We all realize keenly, one time or another, the abject poverty of
language. To attempt putting some emotions into words is like trying
to play Ave Maria on a toy piano. There are heights and depths utterly
beyond the limitation of instrument and speech alike.
Marie's agonized experience in Alpine--and afterward--was of that kind.
She went there under the lure of her loneliness, her heart-hunger for
Bud. Drunk or sober, loving her still or turning away in anger, she had
to see him; had to hear him speak; had to tell him a little of what she
felt of penitence and longing, for that is what she believed she had to
do. Once she had started, she could not turn back. Come what might,
she would hunt until she found him. She had to, or go crazy, she told
herself over and over. She could not imagine any circumstance that would
turn her back from that quest.
Yet she did turn back--and with scarce a thought of Bud. She could not
imagine the thing happening that did happen, which is the way life
has of keeping us all on the anxious seat most of the time. She could
not--at least she did not--dream that Lovin Child, at once her comfort
and her strongest argument for a new chance at happiness, would in
ten minutes or so wipe out all thought of Bud and leave only a dumb,
dreadful agony that hounded her day and night.
She had reached Alpine early in the forenoon, and had gone to the one
little hotel, to rest and gather up her courage for the search which she
felt was only beginning. She had been too careful of her money to spend
any for a sleeper, foregoing even a berth in the tourist car. She could
make Lovin Child comfortable with a full seat in the day coach for
his little bed, and for herself it did not matter. She could not sleep
anyway. So she sat up all night and thought, and worried over the
future which was foolish, since the future held nothing at all that she
pictured in it.
She was tired when she reached the hotel, carrying Lovin Child and her
suit case too--porters being unheard of in small villages, and the one
hotel being too sure of its patronage to bother about getting guests
from depot to hall bedroom. A deaf old fellow with white whiskers and
poor eyesight fumbled two or three keys on a nail, chose one and led the
way down a little dark hall to a little, stuffy room with another
door opening directly on the sidewalk. Marie had not registered on her
arrival, because there was no ink in the inkwell, and the pen had only
half a point; but she was rather relieved to find that she was not
obliged to write her name down--for Bud, perhaps, to see before she had
a chance to see him.
Lovin Child was in his most romping, rambunctious mood, and Marie's head
ached so badly that she was not quite so watchful of his movements as
usual. She gave him a cracker and left him alone to investigate the tiny
room while she laid down for just a minute on the bed, grateful because
the sun shone in warmly through the window and she did not feel the
absence of a fire. She had no intention whatever of going to sleep--she
did not believe that she could sleep if she had wanted to. Fall asleep
she did, however, and she must have slept for at least half an hour,
perhaps longer.
When she sat up with that startled sensation that follows unexpected,
undesired slumber, the door was open, and Lovin Child was gone. She had
not believed that he could open the door, but she discovered that its
latch had a very precarious hold upon the worn facing, and that a slight
twist of the knob was all it needed to swing the door open. She rushed
out, of course, to look for him, though, unaware of how long she had
slept, she was not greatly disturbed. Marie had run after Lovin Child
too often to be alarmed at a little thing like that.
I don't know when fear first took hold of her, or when fear was swept
away by the keen agony of loss. She went the whole length of the one
little street, and looked in all the open doorways, and traversed the
one short alley that led behind the hotel. Facing the street was the
railroad, with the station farther up at the edge of the timber. Across
the railroad was the little, rushing river, swollen now with rains that
had been snow on the higher slopes of the mountain behind the town.
Marie did not go near the river at first. Some instinct of dread made
her shun even the possibility that Lovin Child had headed that way. But
a man told her, when she broke down her diffidence and inquired, that he
had seen a little tot in a red suit and cap going off that way. He had
not thought anything of it. He was a stranger himself, he said, and he
supposed the kid belonged there, maybe.
Marie flew to the river, the man running beside her, and three or four
others coming out of buildings to see what was the matter. She did not
find Lovin Child, but she did find half of the cracker she had given
him. It was lying so close to a deep, swirly place under the bank that
Marie gave a scream when she saw it, and the man caught her by the arm
for fear she meant to jump in.
Thereafter, the whole of Alpine turned out and searched the river bank
as far down as they could get into the box canyon through which it
roared to the sage-covered hills beyond. No one doubted that Lovin Child
had been swept away in that tearing, rock-churned current. No one had
any hope of finding his body, though they searched just as diligently as
if they were certain.
Marie walked the bank all that day, calling and crying and fighting off
despair. She walked the floor of her little room all night, the
door locked against sympathy that seemed to her nothing but a prying
curiosity over her torment, fighting back the hysterical cries that kept
struggling for outlet.
The next day she was too exhausted to do anything more than climb up the
steps of the train when it stopped there. Towns and ranches on the
river below had been warned by wire and telephone and a dozen officious
citizens of Alpine assured her over and over that she would be notified
at once if anything was discovered; meaning, of course, the body of her
child. She did not talk. Beyond telling the station agent her name, and
that she was going to stay in Sacramento until she heard something, she
shrank behind her silence and would reveal nothing of her errand there
in Alpine, nothing whatever concerning herself. Mrs. Marie Moore,
General Delivery, Sacramento, was all that Alpine learned of her.
It is not surprising then, that the subject was talked out long before
Bud or Cash came down into the town more than two months later. It is
not surprising, either, that no one thought to look up-stream for the
baby, or that they failed to consider any possible fate for him save
drowning. That nibbled piece of cracker on the very edge of the river
threw them all off in their reasoning. They took it for granted that
the baby had fallen into the river at the place where they found the
cracker. If he had done so, he would have been swept away instantly. No
one could look at the river and doubt that--therefore no one did doubt
it. That a squaw should find him sitting down where he had fallen, two
hundred yards above the town and in the edge of the thick timber,
never entered their minds at all. That she should pick him up with
the intention at first of stopping his crying, and should yield to the
temptingness of him just as Bud had yielded, would have seemed to Alpine
still more unlikely; because no Indian had ever kidnapped a white child
in that neighborhood. So much for the habit of thinking along grooves
established by precedent
Marie went to Sacramento merely because that was the closest town of any
size, where she could wait for the news she dreaded to receive yet must
receive before she could even begin to face her tragedy. She did not
want to find Bud now. She shrank from any thought of him. Only for him,
she would still have her Lovin Child. Illogically she blamed Bud for
what had happened. He had caused her one more great heartache, and she
hoped never to see him again or to hear his name spoken.
Dully she settled down in a cheap, semi-private boarding house to wait.
In a day or two she pulled herself together and went out to look for
work, because she must have money to live on. Go home to her mother
she would not. Nor did she write to her. There, too, her great hurt
had flung some of the blame. If her mother had not interfered and found
fault all the time with Bud, they would be living together now--happy.
It was her mother who had really brought about their separation. Her
mother would nag at her now for going after Bud, would say that she
deserved to lose her baby as a punishment for letting go her pride and
self-respect. No, she certainly did not want to see her mother, or any
one else she had ever known. Bud least of all.
She found work without much trouble, for she was neat and efficient
looking, of the type that seems to belong in a well-ordered office,
behind a typewriter desk near a window where the sun shines in. The
place did not require much concentration--a dentist's office, where her
chief duties consisted of opening the daily budget of circulars, sending
out monthly bills, and telling pained-looking callers that the doctor
was out just then. Her salary just about paid her board, with a dollar
or two left over for headache tablets and a vaudeville show now and
then. She did not need much spending money, for her evenings were spent
mostly in crying over certain small garments and a canton-flannel dog
called “Wooh-wooh.”
For three months she stayed, too apathetic to seek a better position.
Then the dentist's creditors became suddenly impatient, and the dentist
could not pay his office rent, much less his office girl. Wherefore
Marie found herself looking for work again, just when spring was opening
all the fruit blossoms and merchants were smilingly telling one another
that business was picking up.
Weinstock-Lubin's big department store gave her desk space in the
mail-order department. Marie's duty it was to open the mail, check up
the orders, and see that enough money was sent, and start the wheels
moving to fill each order--to the satisfaction of the customer if
possible.
At first the work worried her a little. But she became accustomed to
it, and settled into the routine of passing the orders along the proper
channels with as little individual thought given to each one as was
compatible with efficiency. She became acquainted with some of the
girls, and changed to a better boarding house. She still cried over the
wooh-wooh and the little garments, but she did not cry so often, nor did
she buy so many headache tablets. She was learning the futility of grief
and the wisdom of turning her back upon sorrow when she could. The sight
of a two-year-old baby boy would still bring tears to her eyes, and she
could not sit through a picture show that had scenes of children and
happy married couples, but she fought the pain of it as a weakness which
she must overcome. Her Lovin Child was gone; she had given up everything
but the sweet, poignant memory of how pretty he had been and how
endearing.
Then, one morning in early June, her practiced fingers were going
through the pile of mail orders and they singled out one that carried
the postmark of Alpine. Marie bit her lips, but her fingers did not
falter in their task. Cheap table linen, cheap collars, cheap suits or
cheap something-or-other was wanted, she had no doubt. She took out the
paper with the blue money order folded inside, speared the money order
on the hook with others, drew her order pad closer, and began to go
through the list of articles wanted.