The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can
give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to
Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”
“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”
Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most
tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on
a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and
remarked:
“It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have
fair weather.”
“I think we are,” she answered.
Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped
Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from
the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The
lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was
about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on
gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of
the windows.
At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and
let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.
Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for
his weapons.
“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to
the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill you,
and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the
drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer.
I'm going to open this window.”
A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless
lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force
a way through the window.
“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his
gun on the sill. “You're tramping down my wife's flowers.”
“It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen
them shlipping in here!”
“It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own dacent wife that hard to come
at, by raison of King Strang!”
“Augh! thim bloomers!—they do be makin' me sthummick sick!”
“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay the
Mormons for fish barrels.”
The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us oat the divil forninst
there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”
“I haven't any devil in the house.”
“It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”
“Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the
women.”
“He'll not lave it alive.”
“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the
torch-bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in
to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?”
“Do I moind it? I do!”
“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”
“No, bedad.”
“When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you,
didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?”
“You did, bedad!”
“I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you.
They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.”
“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.
“How many wives and children have you?”
“Is it 'how many wives,' says the haythen! Wan wife, by the powers;
and tin childer.”
“Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?”
“Begobs, I have.”
“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her?
Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it
yourself.”
“No, bedad!”
“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I
don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”
The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being
plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil
for good.
“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his
confederates.
“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not
making a war on women.”
“We're not. Thrue for you.”
“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get
more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done
about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”
As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with
parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.
“I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes
on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the
sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim.”
In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting
at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were
alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.
“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet
voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says he'll
build me a little house in your yard.”
“Oh, Elizabeth!”
Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself into
the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as
a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her
husband's wife as a little sister.
The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind
Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after
the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against
the indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal
rights were not even recognized by the society into which she would
be forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it
would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected
fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and
were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed through
Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted around
his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the swarming
centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature with such
genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?
Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the
footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.
“Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!” said the man to whom
Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law
unhusbanded her.
Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal
without touching him as he lurched over a rock.
He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind
formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.
“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up the
lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think there'll
be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”
“I'll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”
“Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give him news of us and our
love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about
Beaver.”
“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”
“Good-bye, Cecilia!”
A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the rush of
water on each side of a boat's course, marked the fugitives' progress
towards the anchored smack.
Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the smoke
of her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the sense of
a great company around her. The uninstructed girl from the little
kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and loving in
hopeless silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to their
reward. For there is a development like the unfolding of a god for
those who suffer in strength and overcome.
A BRITISH ISLANDER[2]
Well, I wish you could have been here in Mrs. Gunning's day. She was
theoddest woman on Mackinac. Not that she exerted herself to attract
attention. But she was such a character, and her manners were so
astonishing, that she furnished perennial entertainment to the few
families of us constituting island society.
[Footnote 2: This story is set down exactly as it was told by the
Island Chronicler.]
She was an English woman, born in South Africa, and married to an
American army surgeon, and had lived over a large part of the world
before coming to this fort. She had no children. But her sister had
married Dr. Gunning's brother. And the good-for-nothing pair set out
to follow the English drum-beat around the world, and left a child for
the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana Gunning was so deaf she
could not hear thunder. But she was quits with nature, for all that;
a wonderfully alluring kind of girl, with big brown eyes that were
better than ears, and that could catch the meaning of moving lips.
It seemed to strangers that she merely evaded conversation; for she
had a sweet voice, a little drawling, and was witty when she wanted
to speak. Juliana couldn't step out of the surgeon's quarters to walk
across the parade-ground without making every soldier in the fort
conscious of her. She was well-shaped and tall, and a slight pitting
of the skin only enhanced the charm of her large features. She used to
dress unlike anybody else, in foreign things that her aunt gave her,
and was always carrying different kinds of thin scarfs to throw over
her face and tantalize the men.
Everybody knew that Captain Markley would marry her if he could. But
along comes Dr. McCurdy, a wealthy widower from the East, and nothing
will do but he must hang about Mackinac week after week, pretending to
need the climate—and he weighing nearly two hundred—to court Juliana
Gunning. The lieutenant's wife said of Juliana that she would flirt
with a half-breed if nothing better offered. But the lieutenant's wife
was a homely, jealous little thing, and could never have had all the
men hanging after her. And if she had had the chance she might have
been as aggravating about making up her mind between two as Juliana
was.
We used to think the girl very good-natured. But those three people
made a queer family. Dr. Gunning was the remnant of a magnificent man,
and he always had a courtly air. He paid little attention to the small
affairs of life, and rated money as nothing. Dr. Gunning had his
peculiarities; but I am not telling you about him. He was a kind man,
and would cross the strait in any weather to attend a sick half-breed
or any other ailing creature, who probably never paid him a cent. He
was fond of the island, and quite satisfied to spend his life here.
The day I am telling you about, Mrs. Gunning had driven with me into
the village to make some calls. She was very punctilious about calling
upon strangers. If she intended to recognize a newcomer she called at
once. We drove around to the rear of the fort and entered at the back
sally-port, where carriages always enter; but instead of letting me
put her down at the surgeon's quarters, she ordered the driver to stop
in the middle of the parade-ground. Then she got out and, with never a
word, marched down the steps to Captain Markley, where he was leaning
against the front sally-port, looking below into the town. I didn't
know what to do, so I sat and waited. It was the loveliest autumn
morning you ever saw. I remember the beeches and oaks and maples were
spread out like banners to the very height of the island, all crimson
and yellow splashes in the midst of evergreens. There had been an
awful storm the night before, and you could see down the sally-port
how drenched the fort garden was at the foot of the hill.
Captain Markley had a fearfully depressed look. He was so down in
the mouth that the sentinels noticed it. I saw the one in front of
the western block-house stick his tongue in his cheek and wink at
one pacing below. We heard afterwards that Captain Markley had been
out alone to inspect target-ranges in the pine woods, and almost ran
against Juliana Gunning and Dr. McCurdy sitting on a log. Before he
could get out of the way he overheard the loudest proposal ever made
on Mackinac. It used to be told about in mess, though how it got out
Captain Markley said he did not know, unless they heard it at the fort.
“I have brought you out here,” the doctor shouted to Juliana, as loud
as a cow lowing, “to tell you that I love you! I want you to be my
wife!”
She behaved as if she didn't hear—I think that minx often had fun with
her deafness—and inclined her head to one side.
So he said it all over again.
“I have brought you to this secluded spot to tell you that I love you!
I want you to be my wife!”
It was like a steamer bellowing on the strait. Then Juliana threw her
scarf over her face, and Captain Markley broke away through the bushes.
Mrs. Gunning never said a word to me about either of the suitors. It
wasn't because she didn't talk, for she was a great talker. We had to
postpone a card-party one evening, on account of the continuous flow
of Mrs. Gunning's conversation, which never ceased until it was time
for refreshments, there being not a moment's pause for the tables to
be set out.
[Illustration: I WAS STARTLED TO SEE HER RUSH AT THE CAPTAIN]
I was startled to see her rush down at Captain Markley, brandishing
her parasol as if she were going to knock him down. I thought if
she had any preference it would be for an army man; for you know an
army woman's contempt of civilian money and position. Army women
continually want to be moving on; and they hate bothering with
household stuff, such as we prize.
Captain Markley did look poor-spirited, drooping against the
sally-port, for a man who in his uniform was the most conspicuous
figure to Mackinac girls in a ball-room. Maybe if he had been courting
anything but a statue he might have made a better figure at it.
Juliana was worse than a statue, though; for she could float through
a thousand graceful poses, and drive a man crazy with her eyes. He
wasn't the lover to go out in the woods and shoot a proposal as loud
as a cannon at a girl; and it seems he couldn't get any satisfaction
from her by writing notes.
Mrs. Gunning was drawing off her gloves as she marched at him with her
parasol, and I remember how her emeralds and diamonds flashed in the
sun—old heirlooms. I never saw another woman who had so many precious
stones. She was tall, with that robust English quality that sometimes
goes with slenderness. She and Juliana were not a bit alike. When she
walked, her feet came down pat. I pitied Captain Markley. By leaning
over the carriage I could see him give a start as Mrs. Gunning pounced
at him.
“It's a fine day after the storm, Captain Markley,” says she; and he
lifted his cap and said it was.
Then she made a rush that I thought would drive him down the cliff,
and whirled her parasol around his head like sword-play, talking about
the havoc of the storm. She rippled him from head to foot and poked
at his eyes, and jabbed him, to show how lightning struck the rocks,
Captain Markley all the time moving back and dodging; and to save my
life I couldn't help laughing, though the sentinels above him saw it.
They were pretty well used to her, and rolled their quids in their
cheeks, and winked at one another.
When she had all but thrown him down-hill, she stuck the ferrule right
under his nose and shook it, and says she: “Yet it is now as fine a
day as if no such convulsion had ever threatened the island. It is
often so in this world.”
He couldn't deny that, miserable as he looked. And I thought she would
let him alone and come and say good-day to me. But no, indeed! She
took him by the arm. Soldiers off duty were lounging on the benches,
and Captain Markley wouldn't let them see him haled like a prisoner.
He marched square-shouldered and erect; and Mrs. Gunning says to me as
they reached the carriage:
“The captain will help you down if you will come with us. I am going
to show him my Shanghai rooster.”
I thanked her, and gladly let him help me down. I wasn't going to
desert the poor fellow when Mrs. Gunning was dealing with him; and,
besides, I wanted to see that rooster myself. We heard such stories
of the way she kept her chickens and labored over all the domestic
animals she gathered around herself at the fort.
By ascending a steep bank on which the western block-house stands, you
know you can look down into the drill-ground—that wide meadow behind
the fort, with quarters at the back. Mrs. Gunning had an enclosure
built outside the wall for her chickens; and there they were, walking
about, scratching the ground, and diverting themselves as well as they
could in their clothes. She had a shed at one end of the enclosure,
and all the hens, walking about or sitting on nests, wore hoods! Holes
were made for their eyes but none for their beaks, and the eyelets
seemed to magnify so that they looked wrathy as they stretched their
necks and quavered in those bags. Captain Markley and I both burst out
laughing, but Mrs. Gunning explained it all seriously.
“They eat their eggs,” says she; “so I tie hoods on them until I have
collected the eggs for the day.”
I remember some were clawing their head-gear, trying alternate feet,
and two determined hens were trying to peck each other free. But they
were generally resigned, and we might have grown so after the first
minute, if it hadn't been for the rooster.
Captain Markley roared, and I leaned against the lower part of
the block-house and held my sides. That long-legged, awkward,
high-stepping Shanghai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of
clothes—all but a hat. His coat-sleeves extended over his wings,
and when he flapped them to crow, and stuck his claws out of his
trousers-legs, I wept tears on my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning talked
straight ahead without paying any attention to our laughter. If it
ever had been funny to her it had ceased to be so. She had not brought
Captain Markley there to amuse him.
“Look at that Shanghai rooster now,” says she. “I brought him up
from the South. I put him among the hens and they picked all his
feathers off. He was as bare, captain, as your hand. He was literally
hen-pecked. First one would step up to him and pull out a feather;
then another; and he, poor fool, did nothing but cower against the
fence. It never seemed to enter his brain-pan he could put a stop to
the torture. There he was, without a feather to cover himself with,
and the cool autumn nights coming on. So I took some gray cloth and
made him these clothes. He would have been picked to the bone if I
hadn't. But they put spunk into him. That Shanghai rooster has found
out he has to assert himself, captain, and he does assert himself.”
I saw Captain Markley turn red, and I knew he wished the sentinel
wasn't standing guard a few feet away in front of that block-house.
[Illustration: THE QUARTERS]
She might have let him alone after she had given him that thrust, and
gone on to her house, and said good-bye in the usual way. But just
as he was helping me down it happened that Juliana and Dr. McCurdy
appeared through the rear sally-port, which they must have reached by
skirting the wall instead of crossing the drill-field. As soon as Mrs.
Gunning saw them she stiffened, and clubbed her umbrella at Captain
Markley again. He couldn't get away, so he stood his ground.
“See that creature begin to curvet and roll her eyes!” says Mrs.
Gunning. “If the parade-ground were full of men I think she would
prance over the parapet. At my age she may have some sense and
feeling. But I would be glad to see her in the hands of a man who knew
how to assert himself.”
“May I ask,” says Captain Markley, “what you mean by a man's asserting
himself, Mrs. Gunning?”
She made such a pounce at him with the parasol that her waist began to
rip in the back.
“My dear boy, I am a full-blooded Briton, and Juliana is what you may
call an English half-breed. In the bottom of our hearts we have a
hankering for monarchy. The lion, who permits nobody else to poach on
his preserves, is our symbol. While the vexatious child and I are not
at all alike in other things, I know she admires as much as I do a man
who asserts himself.”
Though it was said Juliana Gunning could not hear thunder, she
generally understood her aunt's voice, and could tell when she was
being talked about. She came straight to her own rescue, as you might
say, and Dr. McCurdy, poor man, was very polite, but not cheerful.
If we had known then what he had been yelling in the woods, we should
have understood better why Captain Markley seemed to pluck up and
strut at the sight of him.
I think Mrs. Gunning determined to finish the business that very hour.
She met Dr. McCurdy with all the sweetness she could put into her
manner just before she intended to pounce the hardest.
“I have been showing the captain my chickens,” she says, “and now I
want to show you my cows.”
Dr. McCurdy thanked her, and said he would be delighted to see the
cows, but he stuck to Juliana like a shadow. Maybe he expected the
cows would give him a further excuse for being with her. But Mrs.
Gunning cut him off there. She gave her keys to her niece, and says
she:
“Go in the house, my dear, and set out the decanter and glasses, and
give Captain Markley a glass of wine to keep him until we come back. I
want to tell him something more about that Shanghai rooster.”
Juliana understood, and took the keys, and rolled her eyes
tantalizingly at Dr. McCurdy. The poor fellow made a stand, and said
the cows would do some other time, and mightn't he beg for a glass of
wine too, after his walk?
“Certainly, doctor, certainly,” says Mrs. Gunning, leading the way
to the front sally-port. “We expect you to take a glass with us. But
while Juliana sets out the decanter, let us look at the cows.”
She hadn't mentioned me, but I didn't care for that, knowing Mrs.
Gunning as I did. I should have followed if she hadn't beckoned to me,
for I was as determined to see the affair through as she was to finish
it.
We had to go down that long path from the front sally-port to the
street, and then turn into the field at the foot of the hill, where
the fort stables are. Mrs. Gunning talked all the time about cattle,
flourishing her parasol and flashing her diamonds and emeralds in the
sun, and telling Dr. McCurdy she had intended to ask his opinion about
them ever since his arrival on the island. He answered yes, and no,
and seemed to be thinking of anything but cattle.
Mackinac cows tinkled their bells in every thicket. But Mrs. Gunning's
pets were brought in morning and afternoon to clean, well-lighted
stalls. There they stood in a row, sleek as if they had been
curried—and I have heard that she did curry them herself—all switching
natural tails except one. And, as sure as you live, that cow had a
false tail that Mrs. Gunning had made for her!
She took hold of it and showed it to us. It did not seem very funny to
Dr. McCurdy, but he had to listen to what she said.
“Spotty was a fine cow, but by some accident she had lost her tail,
and I got her cheaper on that account,” says Mrs. Gunning. “You don't
know how distressing it was to see her switching a stump. So I made
her a tail of whalebone and India-rubber and yarn. I knit it myself.”
The poor fellow looked up at the fort and said: “Yes. It is very
interesting, Mrs. Gunning.”
“I am aware,” says she, “that the expedient was never hit upon before.
But Spotty's brush is a great success. It used to make me unhappy to
think of leaving this post. All the other cows might find good homes
with new owners; but who would care for Spotty? Since I have supplied
her deficiency, however, and know that the supply can constantly be
renewed, my mind is easy about her. If you ever have to knit a cow's
tail, doctor, remember the foundations are whalebone and India-rubber;
and I would advise you to use the coarsest yarn you can find for the
brush.”
“I will, Mrs. Gunning,” he says, like a man who wanted to lie down in
the straw and die. And I couldn't laugh and relieve myself, because it
was like laughing at him.
“Now that shows,” says Mrs. Gunning, and she pounced at him and shook
her parasol in his face so vigorously that she ripped in the back the
same as a chrysalis, “how easy it is to remedy a seemingly incurable
injury.”
If he didn't understand her then, he did afterwards. But he looked as
if he couldn't endure it any longer, and made for the door.
“Stop, Dr. McCurdy,” says she. “You haven't heard these cows'
pedigrees.”
He stopped, and said: “How long are the pedigrees?”