JACK OF ALL TRADES
IN due time I received another communication from my unknown friend.
Very brief it was. It said:
“I appreciate your confidence. I am glad to know of Haidee. But I
want still more to know of yourself. Can you trust me?”
I did not answer this at once, revolving it in my mind. A few days
later I wrote in this wise:
“There is little to know, kind friend. Eight years ago, when I was
twenty-four, I came to Idaho. I took up a homestead on the Cœur
d’Alene River. I proved up on it, and I have sold all but sixteen
acres. I have worked hard. I have grown horny-handed, weather-beaten
and a bit gray. I live in a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers,
and I eat off a pine table in the kitchen of a three-roomed shack.
Lately, I have developed into a craftsman. It is a sordid enough
tale--is it not?”
Conversations with Haidee were still infrequent. Wanza ordinarily
shared them, and Joey was nearly always present.
We were seated in a group about the pool in the Dingle, one morning,
Haidee in her chair, Joey at her feet with Jingles asleep at his side,
Wanza on the brink of the pool with her tatting, gazing in from time to
time at the reflection of her pale blonde loveliness, while I, seated
on a stump of a pine tree, was carving a bow-gun for Joey.
There was a white syringa bush above Haidee that was dropping pale
flowers on her head. They seemed to me like perfumed petals of
Paradise. I caught one as it fell, smiling into her tranquil eyes.
I said to myself that with each succeeding day Haidee’s voice grew
lighter, her laughter more frequent, her expression brighter.
As we sat there, an entrancing harmony arose about us. Waves of
ecstatic melody swelled and softened and swelled again through the
green fragrant woods. Trills on one hand, deep throaty mellow carolings
on the other. The thrush, the warbler, the sparrow joined in a mighty
chorus.
“What a magnificent orchestra,” Haidee cried. “The birds are holding
high carnival.”
The pearl-like, throbbing symphony grew sweeter and sweeter. We sat
spellbound drinking in the enchantment with hungry ears. Suddenly I
cried:
“Look! There is a lazuli-bunting.”
I pointed to the feathered blue beauty that was winging its way to a
nearby maple.
“Lazuli-bunting?” Haidee echoed. “What a cosy name. I suppose the baby
birds are called baby buntings, Joey.”
Joey looked up in her face with adoration in his brown eyes, and she
moved a little forward and pressed his head gently back against her
knee. They contemplated each other with a sort of radiant satisfaction.
“No one ever told me about baby buntings,” Joey declared at last.
“What a shame! Mr. Dale, do you know you have neglected Joey’s
education?”
Very slowly and prettily Haidee repeated the old rhyme, her fingers
stroking the lad’s sunburnt cheek. Wanza’s eyes were very big and
strangely burning as they rested on her. And her lips were drawn into
a straight, unlovely red line as she finally dropped her regard to her
tatting. I carved in silence, and the lazuli-bunting was forgotten as
the recital of the nursery rhyme led to the demand for others.
“Wanza,” I teased, going up behind her in the kitchen later, and
reaching round to tickle her chin with a ribbon grass as she bent over
the ironing board. “Wanza, why so pensive? Where are your smiles?”
“She smiles enough for both,” Wanza retorted, giving an angry flirt
to the ruffle she was ironing. “I don’t know which is the worst--your
smiley kind or your everlasting scolds. Mrs. Olds would sour the
cream--and Mrs. Batterly’s eternal smirk makes me think of a sick calf.
And when I feel like rushing around and biting the furniture it’s just
enough to kill me, so it is, to have her so purry and mealy-mouthed.”
“But why should you want to rush around and bite the furniture?” I
asked in bewilderment.
“Oh, just because I’m a great big rough, mean-tempered country girl!
I’ve never had real bringing up.” Tears stood in Wanza’s stormy eyes.
“No perfect lady ever felt like biting anything. Oh, please go away,
Mr. Dale, and leave me be--I’m cross and tired--and not fit to be
noticed!”
I saw Mrs. Olds smiling palely at me from the door of the sick room.
She tiptoed forward.
“Hush,” she whispered. “My patient is asleep. He is quite rational, Mr.
Dale. In a few days he will be able to sit up.”
With Mrs. Olds’ permission I went in and stood at the bedside and
looked down at the sleeping man. He was thin and his face was lean and
white. He looked a very different being from the man who had staggered
into the cabin that night in the storm. He looked more nearly a man as
God intended him to look. His brow was high, his jaw clean cut, his
hair grew luxuriantly on his well-shaped head. But his mouth beneath
the brown moustache was loose-lipped, self indulgent, and obstinate.
And there was something hateful to me in the set of his thick neck on
his big shoulders.
I returned to the kitchen. It was very hot in the small room, and the
steam that arose from a kettle of soup on the stove as Wanza lifted the
lid assailed my nose and eyes unpleasantly. I opened the door to allow
the steam to escape, and Wanza spoke hastily:
“Shut the door, Mr. Dale, please, you’re cooling off the oven, and I’m
baking this morning.”
“Does a whiff of air like that cool your oven?” I asked curiously.
“Well, I should say so. My, it’s hot in here!” I looked at her red
face, and as I did so an inspiration came to me. “Wanza,” I said, “why
should I not make you a fireless cooker?”
She stared at me.
“Is there any reason why you would not like one?” I queried.
“Glory! I’d like one right enough.”
“Come to the workshop after dinner,” I rejoined, “and we will discuss
it.”
Wanza came to the shop later in the afternoon and I convinced her that
the construction of a fireless cooker was a bagatelle to a skilled
craftsman such as I considered myself to be. Her face flamed with the
fire of her enthusiasm. She caught my hand, and cried:
“You’re a fixing man, all right! You sure are.”
I had never seen her blue eyes so softly grateful before. They were
like humid flowers. Her voice was full and low. Her hand pressed my
hand, and clung. Seeing her thus moved I stammered:
“Why, I seem to be a sort of Jack of all trades. A Jack of all trades
is master of none, usually.” Her face was very close to mine, and what
with her strange witchery and her appealing wistfulness I might have
said more; but as I gazed at her my senses untangled, and I locked
my lips. I shook my head at her, and I smiled a little deprecatingly
and loosed my hand as she murmured: “I think you’re just grand--just
grand! You’re kind as kind can be. Oh, Mr. David Dale, you sure are a
good, good fellow!”
“All of this because I am going to try to turn out some sort of
fireless cooker,” I remonstrated.
“You’re always trying to do something--for somebody--trying to help
along--that’s it. It ain’t so much just this.”
Wanza was rather incoherent as she turned and walked out of the shop.
And someway instead of her words of commendation heartening me they
left me dejected. But the cooker was a success. A stout box, lined
with asbestos, a receptacle of tin, and sawdust for packing turned
the trick. And the corned-beef and cabbage that Wanza, the conjurer,
straightway evolved from this crude contrivance left nothing to be
desired.
The chicken Wanza cooked one day soon after was so unusually succulent
that we decided at once to ride to the village before supper and carry
Captain Grif a generous portion.
“He’ll relish a bit of chicken after so much pork and corn bread, and
such living. I can warm it up on the stove for him, and stir up some
biscuits, while you and him are having a game of chess on the porch,”
Wanza announced.
Accordingly we rode away over the ploughed field together at about five
o’clock, Mrs. Olds watching us dourly from the kitchen doorway, and
Joey yelling after us: “I’ll see to Bell Brandon while you’re away.”
Captain Grif’s was the warmest of welcomes.
“Well, well, well,” he said, rising from his rocker on the front porch
as we mounted the steps, “and here you be, the two of ye--and better
than a crowd, I say! By golly, s-ship-mate, you’re a sight for sore
eyes. You looked peaked, too, and Wanza ain’t at her best. But sit
right down--Wanza, there’s the hammock--the hammock I slept in many a
night at sea--plump into that now.”
He beamed at his daughter. It was good to see his pride and delight in
her.
“Dad,” Wanza said, wagging her bright head at him, “something told us
you was pining for chicken--chicken with dumpling, Dad. It’s in this
pail. You sit here with Mr. Dale, and I’ll get out the chessmen, and
while you’re playing I’ll warm up the stew. Then when you’ve had your
bite with us, I’ll play on the melodeon--I’ll play ‘Bell Mahone’--and
you and Mr. Dale can sit on the porch and watch the moon come up, and
you can tell him stories; and pretty soon I’ll come out, after I have
tidied up, and go to sleep in the hammock.”
It all fell out as Wanza planned. We had our bite together; I helped
carry the dishes to the sink in the kitchen while Captain Grif filled
his pipe; and then Wanza played on the melodeon and sang “Bell Mahone,”
and “Wait for the Wagon,” and “Bonnie Eloise,” while Captain Grif and
I chatted on the porch. The moon came up later, and Wanza swung in the
hammock and dozed, or pretended to, while her father told me one story
after another. The central figure of many of his tales was Dockery--the
ship’s steward--whom he described as a bald-pated, middle-aged man,
with a round face, a Mephistophelean smile, and the helpless frown
of a baby. “A curious m-mixture that feller! I was some time readin’
him--but I read him. He wa’n’t very sharp--that was his trouble mostly.
It’s a trouble lots of us is afflicted with. Them as knows it I have a
sort o’ respect for--them as don’t I ’bominate, I sure do, s-ship-mate.
Ignorance itself is bad enough, but when it’s mixed proper with
conceit, they’s no standin’ it.” In this wise old Grif would discourse
much to our edification.
To-night he was hugely interested in dissecting the big man’s character
from bits concerning him Wanza and I had dropped.
“I don’t take no stock in him, boy--I’ve told Wanza so from the
first--with all his nightshirts embroidered like an old lady’s
antimacassar! And when he gets to settin’ up, and needs waitin’ on, I
want Wanza should make herself scarce. The gal tells me she thinks he
is a rich man. Well, may be--may be; that don’t mend matters if he’s a
rascal.”
At this juncture Wanza yawned, tossed her arms abroad, and said
sleepily:
“He’s a gentleman, Dad.”
Old Grif chuckled.
“Now, what do you mean by that? A gentleman! Ump! I’ve never knowed the
time I ain’t heard somebody called a gentleman that hadn’t any more
call to be considered a gentleman than your pap here. A gentleman, hey?
you mean he has clothes made by a tailor and money in his pockets, and
goes to the barber frequent, probably takes a bath every day--runnin’
water in his room at home, you guess? Hum--well--yes--he’s a gentleman
’cording to them standards. I got my own standard I measure men by,
thank God.”
In his excitement Captain Grif rose from his chair and limped back and
forth on the porch, thumping his cane down hard at each step. He went
on:
“Now, Dale, here--_he’s_ a gentleman. You bet he is. He ain’t got no
initial embroidered on _his_ shirts--ain’t got mor’n two, likely. He
ain’t got no runnin’ water in _his_ house--but he douses himself in the
river every day; and he shaves himself. It’s some work for _him_ to get
himself up presentable. Tain’t no credit to a feller to keep clean when
he has a shower bath in his closet.” He was chuckling again, and Wanza
ventured to say:
“I call him a gentleman because--he’s different--that’s what he is. He
don’t talk or look or act like any one in these parts. I like him. I
think I could earn a bit amusing him when he is able to sit up, Dad.”
“You’ll march right back home here if I hear of your tryin’ it, gal,
mark me, now!”
“But, Dad, you’re not fair! Why, he may be the best man living. You
haven’t ever laid your eyes on him.”
“I knows it--I knows it, Wanza. I may sound a leetle mite prejudiced;
but I ain’t--oh, no! I’m fair-minded; but I’m a reader of character,
and I can tell as much by a man’s nightshirts as some of these here
phrenologists can tell by the bumps on his head. The minute you said he
had flowers and initials worked on his nightshirts that minute I said
to myself, ‘He ain’t no good’; and you mark my words, he ain’t.”
Going home, Wanza said to me:
“Poor Dad, he’s terribly suspicious, ain’t he, Mr. Dale?”
“A little, Wanza, perhaps.”
“You’re suspicious, too, David Dale. You don’t think the big man is a
gentleman.”
I considered.
“I think he would be called a gentleman, Wanza.”
She tossed her head.
“I do think he’s the handsomest man--and the smartest man, seems! And I
like embroidered underclothes. So there!”