THE LEAD
I SEEMED to have cut myself off quite effectually from communication
with either Haidee or Wanza. The days went by, colorless and unlovely.
And June came at last, bringing new wonderful wild flowers, and added
tassels to the tamaracks, and browner stalks to the elder bushes.
One unusually hot afternoon I sat in my canoe, idly drifting on the
shadowy river, marvelling at the clear cut reflections, and casting an
eye about for a certain elusive break in the screen of willow shoots
and rushes. If I once paddled my craft successfully through this meagre
opening, I knew I should find a narrow waterway that would convey me to
the shore of Hidden Lake.
What I should do when I reached that shore was a matter of conjecture.
But after paddling along close to the high grass and floundering about
in the tules for an hour, I gave over my search, rested on my paddle,
and fell into deep thought. And my thoughts were not pleasant ones.
Like the man in the story, I realized that at a certain hour of a
certain day I had been a fool.
A slight sound disturbed my reverie. I looked ahead. A canoe came
slipping along in the shade of the willows. As I stared and stared, a
voice hailed me, a voice compelling and shrill. Wanza sat, paddle in
hand, the thick fair hair pleached low on her brows and bound with a
crimson handkerchief, her young eyes disdainful, her lips sulky. When
she met my eyes she frowned.
I swept my canoe close to hers. “Did you call me?” I asked, with marked
respect.
She frowned still more deeply.
“Wanza,” I cried, with swift cajolery, “washed or unwashed your hair is
wonderful. It is the color of corn silk, and your eyes are surely blue
as the cornflowers. Will you forgive my rudeness when last we met?”
She smiled ever so slightly and the heaviness left her face.
“How is business?” I asked.
“I’ve sold one whisk broom, five spools of darning cotton, a pair of
cotton socks, and three strings of blue glass beads, to-day,” she said
succinctly.
“Glass beads are the mode, then? It is shocking how out of touch I am
with the world of fashion beyond Cedar Dale.” I smiled across at the
flushed face. “Now who among the rancher’s wives, I wonder, could have
had the temerity to pay the price of three strings of blue glass beads.”
Wanza drew her paddle from the water, giving her head a backward toss.
“And it isn’t to ranchers’ wives or town folks I’ve been selling the
beads. It’s to the gipsies at the gipsy encampment beyond the village.”
Of a sudden her face crumpled with an expression of sly reflection. “A
gipsy woman told my fortune too, Mr. Dale; oh, a great fortune she told
me!”
“What did she tell you, child?” I asked, anxious to appear friendly and
interested. “It must have been something exceptionally good, since you
are so vastly pleased.”
Her light brows came together. She shook her head until her hair spun
out riotously like fine zigzag flames about her damask cheeks. “It was
not a bit good. It was as bad as bad could be. Hm! It made me shiver,
Mr. Dale. She said she saw,” Wanza lowered her voice and glanced
apprehensively over her shoulder at the tree shadows, “she said she saw
blood on my hands.”
In spite of myself I felt myself grow cold, sitting there with the warm
sun on my back. And I cried out angrily: “Have you no better sense
than to listen to a pack of foolish lies from the tongue of a vagabond
gipsy? I am surprised at you, Wanza. Surprised--yes, and ashamed of
you!”
I dipped my paddle into the water and swung my canoe about.
“Wait,” I heard a surprisingly meek voice entreat. “I thought you was
going to get me a place with the lady as has bought Russell’s old
place. Have you forgotten, Mr. Dale?”
I rested on my paddle. “Oh, no,” I said, airily, “I have not forgotten!”
“I believe you’ve been hunting for the opening in the willows and
haven’t been able to find it, either! And here was I hoping you could
help me! I been looking for it for an hour. I was going to see this
woman at Hidden Lake, myself. After a while when I get to a slack time
with my peddling I may take the place with her.”
There was a brief silence. I felt her searching eyes on my face.
“To be sure,” I said then, “I can find the tricksy aperture that leads
to the narrow water route that runs between this river and Hidden
Lake--”
Wanza interrupted me with an impish laugh.
“It sounds like that nursery rhyme you say to Joey.”
“Yes,” I went on with the air of weighing the matter, “I can find the
opening very easily, I dare say, when I come to look for it.”
Her eyes grew grave. She favored me with a ruminative glance. Presently
she said:
“Well, go ahead--find the tricksy aperture! I’m waiting.”
I propelled my canoe forward. “I shall find the open sesame,” I boasted.
The gravity left her eyes; they grew starry with mirth. She repeated
gaily:
“Go ahead!”
After all it was through sheer good luck that I found the entrance to
the slight channel that led to the lake. Wanza gave me a surprised
glance as I held aside the willow shoots lest the branches rake her
head, as her canoe slipped through the leafy opening in the wall of
high growing greenery. My blood flowed smoothly and deliciously through
my veins as I answered her glance and swept my canoe along close to
hers, letting the willows swing into place behind us.
Oh, the secretive charm of the weaving, ribbon-like waterway, as
it glided in and out between the high willow-fringed banks of the
meadows! Oh, the flowered border-ways past which the curling stream
ran turbidly, oily and dark and shadow-flecked, beneath the shivering
grey-green tree arcade. Oh, the perfume of the syringa, the pipe of
mating birds, the bee droning that made the air sensuous with sound.
We were borne along silkenly. We scarcely spoke. We drifted thus for
a time, and then the channel, gradually widening, conveyed us through
leafy growths and over-arching green to the lake, snug in its frame of
cedars.
Ten minutes later I stood on the crumbling steps of the old cabin and
looked up at Wanza, where she stood, leaning against the door frame,
a waving curtain of woodbine casting delicate shadows on her face.
Glancing down and meeting my eyes she smiled.
“Shall I knock?” she whispered.
I nodded.
But her knock elicited no response.
“I reckon she’s gone off into the woods sketching. Old Lundquist says
she sketches a lot, and rides, and shoots at marks.”
My heart sank. I sat down on the top step. Wanza seated herself on the
piazza railing. “Quiet here, isn’t it?” she said musingly. “I think
I’d like living here. It’s wild and free. Why, the village just seems
to cramp me sometimes! What’s that funny bird making that screeching
noise, Mr. Dale? And where is he?”
“In the pine tree yonder. High up on one of the topmost branches.
That’s our western wood pewee, Wanza. Listen and you will hear the true
pewee note. He gives it occasionally. But his customary note is a very
strident unlovely one, almost like the cry a hawk makes--there! He is
giving his pewee call, now.”
We sat very still, listening. “Pewee, Pewee,” the bird gave its sad,
plaintive cry, repeatedly.
Presently I said: “So even as unconventional a place as Roselake
village makes you restless, does it, Wanza?”
“I should say so. It’s the people--and--and church!”
“Church!”
She met my eyes somberly. “Going to church almost kills me. It does,
honest. Hats do, too.”
“Hats!”
“Thinking about ’em. Seeing ’em on other people--in front of you--at
church--knowing they can’t afford ’em--but wishing you’d skimped Dad a
little more on his white sugar and got a better one.”
I laughed outright. Her eyes continued to meet mine broodingly.
“Why don’t we have church outdoors, Mr. Dale? And why don’t we just
kneel down in our work clothes, bareheaded? I’d like to know! The
trouble with church is that we only have it once a week and in the
house. If we had it in the woods or fields and we didn’t go dressed
up--oh, a body’d feel so much nearer to heaven!”
“The woods were God’s first temples,” I said gently.
“I’d like to go to church in the woods, and to school in the woods.
When I am sick--even sick-hearted--the out of doors seems to cure me,
Mr. Dale.”
“Nature is sanative,” I agreed.
Her eyes fired. “I love every tree and every shrub, and every rose and
every trillium--yes, even the weeds--yarrow ain’t so bad! It’s got a
fine nutty flavor, hasn’t it now? I love the scarred old mountains, and
I love the dew on fine mornings, and the sky on stormy nights.”
“Heaven’s terrible bonfires, and the delicate rainbow belt--the purple
of the new day,” I murmured dreamily.
Wanza drew her feet up beneath her gown, and clasped her knees with her
hands. Looking across them she put a wistful question: “Does it seem
long to you since you were a little boy, Mr. Dale?”
“Rather long,” I answered drearily.
“I feel still as if I was a little girl. Funny, ain’t it? I like such
wee things--flowers and birds, and kittens and puppies.”
“You seem very childlike, Wanza--your mind is like that of a child--I
mean--you think like a child.” Here I broke off, catching an indignant
flash in her eye.
“How do you know I think like a child? I may act like one. And a very
bad one, too, sometimes! I don’t deny that. But my thoughts--well, they
are my own! I’d be willing sometimes to have them child-thoughts.” She
sighed ponderously. “Hm! I have some pretty grown-up thoughts--and
worries, times, when I’m all alone.”
“I intended to say, Wanza girl, that you have a young soul--students of
Oriental literature tell us that some souls are younger than others.”
She looked at me, frowned, bit her lip and then said dryly: “Do they
know more about it than we do?”
“I think so, child.”
“Oh, all right--I don’t care! So long as I know I’ve got a soul it’s
enough for me.”
“There are people--do you know it, little girl?--who doubt the
existence of the soul.”
“What?”
Wanza turned on me so quickly that she almost lost her balance on the
piazza railing. I repeated my remark.
“They don’t believe--they don’t belie--why, David Dale, how dare you
sit there and tell me such stuff as that!”
“I am speaking the truth, girl.”
“Did you ever know any one who thought that way? Tell me that?”
“Yes--one or two.”
“Where?”
“At college.”
“At college!” Wanza gave a quick twitter of mirth. “Well, if they
was such fools as that, why did they waste their time trying to learn
anything.”
I shook my head. “I cannot answer that, Wanza.”
“Why! Couldn’t they smell the flowers, and see the birds--and hear ’em,
and look up at the stars at night?”
I shook my head again. “One would think so, child.”
“Perhaps they never looked down at the flowers, or up at the birds, or
higher up at the stars.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Law!” Disgust was painted on her speaking face. “I knew there was all
kinds of people in the world!--siwashs, and cannibals, and heathen as
never had a chance--but I never knew before that there was educated
white men who didn’t believe folks has got souls.” She uncramped her
knees, let her feet down until they touched the floor, and rose to her
full height, stretching her arms high over her head. Standing thus, she
raised her face and closed her eyes, I saw her lips move.
Still maintaining her position she whispered presently:
“Even with my eyes shut--not being able to see anything--I can _feel_
God!”
And this was Wanza--simple, ignorant Wanza! whom I aspired to teach.
We sat on the steps, side by side till sundown, waiting for the
mistress of the cabin to appear. But she did not come. And in the
twilight Wanza and I paddled back through the narrow lead, and parted
where it joins the river. Her song floated back to me as I swept along
in my canoe,--an old, old song I had often heard my father sing:
“Wait for me at heaven’s gate--Sweet Bell Mahone.”
In the east I saw the thin curve of the new moon; the departing sun
had left the west purple and gold, the water was streaked with color.
I heard the whistle of the thrush, and the weird, “Kildee-Kildee”
of the Kildeer from the marshy shore of the lake. The hour was rich
with charm. Old Indian legends leaped to my mind as the fascinating
“Kildee-Kildee” note continued. I thought of myself as a little chap
listening to Leather Stocking bed-time tales told to me by my father,
while I lay watching with charmed eyes the shadow of the acacia tree
on the opposite wall. Memories stirred. My throat tightened. Before
I could grip my thoughts and turn them aside to safer channels, tears
rolled down my cheeks. “Dad, Dad,” I whispered, over and over, as if he
might hear me, “anything for you--anything!”