LOUISE had wondered why Katie Salter had not appeared to do the weekly
washing. In the light of a report brought by the mail carrier the reason
was now too frightfully clear. Katie’s son, a boy of twelve, had
accidentally killed himself while examining an old shot-gun.
Keble was sitting at his table filling in a cheque. Louise had been
silently watching him. “I’ll give this to Sweet to take to Katie on his
way back to the Valley,” he said. “It will cover expenses and more.”
“Give it to me instead, dear. I’ll take it when I go this afternoon.”
“Oh! Then what about our trip to the Dam with the Browns?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to be excused. I must do what I can for Katie. She
has nobody.”
“She has the neighbors. Mrs. what’s her name, Dixon, is taking care of
her. Besides, all the women for miles around flock together for an
occasion of that sort. It will be rather ghastly.”
“Especially for Katie. That’s why I have to go.”
“Oh, Lord! if you feel you must. I’ll come with you.”
She rose from her chair and picked up the cheque he had left on the edge
of the table. She had thought it all out within a few seconds, and in
none of the pictures she had conjured up could she find a place for her
husband. The fastidiousness which persisted through all his efforts to
be “plain folks” could not be reconciled with the stark details of the
tragedy ten miles down the road.
“No, Keble dear,” she replied with a firmness she knew he wouldn’t
resist. More than once she had secretly wished he would resist her
firmness, for every yielding on his part seemed to increase her habit of
being firm, and that was a habit that bade fair to petrify the amiable
little gaieties and pliancies of her nature. “You know you’ve been
anxious about the Dam. It won’t do to put off the trip again. Katie will
understand your absence, and she will feel comforted to have at least
one dude present. You know I’m considered a dude, too, since my
marriage. Nowadays my old friends address me as stiffly as we used to
address the schoolma’am. . . . It’s strange what trifles determine the
manners of this world.”
“Was our marriage such a trifle?”
Louise came out of her reflective mood and smiled, then said, as if just
discovering it, “Why, yes, when you think of all the big things there
are.”
“What about Billy’s death? Is that a big thing?”
“A big thing to Katie, just as our being together is a big thing to us.”
“What a horrid way of putting it!”
“. . . Marriage _is_ being together, though.”
He let that pass and returned to his point. “A big thing to Katie, but
negligible in the light of something else, I suppose you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“In the light of what, for example?”
“I don’t quite know, dear. I’ll tell you when I’ve had time to
philosophize it out.”
She kissed him and went out to the saddle shed.
Sundown knew his mistress’s moods and decided on an easy trot for the
first few miles of the route, which lay through groves of pine and
yellowing cottonwood. Eventually the road emerged into a broad stretch
of dust-green sage perforated with gopher holes, and Louise set a
diagonal course toward the stony river bed which had to be forded. A
flock of snow-white pelicans sailed lazily overhead, following the
stream toward favorite fishing pools. A high line of mountains, pale
green, violet, and buff, merged into the hazy sky. The heat was
oppressive and ominous.
For an hour not one human being crossed her path. The only sign of
habitation had been the villainous dog and three or four horses of a not
too prosperous homestead owned by one of Keble’s horse wranglers. All
along the road she had been preoccupied by the tone of her parting talk
with Keble, vaguely chagrined that her husband seemed to deprecate her
identifying herself too closely with the life of the natives. Strangely
enough he sought to identify himself with them, while, presumably,
expecting her to identify herself with the class from which he had
sprung, as though, gradually, she would have portentous new duties to
undertake.
She couldn’t help dreading the prospect. Not that she shrank from
duties,—on the contrary; it was the menacing gentility of it all that
subdued her. When Keble had first come to them, disgusted with the old
order, he had persuaded her that the younger generation,—his English
generation,—had learned an epoch-making lesson, that it had earned its
right to ignore tradition and to build the future according to its own
iconoclastic logic. He had determined to create his own life, rather
than passively accept the life that had been awaiting him over there
since birth. She had thrilled with pride at having been chosen partner
in such a daring scheme. Only to find that, in insidious ways, perhaps
unconsciously, Keble was buttressing himself with the paraphernalia of
the old order which he professed to repudiate. She could love Keble
without gloating over his blue prints and his catalogues of prize
cattle, his nineteenth century poets, and his eighteenth century
courtliness. The natives might gape at her luxurious bathroom fixtures
and other marvels that were beginning to arrive in packing-cases at the
Witney railway station. She had almost no possessive instinct, and
certainly no ambition to be mistress of the finest estate in the
province. Her most clearly defined ambition was to be useful,—useful to
herself, and thereby, in some vague but effective way, to her
generation. Her father, for all his obscurity, was to her notion more
useful than Keble. Wherever Keble went he drove a fair bargain: took
something and gave something in return. Wherever the little physician
went he left healing, courage, cheerfulness, and in return took, from
some source close to the heart of life, the energy and will to give
more.
She dismounted to open the gate of the Dixon yard and led Sundown past a
meagre field of wheat, past straggling beds of onions and potatoes,
towards a small unpainted house which struck her as the neglected wife
of the big, scrupulously cared-for barn. Two harnessed farm wagons were
standing before it, and a dirty touring car. A group of men were
lounging near the woodshed chewing tobacco with a Sunday manner, and
some small boys, bare-legged, were playing a discreet, enforcedly
subdued game of tag. Two saddled horses were hitched to the fence, to
which she led Sundown.
One of the Dixon children had run indoors to announce her advent, and as
she stepped into the kitchen she was met by a woman dressed in black
cotton and motioned into the adjoining room,—a combination of parlor
and bedroom,—where two or three other women were sewing together strips
of white cheese-cloth. All eyes turned to her.
The walls were covered with newspaper, designed to prevent draughts.
There was a rust-stained print of Queen Victoria and a fashion plate ten
years out of date. At the two tiny windows blossomless geranium stalks
planted in tomato tins made a forlorn pattern. The centre of the room
was occupied by a rough box in which lay a powder-scarred little form
clad in a coquettish “sailor suit” of cheese-cloth.
Louise drew near and looked wonderingly at the yellowish-white,
purple-flecked face and hideously exposed teeth of the boy who had a few
days since run errands for her, and who had planned to grow up and
“drive the mail.”
The women expected her to weep, and in anticipation began to sniffle.
“At what time is the burial?” she asked, dry-eyed.
“As soon as we can git this here covering made. We’ve had to do
everything pretty quick. We can’t keep him long.”
Louise shuddered and was turning away when she remembered the flowers in
her hand,—dahlias and inappropriate, but the only flowers to be had,
the only flowers on the scene,—and placed them in the coffin, with an
odd little pat, as if to reassure Billy. Then she threaded a needle and
set to work with the others.
When all the strips were sewn together and gathered, they were nailed to
the boards and to the cover of the coffin. Perspiration rolled from the
forehead of Mr. Dixon, and his embarrassment at having to make so much
noise caused him from time to time to spit on the floor.
The sound of hammering stirred Katie’s drugged imagination, and overhead
thin wails began to arise. With the continued pounding the lamentations
increased in volume, and presently the sound of moving chairs could be
heard, followed by indistinct consolations and footsteps on the
uncarpeted stairs. The door burst open, and Katie lurched in, her face
twisted and swollen behind a crooked veil. Clawing away the man with the
hammer, she threw herself across the box. A long strand of greyish-red
hair escaped from under a dusty hat and brushed against the redder hair
of the boy.
It was some time before Katie could be drawn away. Finally, with a
renewed burst of sobbing she let herself be led by Louise into a corner
of the kitchen. Mixed with her sobs were incoherent statements. “It was
for his health,” Katie was trying to tell Louise, “I brought him up
here. And I was workin’ so hard, only for his schoolin’.”
Louise kept peering anxiously out of doors. Black clouds had gathered,
and a treacherous little breeze had begun to stir the discarded pieces
of cheese-cloth which she could see on the floor through the open door.
A tree in the yard rustled, as if sighing in relief at a change from the
accumulated heat of days.
After long delays the time arrived for the fastening down of the lid. To
everyone’s surprise, and thanks largely to Louise’s tact, Katie allowed
the moment to pass as if in a stupor. The coffin was placed in one of
the farm wagons, and a soiled quilt thrown over it. The outer box was
lifted upon the second wain, and served as a seat for the men and boys
in the gathering. Katie and the women were installed in the dirty motor,
which was to lead the way. And Louise, unstrapping her rain-cape,
mounted Sundown and galloped ahead to open the gate.
As the clumsy procession filed past her, the clouds broke, and a deluge
of hailstones beat against them, followed by sheets of water into which
it was difficult to force the horses. It persisted during the whole
journey toward the mound which was recognized as a graveyard, although
no one but Rosie Dixon and an unknown tramp had ever been interred
there.
On the approach of the bedraggled _cortège_ two men in shirtsleeves and
overalls, grasping shovels, came from under the shelter of a dripping
tree to indicate the halting place. Louise dismounted at once and led
Katie to a seat on some planks that rested near the grave. Mrs. Dixon, a
glass of spirits of ammonia in her hand, pointed out Rosie’s resting
place and for a moment transposed the object of her sorrow.
The grave proved too narrow for the outer box, and there was another
long wait on the wet planks while the grave-diggers shoveled and took
measurements, with muttered advice and expletives. The rain had abated.
A mongrel who had followed them ran from one to another, and yelped when
some one attempted to chasten him.
At length the box splashed into place, scraping shrilly against
projecting pebbles, and the assembly drew near to assist or watch the
lowering of the white cheese-cloth box. Katie was reviving for another
paroxysm.
With a shock Louise discovered that they were preparing to put the cover
in place without a sign of a religious ceremony.
“Is there no one here to take charge of the service?” she inquired.
The man with the shovel replied for the others. “You see, Mrs. Eveley,
Mr. Boots is away from the Valley. We couldn’t get a parson from Witney.
We thought perhaps somebody would offer to say a prayer like.”
To herself she was saying that not even her father could let poor Billy
be buried so casually.
“Let me take charge,” she offered, with only the vaguest notion of what
she was going to do.
Mrs. Dixon took her place beside Katie, and Louise proceeded to the head
of the grave, making on her breast the sign her mother had secretly
taught her.
“My dear friends,” she commenced. “We poor human beings have so little
use for our souls that we turn them over to pastors and priests for safe
keeping, till some emergency such as the present. In French there is a
proverb which says: it is better to deal with God direct than with his
saints. If we had acquired the habit of doing so, we shouldn’t feel
embarrassed when God is not officially represented. With our souls in
our own keeping, we could not be so cruelly surprised.
“As a matter of fact, priests and parsons know no more than we do about
life and death. Truth lies deep within ourself, and the most that any
ambassador of heaven can do is to direct our gaze inward. Although we
know nothing, we have been born with an instinctive belief that the
value of life cannot be measured merely in terms of the number of years
one remains a living person. We can’t help feeling that every individual
life contributes to an unknown total of Life. Our human misfortune is
that we see individuals too big and Life itself too small. We forget we
are like bees, whose glory is that each contributes, namelessly, a
modicum to the hive and to the honey that gives point to their
existence. We do wrong to attach tragic importance to the death of even
our nearest friend, for their dying is a phase of their existence in the
larger sense, just as sleeping is a phase of our twenty-four hour
existence.
“The real tragedy is that we build up our lives upon something which is
by its nature impermanent. The wisest of us are too prone to live for
the sake of a person, and if that person suddenly ceases to exist the
ground is swept from under us. To find a new footing is difficult, but
possible, and it may even be good for us to be obliged to reach out in a
new direction and live for something more permanent than ourselves.
“We are too easily discouraged by pain. We should learn from nature that
pain is merely a symptom of growth. Trees could not be luxuriant in
spring if in winter they hadn’t experienced privation. What we have
derived from life has been at the expense of others’ privations and
death; if we are unwilling to be deprived in our turn, we are stupidly
selfish.
“Instinct tells us that, in a voice that can be heard above the voice of
grief. It also tells us to be courageous and neighborly. In that spirit
we can say that Katie’s loss is our opportunity. It affords us an
occasion to prove our human solidarity by giving her a hand over the
barren stretch and helping her to a new conception of life.
“In that spirit let us put a seal on the last reminder of the soul which
has passed into the keeping of forces that direct us all, and let us do
so with a profound reverence for all the elements in nature which are a
mystery to us. Some of us have grown up without an orthodox faith. But
we can all be humble enough to bow our heads in acknowledgement of the
great wisdom which has created us mortal and immortal.”
Stepping back to make way for the men, Louise, on some incongruous urge,
again made the sign of the cross with which she had superstitiously
preluded her address. From the faces around her she knew she had spoken
with an impersonal concentration as puzzling to them as it had been to
herself.
One of the grave-diggers suddenly said “Amen,” and Mrs. Dixon, in
tremulous tones, added, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
The ceremony over, and Katie installed in the home of a neighbor until
she should feel able to remove with her belongings to a cabin on the
Eveley ranch, Louise rode away in the twilight towards the Valley, to
spend a night with her father.
The air had a tang in it that suggested October rather than August, and
the storm had deposited a sprinkling of white on the summits of the
mountains. Not a sign remained of the landscape which only a few hours
earlier had been drooping under a sultry heat. Her knuckles ached with
cold as Sundown trotted on toward the town which was beginning to
sparkle far away in the gloom.
2
When Louise and her father were alone they dropped into French which
gave them a sense of intimacy and of isolation which they liked. The
little doctor was greatly pleased on his arrival from a trying case that
night to find her in possession of the library. Her first question,
issuing from some depth of revery, was even more unaccountable than her
presence.
“_Bon soir, Papa_,” she greeted him. “Can you tell me exactly how much
money I have in the bank, including what Uncle Mornay-Mareuil left me?”
Dr. Bruneau opened his eyes, made a bewildered grimace, went to a desk
in the corner, and rummaged for a bank-book. “Including interest to
date,” he gravely replied, “eleven thousand, two hundred and
thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents.”
He came to his own chair opposite her, picking up the pipe which she had
filled for him. “What’s in that black little head?”
“Many things. More, really, than I know,—or, at least, than I knew.”
“Nothing wrong?”
“. . . I even wonder if there is anything right.”
He was at once reassured. “You’ve been with Katie Salter. How is she?”
“She’s bearing it. Papa, _penses-tu_, I delivered the funeral oration.”
“_B’en vrai, tu en as!_ . . . What did you say?”
“I talked over their heads, and a little over my own, as though I were
under a spell. I thought I was going to say something religious; but it
was scarcely that. It was rather like what the cook scrapes together
when people turn up for dinner unexpectedly,—philosophical pot-luck.
Everybody seemed puzzled, but I wasn’t just inventing words, as I used
to do when addressing my paper dolls. The words seemed to make sense in
spite of me. . . . And I had a strange feeling, afterwards, of having
grown up all at once. I don’t think I’ll ever feel sheer girlish again.
And the worst of that is, I don’t quite know how a woman is supposed to
feel and conduct herself. It’s very perplexing. . . . Papa, what do you
believe comes after this life, or what doesn’t?”
“Precisely that,—that nothing does.”
“I told them that we were infinitesimal parts of some mighty human
machinery, and although life was the most valuable thing we knew of
there was something beyond our comprehension a million times more
valuable; that even though we as individuals perished, our energies
didn’t.”
The doctor was chuckling. “I hope they’ll take your word for it! . . .
We may be immortal for all I know. But if we are, I see no reason why
cats and chickens should not be. In the dissecting room they’re very
much like men.”
“They are; they must be! Though not as individuals. The death of a man
or the death of a cat simply scatters so many units of vitality in other
directions! _Tiens!_ when our dam broke, up at the canyon, all the
electric lights went out. That was the death of our little lighting
plant. But the water power that generated our current is still there,
immortal, even if the water _is_ rushing off in a direction that doesn’t
happen to light our lamps, a direction that makes Keble grieve and Mr.
Brown swear. . . . That’s a rock on which Keble and I have often split.
I think he sincerely believes he’s going to a sort of High Church
heaven, intact except for his clothes and his prayer-book. I wish I
could believe something as naïve as that.”
“_Pas vrai!_ You are too fond of free speculation, like your poor
Papa. . . . And now, those dollars in the bank?”
“Oh, I was just wondering. . . . Besides, you never can tell, I might
decide to run off some day and improve my education.”
Her father shot a look of inquiry across the table, but her face was
impassive. “You’re not exactly ignorant; and certainly not stupid.”
She laughed. “_Ah ça!_ . . . Will you please get me a cheque book the
next time you call at the bank?”
The next morning Louise passed in helping Nana dust and straighten the
accumulation of books and knick-knacks in the house. She relieved the
old servant by preparing luncheon herself, and the doctor arrived from
the little brown shingled hospital opposite the cement and plaster bank
to rejoin her, bringing with him a new cheque book, which she carelessly
thrust into the pocket of her riding breeches.
“What a sensible Papa you are, not to warn me against extravagance!”
“I’ve never doubted you, my child. It’s not likely I shall commence now.
You might have gone far if you hadn’t decided to marry; I always
maintained that. As it is, you made a match that no other girl in the
Valley could have done,—though I for one never guaranteed it would be
successful.”
“_Hein ça!_” she mocked, absent-mindedly. “I’ve made an omelette that no
other girl in the Valley could have done, and it’s too successful for
words. Keble is upset for days if he catches me in my own kitchen.”
She divided the omelette into three parts, one for Nana, who, more than
any other person in the Valley, was awed by the fact that Weedgie
Bruneau had turned into the Honorable Mrs. Eveley.
3
During several days Louise’s thoughtful, suddenly grown-up mood
persisted, but it was destined to be violently detracked by the chance
reading of a poem which had been marked in blue pencil and cut out,
apparently, from the page of a magazine. It was lying on Keble’s table,
among other papers. It was unsigned, and the title was _Constancy_. With
a sense of wonderment that grew into fear she read:
_You cry I’ve not been true,_
_Why should I be?_
_For, being true to you,_
_Who are but one part of an infinite me,_
_Should I not slight the rest?_
_Rather are you false to me and nature_
_In seeking to prolong the span_
_Of impulses born mortal;_
_In prisoning memories_
_Impalpable as the fluttering of wings._
_If I’d been false,_
_I have but mounted higher_
_Toward a spacious summit,_
_Bourne of all soaring vows._
_The buds we gathered in the vale have perished._
_Branches that offered roofs of shimmering green motley,_
_Their summer service rendered,_
_Divested themselves,_
_Framing rude necessary heights._
_Yet you sit plaintive there while I aspire,_
_Intent upon a goal you will not see._
_Must I descend to you?_
_Or shall I venture still?—My staff_
_An accusation of inconstancy._
What did it mean? Why was it marked? Who had written it? Why was it
lying on Keble’s desk? She stood cold and still, her gaze returning
again and again to the paper in her hand.
Unable to answer the questions, she sat down and made an ink copy of the
brutal lines. When the last word was written she replaced the original
on the table and took the copy to her bedroom, reading it, unconsciously
memorizing it, making room in her philosophy for its egoistic claim, and
finally locking it in the box that sheltered her youthful manuscripts.
Although she did not refer to the enigmatic poem, she knew that to its
discovery could be traced a breach that began to make itself felt, a
breach which she knew Keble associated in some vague way with the
funeral of little Billy Salter. Keble, for his part, had made no mention
of the poem, and day after day those accusatory blue marks continued to
peer through the unanswered correspondence that rested on his table.
Although she argued the lines out of countenance, though she watched for
Keble’s polite mask to fall and reveal some emotion that would disprove
her interpretation of them, they ate into her heart.
The poem might have been a hint from Providence. She _was_ an impediment
to Keble’s progress, a poor creature unable to comprehend the hereditary
urges that bore him along in a direction that seemed to her futile. How
often must he have been legitimately impatient of her deficiencies! How
often must he have starved for the internationally flavored chit-chat
with which a wife like Girlie Windrom would have entertained him! With
what a bitter sigh must he have read his thought thus expressed by an
unknown poet! That would account for the marking and the clipping. She
promised herself to profit by the hint, if hint it were.
As the breach widened, Keble maintained the deferential attitude he had
always assumed in the course of their hitherto negligible
misunderstandings. Technically he was always in the right. Her
acquaintance with people of his class had been large enough to teach her
that good breeding implied the maintenance of a certain tone, that in
divergences of view between well and dubiously bred people, the moral
advantage seemed always to lie with the former. It was a trick she had
yet to learn.
There was a sort of finality in the nature of this breach that made it
unlike any other in their relationship. This was a conclusion she
admitted after days of desperate clinging to the illusion that nothing
was amiss. Meanwhile Keble waited; and she sank deeper into silence.
In the midst of her self-analysis a letter arrived for Keble from the
friend of the early spring. Walter Windrom had spent the intervening
months in England, but was returning to his post in Washington.
The renewal of this link with the outer world had a stimulating effect
upon Louise. It suggested a plan which ran through her veins like a
tonic.
That night, through a blur of tears, she wrote the following letter,
while her husband lay uneasily asleep.
“Hillside, September 16.
“Dear Walter: Before leaving the ranch you offered to do
something for me. You may if you will. I’ve been miserable for
months at the thought of what a very back-woods creature I am. I
can never be what I would like to be; therefore I’ve decided to
be what I _can_ be, so _hard_ that I shall be even with Fate. I
can’t go away, but I can afford a tutor with my very own money.
So will you please immediately pick out the most suitable girl
you can find. Above all things she mustn’t be a teacher, or
anything professional; she must simply be somebody nice, and too
well-bred for words! I’ll learn _by ear_; I never could learn
any other way.
“I will pay all expenses and whatever salary you suggest. And
I’d rather it be a big salary for a paragon than economize on a
second-best. She could come here as a former friend of mine, for
Keble must know nothing about my conspiracy. Do you think that
is too much like not playing the game? After all, it’s only that
I wish to play the game better,—I mean his sort of game. Not
that I especially like it; but I’ve let myself in for it.
“Would you do that, Walter, please, without making fun of me?
Address me in care of Dr. Achille Bruneau.”