THE DREAM IN THE DINGLE
A FEW days later I was summoned to the big man’s side as he sat, fully
dressed for the first time, outside the cabin in the shade of a cedar.
I sat beside him while he thanked me for my hospitality, and said it
was his intention to push on to Roselake and thence to Wallace that
very afternoon.
“I have business to transact there for my partner, Dick Bailey, who
died in Alaska last winter,” he said, and stopped short, looking at me
with a sudden question in his eyes. “By the bye, you people seem to be
laboring under the impression that my name is Bailey,” he added.
“Mrs. Olds found the name on a pocketbook you carried,” I explained.
“To be sure--I was carrying an old wallet of Bailey’s. Our initials are
the same, too.” He fell to musing, wrinkling his brows. But instead
of telling me his name, he went on presently: “You are master of a
somewhat unusual household, Dale. I am vastly interested. You’re a
lucky dog to have such a Hebe for a protégée as the girl Wanza, such
an infant prodigy as that young scamp, who shows fine discrimination,
and glowers at me from the kitchen door, for an adopted son,--and who
is the interesting lady patient on whom Wanza waits and who is shut up
in a Blue Beard’s closet next my room? I have a sly sure instinct that
tells me she is the most wonderful of the lot.”
The blood rushed to my face. The leer with which he accompanied his
words was rakish, and his handsome face smirked disgustingly.
“She is an unfortunate neighbor of mine, who was crippled by a falling
tree the night of the storm,” I answered coldly.
He gave me a quizzical glance, shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed
laughingly:
“Beauty in distress! Don Quixote to the rescue. You’re the sort of
chap, I fancy, Dale, who goes about tilting at windmills. You belong to
a past generation. But it is lucky for me I stumbled across you. Well,
I care not to pry into your Blue Beard’s closet--the girl Wanza is a
piquant enough little devil for me--”
“Just speak more respectfully of her, if you must speak at all,” I
interrupted with heat.
“Don Quixote, Don Quixote,” he murmured, wagging a broad finger at me,
and shaking his head playfully.
I said something beneath my breath, and rose from my chair hastily.
“Wait! Wait!” he cried. “Don’t let your choler rise. Sit down. We will
not discuss the ladies. I was about to tell you my name, and give you
my credentials--”
He broke off abruptly. Joey was issuing from the elder bushes piping
on his flute. As I listened, a voice from the Dingle caught up the
refrain, a voice high and sweet and clear.
“Bell Brandon was the birdling of the mountains--”
The line ended in a ripple of laughter. The man before me half raised
in his seat. Then sweeter and lower:
“And I loved the little beauty, Bell Brandon--
And she sleeps ’neath the old arbor tree.”
The underbrush parted and Haidee came toward us, leaning slightly on
one crutch. In her hand she carried a great bunch of pink spirea. Each
cheek was delicately brushed with color, her star-eyes were agleam, her
lips curved with laughter.
And then, all suddenly, the dimples and laughter and life fled from her
beautiful face, her eyes turned dull and anguished. She was looking
at the big man, and he was looking at her. His pasty face was gray as
ashes. His little eyes contracted to pin-points.
Haidee’s dry lips writhed apart. One word dropped from them:
“You!”
She crouched forward, peered at him intently through the soft green
shadows of the cedars, her eyes growing bigger as if wild with a sudden
hope that they might have played her a trick. And then gradually the
intentness left them, they hardened, and her whole face stiffened, and
grew white and grim.
The big man had risen. He took a step forward now. There was something
bullying in his attitude, something implacable in his altered face. His
light eyes had a sinister gleam, but his _savoir-faire_ did not desert
him. He spoke to me, but his eyes never left the marble face of the
woman who confronted him.
“Mr. Dale,” he said with a wave of the hand, “pardon our agitation. I
am Randall Batterly. This is the first time my wife and I have met in
five years.”
I reached Haidee’s side just in time, for the crutch slipped from her
grasp, and she would have fallen but for my steadying arm.
Joey, the dauntless, sprang forward and menaced the big man with
threatening, childish fist. “You leave my Bell Brandon alone!” he
screamed, “you leave her alone--you big, bad man! I wish we’d let you
die, I do.”
I placed Haidee in a chair. I took Joey’s hand and led him indoors. I
heard a wild cry ring out:
“I thought you were dead in the Yukon, Randall Batterly, I thought you
were dead. I hate you! I hate you!”
I closed the door on her agonized weeping.
Before the big man left that day he sent Wanza to ask me to come to him
in the living room. I was in my workshop, and I shook my head when the
message was delivered. In the mood I was in then it was well for me not
to go to him. I shall never forget the expression on Mrs. Olds’ face
when she sought me in the shop a half hour later to bid me good-bye.
She had found, at last, food for her prying, suspicious mind.
“I am that shocked and surprised, Mr. Dale!” she gasped, all of a
flutter. “Why, I’m just trembly! I heard high voices, and I stole
out on the porch, and there they were, saying such dreadful, dreadful
things to each other! And isn’t it odd, Mr. Dale, that they should come
together here in this remote--I was going to say God forsaken--spot,
this way? Now, don’t you suppose they will patch up their differences?
I should think they might--they’re young folks--it seems a pity
the amount of domestic infelicity nowadays--and they are a likely
fine looking couple.” She drew breath, shook her head, and paused
dramatically.
I felt her fish-eyes searching my face.
Then she broke out, as I maintained an apparently unruffled front:
“Of course, Mr. Dale, it is not for me to say all I think--not for
me to say whose is the fault. But I must say I am surprised and
disappointed--yes, and shocked--shocked, Mr. Dale, that Mrs. Batterly,
a married woman, should proclaim herself a widow. When a woman will do
that--why, what is one to think! I can’t abide duplicity. To my notion
there is absolutely no excuse for that, Mr. Dale. And if she did not
know her husband was alive--well, I have no words.”
I was sullen-hearted enough, God knows, and Mrs. Olds’ inane, arrogant
drivel was like tinder on a blown fire. I was wild as an enraged bull
who has the red scarf flaunted in his long suffering face. I thrust out
my chin and I squared my shoulders, and I know my face must have grown
ugly with my red-eyed anger.
If I had spoken then, I am sure Mrs. Olds could have guessed most
accurately at the state of my heart with regard to Haidee. But just at
that moment the cedar waxwing left its cage, circled about my head,
and descended to settle in the crook of my arm. I straightened my arm,
and it hopped to my outspread palm, looking up at me with pert, bright
eyes. In that short space during which the bird poised there, I thought
of a hundred poignant things to say to Mrs. Olds. But the bird flew
away and I said not one of them.
After I had bidden good-bye to Mrs. Olds there was Wanza still to be
reckoned with. I had just seen from my window the flurried departure
of the nurse and her patient on the afternoon stage when I heard a
tentative voice at my elbow, murmur: “Mr. Dale.”
I am sure there must have been a certain fierceness in my bearing as I
wheeled about. But I was all unprepared for the fervid face that my
lips almost brushed as I turned, the depth of emotion in the burningly
blue eyes.
“Don’t!” she breathed, as I faced her. “Don’t, please!”
“Don’t what, child?” I articulated.
“Don’t look at me so sharp--so awful!” Her voice thinned, as if she
were going to cry. Her brown, pleading hands came out to me. “I only
want to say good-bye.”
As I still stood woodenly, looking at her, she moved back with a swift
jerk of her slim body and put her hands behind her. Her face altered.
It whitened, and she let her lids droop over eyes suddenly hot with
resentment. Feeling like a brute I made haste to intercept the hands.
I slipped my arms about her, caught the hands, and drew them around
against my chest. I think I had never liked Wanza better than at that
moment in her hurt pride, and womanliness.
“Dear Wanza,” I said, “my dear child--”
She pressed against me suddenly, and put her soft cheek against my
sleeve.
“What is it, child, what is it?” I begged. I put my hand gently on her
hair.
“I’m going away, Mr. Dale--I’m going! I been so happy here--with you
and Joey and the birds.”
Her breaths were sobs.
It was my turn to say “Don’t!” I said it imploringly, and I added: “I
cannot bear to see you cry, Wanza.”
“Oh, let me cry! I’m upset, and nervous, and--and sad--I guess you’d
call it. I’m going on home now, and set things to rights a bit, and
to-night I’m going to Hidden Lake to stay with Mrs. Batterly. I
promised.”
“She needs you, Wanza,” I said.
“I was to ask you if you would ride through the woods with her, in a
half hour. She’s not quite fit to go alone, Mr. Dale.” Suddenly Wanza
broke into a tempest of tears, and sobbed and shook, huddled against
my shoulder, stammering: “Everything is upside down--upside down!
But--yes, Mr. Dale, I am glad--glad--that Mrs. Batterly has got a
husband living. He’s probably a bad man, and if she wanted to run away
it was all right and nobody’s business. But it had to come out that
she had a husband, and I’m glad it’s come--that’s all! I’m glad it’s
come--now--afore--”
I looked down at the opulent fleece of hair spinning into artless
spirals of maze against my shoulder, and I threaded a curl through my
fingers absently before I probed this significant, stumbling final
sentence. Then I caught at the lost word. “Before, Wanza? Before--what!”
“Before you got to thinking too much of her.”
I laughed. I stood away from the child and laughed ironically. The
laugh saved the situation. Wanza raised her head, gave a watery smile,
and flung out.
“You needn’t laugh. You were thinking too much of her--you know you
was.”
“Please, Wanza,--don’t!”
“Now your face is black again.” Wanza’s mood changed swiftly. “Oh, Mr.
Dale, I have a weight here,” she laid her hand on her chest. “I feel
things pressing,--awful things! What’s going to happen, do you think,
that I feel so queer and blue and bad?”
I shook my head. She went on quickly:
“Of course I’m broke up about leaving Cedar Dale just now, I just can’t
bear to quit you and Joey--and the birds--and squirrels--and flowers--”
The tears were brimming up again in the velvet-blue eyes. I walked over
to the waxwing’s cage, snapped shut the door on the tiny prisoner, and
handed the cage to Wanza.
“Take him with you,” I bade her.
With the cage clasped in her arms, her eyes flooded with tears, but
with smiles on her mobile lips, she went from the shop, backward, step
by step.
After Wanza came Joey. A transfigured Joey. Wild with rage at the big
man, threatening, and bombastic. Then softening into plaintive grief,
wailing:
“Oh, Mr. David, my Bell Brandon’s going! She’s going! She won’t be here
to-night for my sleep-time story. She won’t be here when I wake up
to-morrow. She won’t ever stay here again.”
“No, lad,” I replied.
“Won’t she, don’t you ’spose? P’r’aps if she don’t like it at Hidden
Lake she’ll come back. Don’t you think she’ll come again, Mr. David?”
“No,” I repeated, sadly.
He sniffled. Then he said, in a frightened tone, “Wanza ain’t going
too, is she?”
“Yes, Joey.”
He drew his sleeve across his eyes. He swallowed. Then he said, winking
hard, “I’ll miss Bell Brandon, but I’ll miss Wanza most.”
After a moment, I ventured:
“You have me, Joey.”
He drew his sleeve across his eyes again, gulped, and muttered:
“I’m ’shamed. I love you most! But she’s mothery--Wanza is, that’s it!”
Mothery--Wanza of the wind’s will--mothery!
I keep a picture still in my mind of that last day on which I rode
through the forest with Haidee to Hidden Lake. Rain had drenched the
earth the previous night, and though the sun smiled from a cloudless
sky, the roads were heavy and our horses’ progress slow. There was a
languid drowsiness in the air, enhanced by the low, incessant singing
of cat-bird, robin and lark, and the overpowering scent of syringa
and rose. We chose a shadowy trail, and our heads were brushed by
white-armed flowery hawthorns, while honeysuckle threw fragrant
tendrils across our way. The woods glowed emerald-green, and dappled
gray, gemmed here and there with dogwood; great plumes of spirea rose
like pink clouds in the purple vistas. Small hollows held crystal-clear
water, and up from these hollows floated swarms of azure butterflies.
We crossed a swift-running stream; and before us, between smooth, mossy
banks fern-topped, lay a cup-like dell, shut in by shrubs and vines. I
drew rein, and dismounted, and Haidee with a swift glance at my face
drew in her mare.
I went to her side.
She held some purple flowers in the bend of her arm, flowers that Joey
had given her, she fingered the petals with a caressing touch. Her
head drooped slightly, but her eyes met mine questioningly. The pallor
of her face but made it more exquisite. Her gown was gray. Its folds
rippled about her slight form. She seemed like some grave-eyed spirit.
Her hair was in braids, outlining the ivory of her face. A scarf of
white muslin left her warm throat bare.
I strove for words. But I could only whisper:
“I am your friend. Never forget. If danger ever threatens you--”
“If danger ever threatened me, I believe that you would intervene--you
are a brave man, David Dale. But I shall live safely--going on with
my even life--in my little cabin, with good Wanza for a companion. I
have had a shock, Mr. Dale,” her voice quivered, her lips whitened with
the words, “oh, such a shock! It is better not to speak of it. Not at
least unless I tell you all there is to tell, and I am not ready as
yet to do that.” She struggled with herself. She drew a deep breath.
“But I came here to work! I shall work as I have planned until autumn,
then--well, I do not know what then. You heard much yesterday--you
know my attitude toward the man who is my husband. I dare say you are
shocked, and shaken in your chivalrous estimate of me. I cannot help
that. I do not feel that I can explain--it goes too deep. It is not to
be laid bare before--forgive me--a stranger.”
She smiled at me sadly as if to soften the last words. But hurt and
amazed, I cried:
“A stranger! Am I that?”
A light sprang into her eyes, the red came into her cheeks.
“Forgive me,” she said again.
“I am your friend--your true friend--no stranger.” I held out my hand.
“I thought you understood.”
She kept her eyes upon me, but did not seem to see me. They were
hunted, weary eyes; weary to indifference, I saw suddenly. And seeing
this I took her slim fingers in mine and pressed them very gently and
let them go.
Suddenly her composure broke. She turned whiter, she could scarcely
breathe. She moved her head restlessly. “I can’t bear it--I can’t--I
can’t! I wish I might fly to the ends of the earth--but there’s no
escape.” She brushed her hand across her face. She cowered in her
saddle. “It’s awful! I thought he was gone forever--forever, do you
understand? Oh, the freedom, the rest--the peace! With his return has
come the shadow of an old, old grief. It blots out the sunshine.”
My lips twitched as I attempted soothing words. I took her cold hands
and chafed them. “Courage,” I whispered. She shook her head, quivering,
panting and undone.
“Oh, I was born to live! Courage? I have none!”
She leaned forward and sunk her head on the pommel of the saddle. After
a time she swung toward me. Her hair swept about her flaming cheeks,
and veiled her burning eyes. She looked like some hunted wild thing.
“I hate him,” she hissed. “He knows I hate him. He does not care.”
We looked at each other.
“But he cares for you,” I stated.
“No, no,” she said, hastily, “don’t say that.”
Again we scanned each other’s faces. I spoke impetuously:
“You believe in Destiny. Well, so do I! But we are not weak
instruments. You know what I mean. What law of society compels you to
a bondage such as you hint at? You are a strong-minded woman. Now that
you know the worst you have weapons to fight with. As soon as you
look about you--when you come to face the facts, you will see this.” I
struggled with my thoughts, then I threw wide my arms. “God knows what
I am to say to you!”
She lifted up her head. “I have promised him to do nothing--to go on as
I have been--he will not molest me.”
I half shrugged. “He loves you; of course, you believe that.”
“He may. He protested that he did, when I told him I must go my way.”
I heard her dully, my eyes on her face. She said a few more words
brokenly, that I scarce gave ear to. At the conclusion of them I looked
away to the purple wood vista. “Why did it please God,” I said, “to
have you cross my path!”
Tears filled her eyes. “Those words did not sound like the words of a
friend.”
“But they are said.” I moved away, she sat brooding. I mounted, and
came to her side. “We are friends, we may be friends, surely! May I
come to see you?”
“Indeed you must come. Your visits will be welcome.” She smiled, but
her smile was twisted and dubious. “I expect great things of Wanza. She
will be my entertainer. She will cheer me. Have Joey come to me--” Her
voice failed her utterly. She was pale again as the syringa blooms at
her side.
“We must push on, now,” I said.
She gathered up her reins.
And so we rode side by side to the little shack on the shore of Hidden
Lake. But when she gave me her hand at parting, I stumblingly cried:
“If he had not come--if he had not come, I should have tried to win
your love!” Something in her eyes caused me to add: “I wonder if I
should have succeeded.”
She paled and drew her hand from mine. “I could have loved you, David
Dale,” she whispered.
That night when Joey was preparing for bed in the cedar room, I spied a
bit of ribbon the color of the gowns Wanza wore, wreathed in among the
grasses in the magpie’s cage. And at the sight Joey cried out:
“That’s Wanza’s. I want her! I want her to come back and stay, I do.”
Holding the ribbon in my hand, I passed out to the Dingle.
Here I sat down on the stump by the pool, in a ring of black shadow
cast by the cedars, and lifted my face to the stars that were shining
through the wattled green roof above my head. I was worn, physically
and mentally, by the experiences of the day. I sat there stupidly,
scarce moving, letting my pipe go out as I fed my grief with memories.
Joey called out at intervals: “Good night, Mr. David, dear.” Each
time I responded: “Good night, Joey.” At last no sound came from the
cedar room. I knew he slept. It was very still in the Dingle. A toad
hopped across the stone walk and a grass-snake flashed through the
rose hedge, like a quick flame. Close to the pool’s brink the big
flag-flowers vacillated in a faint, upspringing breeze, and the rushes
swayed and shuddered above the timorous bluebells. The moon came up
slowly, and I saw its face through the tree spaces. I wondered if
Haidee were watching it from the shore of Hidden Lake. And then a naked
Desolation crept up out of an unknown void, and I saw the gleam of its
whitened bones. It gibed me. It trailed its bleached carcass across
my arid path. The hour grew hideous. I felt myself alone--grievously
alone--on the verge of utmost solitude, reaching out ineffectual hands
toward emptiness. I recoiled, my senses whirling, from the limitless
nothingness into which my vision pored.
I was clammy, with a cold sweat. My throat was dry. But the horror
passed and I grew apathetic at length, and sodden. Then calm, merely.
Soon I grew strangely somnolent. I nodded. But after a space I sat
tense, my chin sunk, listening. A vague stirring in the night chilled
my blood, and at the same time thrilled me. I listened and watched,
breathing heavily, alert and narrow-eyed.
And then!
I saw Wanza part the tangles of syringa, and stand pink-robed, framed
in white blossoms. Her face, rose-tinted and impassioned, was curtained
on either side by her unbound resplendent hair. Her eyes, laughing and
bright like happy stars, shone through the wilderness of locks. Her
lips, smooth and pink as polished coral, smiled freshly as the lips of
a tender child. Her arms were bare. In her strong brown hands she bore
a wooden cage, and the waxwing slept within, its head beneath its wing.
She hesitated, apparently saw no one--listened and heard no sound. She
spurned her flowered frame, and came springing forward, her short skirt
fluttering above her bare knees, her pink feet gleaming in the long
grasses.
She passed close to me. Noiselessly she swept to the steps of the
cedar room. She mounted. I saw her pass through the open doorway, where
there was a pale nimbus of light. I saw her at the window. She took the
magpie’s cage from its hook, and hung the waxwing there instead. Soon
she reappeared. She carried the magpie in its cage. She came down the
steps, and I heard a voice like a “moon-drowned” dream murmur roguishly:
“I have left them the waxwing. But I have taken away the magpie, lest
it tell my secrets.”
I would have stopped her. But she had sprung with fluttering, perfumed
haste through the syringa frame and vanished.
I dropped to the turf, clasped my arms about my head, and slept,
a deep, refreshing sleep. It was dawn when I awakened, a pink,
sweet-smelling dawn, scintillant with promise. I went to the cedar
room, Joey slept, one arm thrown out above his tousled head, the
shawl-flower quilt tossed aside. I covered him, and crossed to the
window.
The magpie’s cage swung in its accustomed place.
As I approached, the bird fixed me with its quick, bright eye, and
chortled:
“Mr. David Dale! Fixing man! Mr. David--dear.”
How strange that I should dream of Wanza!
* * * * *
Dreary days followed for Joey and me.
As the days began to shorten I rode frequently to Captain Grif’s in
the cool of the evening, taking Joey on the saddle behind me. And
each night Joey dropped asleep on the small bed in Wanza’s room while
I played a rubber of chess with the captain. When Father O’Shan was
present a new zest was given our evenings.
One stormy night Father O’Shan, Joey and I were belated at the cottage,
and the father and I kept our good host up to an unconscionable hour in
the room beneath the eaves, while Joey slept peacefully on the lower
floor. Father O’Shan was in fine fettle, and his stories were pungent,
his drollery inimitable. As the storm began I rolled into the captain’s
bunk and lay there in vast contentment. The port hole was open, framing
an oval of purple sky and drifting cloud rack. My fantasy was so keen
that I could fairly smell the odor of bilge and stale fish and tar, and
hear the tramp of feet on the deck over my head. When the storm was at
its fiercest, and the little cottage shook and the lightning flashed
through the port hole, it was easy to cheat myself into the belief
that I was experiencing all the wild delights of a storm at sea.
The talk had turned on the superstitions of men who go down to the sea
in ships. “Lonely men are superstitious men,” the father said. “There
is something about aloneness that engenders visions and superstitions.
People who dwell apart all have their visions.”
“And their madnesses,” I interjected. “People who live at the edge of
things are entitled to their superstitions. During the first months of
my life on my homestead, before Joey’s advent, I had one or two narrow
squeaks--came within an ace of insanity, I believe now. I went so far
that like the man in the story I met myself coming round the corner of
the cabin one day. I pulled up then and went to the city for a month
and took a rather menial position.”
Father O’Shan was looking at me curiously.
“I never heard of that before,” he said. “You pulled through all right.”
“Oh, yes! If it had not been for my dog I might have gone under the
first year. But the dog was understanding.”
“A dog,” Captain Grif explained carefully, “is the instinctinest animal
there be--and the faithfulest.”
I caught Father O’Shan’s eyes fixed on me ruminatingly from time to
time during the evening. Once or twice, meeting my eyes, he favored
me with his rare, heart-warming smile. When I said good night to him
in the village, leaning from the saddle and shifting Joey’s sleeping
figure somewhat, in order that I might offer him my hand, he pressed
close to my horse’s side and peered up at me with friendly glance
through the semi-darkness of the dimly lighted street.
“Too bad, Dale--too bad,” he said in his winning tones.
“Eh? Just what is too bad?” I asked.
He gripped my hand.
“Man, I’m sorry I did not know you in the darkest days--when the dog
was understanding. I’d have tried to be understanding, too. A pity,
Dale--a pity!”
“Never mind!”
“I shall pass through this world but once, you know--I don’t want to
leave more things undone than I have to. But the unguessed things--that
lurk quite obscure--they have a way of unearthing themselves--they
hurt, Dale! Why, my boy, I rode past your cabin when you were putting
the roof on! But I was busy. I did not stop. Oh, well--I’m glad you had
your dog!”