_A New Face in the Dream_
In a settled despair the little bent man waited for the end. Already he
felt himself an outcast from Israel. In spirit he had disobeyed the
voice of Brigham, which was the voice of God; exulting sinfully in spite
of himself in this rebellion. Praying to be bowed and bent and broken,
to have all trace of the evil self within him burned out, he had now let
that self rise up again to cry out a want. Praying that crosses might
daily be added to his burden, he had now refused to take up one the
bearing of which might have proved to Heaven the extinction of his last
selfish desire. He had been put to the test, as he prayed to be, and he
had failed miserably to meet it. And now he knew that even his life was
waning with his faith.
During the year when he waited for the end of the world, he had been
nerved to an unwonted vigour. Now he was weak and fit for no further
combat. He waited, with an indifference that amazed him, for the day
when he should openly defy Brigham, and have penalties heaped upon him.
First he would be ordered on a mission to some far corner of the world.
It would mean that he must go alone, "without purse or scrip," leaving
Prudence. He would refuse to go. Thereupon he would be sternly
disfellowshiped. Then, having become an apostate, he would be a fair
mark for many things, perhaps for simple persecution--perhaps for blood
atonement. He had heard Brigham himself say in the tabernacle that he
was ready to "unsheathe his bowie knife" and send apostates "to hell
across lots."
He was ready to welcome that. It were easier to die now than to live;
and, as for being cut off from his glory in the after-time, he had
already forfeited that; would miss it even if he died in fellowship with
Brigham and full of churchly honours; would miss it even if the power on
high should forgive him,--for he himself, he knew, could not forgive his
own sin. So it was little matter about his apostasy, and Prudence should
be saved from a wifehood that, ever since he had pictured her in it, had
seemed to him for the first time unspeakably bad.
They talked but little about it that day, after her first abrupt
refusal. There was too much for each of them to think of. He was obliged
to dwell upon the amazing fact that he must lie in hell until he could
win his own forgiveness, regardless of what gentle pardoning might be
his from God. This, to him, simple and obvious truth, was now his daily
torture.
As for Prudence, she had to be alone to dream her dreams of a love that
should be always single. Brigham's letter, far from disturbing these,
had brought them a zest hitherto lacking. Neither the sacrilege of
refusing him, its worldly unwisdom, nor its possible harm to the little
bent man of sorrows, had as yet become apparent to her. Each day, when
such duties as were hers in the house had been performed, she walked out
to be alone,--always to Box Canon, that green-sided cleft in the
mountain, with the brook lashing itself to a white fury over the
boulders at the bottom. She would go up out of the hot valley into its
cool freshness and its pleasant wood smells, and there, in the softened
blue light of a pine-hung glade, she would rest, and let her fancy build
what heaven-reaching towers it would. On some brown bed of pine-needles,
or on a friendly gray boulder close by the water-side, where she could
give her eyes to its flow and foam, and her ears to its music,--music
like the muffled tinkling of little silver bells in the distance,--she
would let herself go out to her dream with the joyous, reckless abandon
of falling water.
It was commonly a dream of a youth in doublet and hose, a plumed cap,
and a cloak of purple satin, who came in the moonlight to the balcony of
his love, and sighed his passion in tones so moving that she thought an
angel must have yielded--as did the girl in the balcony who had let down
the scarf to him. She already knew how that girl's heart must have
fluttered at the moment,--how she must have felt that the hands were
mad, wicked, uncontrollable hands, no longer her own.
There was one place in the dream that she managed not without some
ingenuity. It had to be made plain that the lover under the window did
not come from a long, six-doored house, with a wife behind each door;
that this girl, pale in the moonlight, with quickening heart and
rebellious hands on the scarf, and arms that should open to him, was to
be not only his first wife but his last; that he was never even to
consider so much as the possibility of another, but was to cleave unto
her, and to love her with a single heart for all the days of her life
and his own.
There were various ways of bringing this circumstance forward. Usually
she had Brigham march on at the head of his great family and counsel the
youth to take more wives, in order that he should be exalted in the
Kingdom. Whereupon the young man would fold his love in his arms and
speak words of scorn, in the same thrilling manner that he spoke his
other words, for any exaltation which they two could not share alone.
Brigham, at the head of his wives, would then slink off, much abashed.
She had come naturally to see her own face as the face of this happily
loved girl in the dream. She knew no face for the youth. There was none
in Amalon; not Jarom Tanner, six feet three, who became a helpless,
grinning child in her presence; nor Moroni Peterson, who became a
solemn and ghastly imbecile; nor Ammaron Wright, son of the Bishop, who
had opened the dance of the Young People's Auxiliary with prayer, and
later tried to kiss her in a dark corner of the room. So the face of the
other person in her dream remained of an unknown heavenly beauty.
And then one afternoon in early May a strange youth came singing down
the canon; came while she mused by the brook-side in her best-loved
dream. Long before she saw him, she heard his music, a young, clear,
care-free voice ringing down from the trail that went over the mountains
to Kanab and into Kimball Valley; one of the ways that led out to the
world that she wondered about so much. It was a voice new to her, and
the words of his ballad were also new. At first she heard them from
afar:--
"There was a young lady came a-tripping along,
And at each side a servant-O,
And in each hand a glass of wine
To drink with the Gypsy Davy-O.
"And will you fancy me, my dear,
And will you be my Honey-O?
I swear by the sword that hangs by my side
You shall never want for money-O.
"Oh, yes, I will fancy you, kind sir,
And I will be your Honey-O,
If you swear by the sword that hangs by your side
I shall never want for money-O."
The singer seemed to be making his way slowly. Far up the trail, she had
one fleeting glimpse of a man on a horse, and then he was hid again in
the twilight of the pines. But the music came nearer:--
"Then she put on her high-heeled shoes,
All made of Spanish leather-O,
And she put on her bonnie, bonnie brown,
And they rode off together-O.
"Soon after that, her lord came home
Inquiring for his lady-O,
When some of the servants made this reply,
She's a-gone with the Gypsy Davy-O.
"Then saddle me my milk-white steed,
For the black is not so speedy-O,
And I'll ride all night and I'll ride all day
Till I overtake my lady-O."
She stood transfixed, something within her responding to the hidden
singer, as she had once heard a closed piano sound to a voice that sang
near it. Soon she could get broken glimpses of him as he wound down the
trail, now turning around the end of a fallen tree, then passing behind
a giant spruce, now leaning far back while the horse felt a way
cautiously down some sharp little declivity. The impression was
confused,--a glint of red, of blue, of the brown of the horse, a figure
swaying loosely to the horse's movements, and then he was out of sight
again around the big rock that had once fallen from high up on the side
of the canon; but now, when he came from behind that, he would be
squarely in front of her. This recalled and alarmed her. She began to
pick a way over the boulders and across the trail that lay between her
and the edge of the pines, hearing another verse of the song, almost at
her ear:--
"He rode all night and he rode all day,
Till he came to the far deep water-O,
Then he stopped and a tear came a-trickling down his cheek,
For there he saw his lady-O."
Before she could reach a shelter in the pines, while she was poised for
the last step that would take her out of the trail, he was out from
behind the rock, before her, almost upon her, reining his horse back
upon its haunches,--then in another instant lifting off his
broad-brimmed hat to her in a gracious sweep. It was the first time she
had seen this simple office performed outside of the theatre.
She looked up at him, embarrassed, and stepped back across the narrow
trail, her head down again, so that he was free to pass. But instead of
passing, she became aware that he had dismounted.
When she looked up, he was busily engaged in adjusting something about
his saddle, with an expression of deepest concern in his blue eyes. His
hat was on the ground and his yellow hair glistened where the band had
pressed it about his head.
"It's that latigo strap," he remarked, in a tone of some annoyance.
"I've had to fix it every five miles since I left Kanab!" Then looking
up at her with a friendly smile: "Dandy most stepped on you, I reckon."
The amazement of it was that, after her first flurry at the sound of
his voice and his half-seen movements up the trail, it should now seem
all so commonplace.
"Oh, no, I was well out of his way."
She started again to cross the trail, stepping quickly, with her eyes
down, but again his voice came, less deliberate this time, and with
words in something less than intelligible sequence.
"Excuse me, Miss--but--now how many miles to--what's the name of the
nearest settlement--I suppose you live hereabouts?"
"What did you say?"
"I say is there any place where I could get to stop a day or so in
Amalon?"
"Oh--I didn't understand--I think so; at least, my father sometimes--but
there's Elder Wardle, he often takes in travellers."
"You say your father--"
"Not always--I don't know, I'm sure--" she looked doubtful.
"Oh, all right! I'll ask him,--if you'll show me his place."
"It's the first place on the left after you leave the canon--with the
big peach orchard--I'm not going home just yet."
He stroked the muzzle of the horse.
"Oh, I'm in no hurry, I'm just looking over the country a little. Your
father's name is--"
"Ask for Elder Rae--or one of his wives will say if they can keep you
over night."
She caught something new in his glance, and felt the blood in her face.
"I must go now--you can find your way--I must go."
"Well, if you _must_ go,"--he picked up his hat,--"but I'll see you
again. You'll be coming home this evening, I reckon?"
"The first house on the left," she answered, and stepped once more
across the trail and into the edge of the pines. She went with the same
mien of importance that Tom Potwin wore on his endless errands; and with
quite as little reason, too; for the direction in which she had started
so earnestly would have led her, after a few steps, straight up a
granite cliff a thousand feet high. As she entered the pines she heard
him mount his horse and ride down the trail, and then the rest of his
song came back to her:--
"Will you forsake your houses and lands,
Will you forsake your baby-O?
Will you forsake your own wedded lord
To foller a Gypsy Davy-O?
"Yes, I'll forsake my houses and lands,
Yes, I'll forsake my baby-O,
For I am bewitched, and I know the reason why;
It's a follering a Gypsy Davy-O.
"Last night I lay on a velvet couch
Beside my lord and baby-O;
To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground,
In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O.
"To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground,
In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O!"
When his voice died away and she knew he must be gone, she came out
again to her nook beside the stream where, a moment before, her dream
had filled her. But now, though nothing had happened beyond the riding
by of a strange youth, the dream no longer sufficed. In place of the
moonlit balcony was the figure of this young stranger swaying with his
horse down between the hollowed shoulders of the Pine Mountains and
reining up suddenly to sweep his broad hat low in front of her. She was
surprised by the clearness with which she could recall the details of
his appearance,--a boyish-looking fellow, with wide-open blue eyes and a
sunbrowned face under his yellow hair, the smallest of moustaches, and a
smile of such winning good-humour that it had seemed to force her own
lips apart in answer.
Around the broad, gray hat had been a band of braided silver; when he
stepped, the spurs on his high-heeled boots had jingled and clanked of
silver; around his neck with a knot at the back and the corners flapping
down on the front of his blue woollen shirt, had been a white-dotted
handkerchief of scarlet silk; and about his waist was knotted a long
scarf of the same colour; dogskin "chapps" he had worn, fronted with the
thick yellowish hair outside; his saddle-bags, back of the saddle,
showing the same fur; his saddle had been of stamped Spanish leather
with a silver capping on the horn and on the circle of the cantle; and
on the right of the saddle she had seen the coils of a lariat of
plaited horsehair.
The picture of him stayed in her mind, the sturdy young figure,--rather
loose-jointed but with an easy grace of movement,--and the engaging
naturalness of his manner. But after all nothing had happened save the
passing of a stranger, and she must go alone back to her dream. Yet now
the dream might change; a strange youth might come riding out of the
east, sitting a sorrel horse with a star and a white hind ankle, a long
rangy neck and strong quarters; and he--the youth--would wear a broad,
gray hat, with a band of silver filigree, a scarlet kerchief at his
throat, a scarlet sash at his waist, and yellow dogskin "chapps."
Still, she thought, he could hardly have a place in the dream. The real
youth of the dream had been of an unearthly beauty, with a rose-leaf
complexion and lustrous curls massed above a brow of marble. The
stranger had not been of an unearthly beauty. To be sure, he was very
good to look at, with his wide-open blue eyes and his yellow hair, and
he had appeared uncommonly fresh and clean about the mouth when he
smiled at her. But she could not picture him sighing the right words of
love under a balcony in the moonlight. He had looked to be too intensely
business-like.