THE DEPARTURE OF JOE LING
The yellow pony, stamping and sidling, came to an unwilling stop before
the sturdy figure that blocked the way. Beatrice began to see that the
red firelight had made the woman seem unduly terrifying and that her
face, while it was sunburnt almost to the color of leather, was merely a
square, stolid one, with keen, blue eyes and heavy, fair hair showing
under the picturesque head handkerchief. With one hard, big hand, the
stranger was feeling within her dress and, as Beatrice came close, she
held up a letter.
“I saw you in town yesterday, and you looked kind. I want you to read my
letter to me; I cannot read English myself. My name is Christina Jensen.
The letter is from my boy.”
She spoke with a strong accent that, while it was somewhat like that of
the man from whom Beatrice had asked the way, was not unpleasant, for
her voice was rich and clear. The girl thought as she looked into the
upturned face, that she had never seen such eager, appealing eyes.
“You can’t read?” Beatrice exclaimed, forgetting politeness in her
surprise.
“My own language, Finnish, yes, but not yours. My boy, Olaf, made me
learn to talk English plain, but I was always so busy with my two hands
I could not learn to read or write. Read, read, please, before it is too
dark to see the letter.”
Beatrice spread out the paper on the pommel of the saddle.
“Why,” she said, glancing at the date, “it is nearly a year old!”
“Yes,” returned the woman nodding heavily, “ten months ago he wrote it
from his ship in Marseilles. I have nearly worn it out carrying it
around and having it read to me. But it is only kind people I ask to
read it now, for some begin to say, ‘Like father, like son; your Olaf
will never come back.’”
“Was his father a sailor too?” the girl asked.
“Yes, but he sailed away from our home in Finland when our boy was only
a month old, and I never heard from him again. It was nearly a year
later that we learned how his ship had been wrecked on the voyage to
Japan. I brought my boy to this country then where I could support him
better, and what a credit and a comfort to me he was. He was wild to go
in the navy when the war began, but he was just too young; so it was not
till last year that he slipped away, as I had always feared he would. He
hardly even said good-by to me, and this is my only letter from him. But
I talk too long; you will not be able to see.”
Once more Beatrice turned to the paper and began:
“My dear mother: I expect you think I am never going to send you a
letter—”
She read through to the end, thinking that it sounded affectionate but
contained little news beyond the fact that the writer was going to
China.
“He gives an address to send an answer,” she observed as she folded the
letter and handed it back. “What did you write to him?”
To her surprise she saw big tears stand suddenly in Christina’s eyes.
“Ah, Thorvik would not let me, and I couldn’t write myself,” she said.
“And my Olaf is such an American, he cannot read my language. That is
perhaps why he has not written again and has not come home.”
Then, seeing Beatrice’s puzzled look, she explained more fully, although
it was difficult to make plain her foreign notion that women are subject
to the men in their houses.
“Thorvik is my brother, once a good Finn like myself, but now—oh, so
different. He was to come to America some years ago, but the war broke
out over here and he went, instead into the Russian army. Now that there
is peace he has come to us, but how that time had changed him! He is
full of wild talk of revolution, and tyrants and destroying every thing.
He and Olaf never agreed. It was what made my boy unhappy at home, and,
though I did what I could, Olaf went away from us at last.”
Beatrice leaned forward in her saddle with sudden interest.
“Do you live in a little cottage half-way up the hill above Ely? That
man I saw there when I rode by—is that your brother?”
Christina nodded.
“And if you could write to your son,” the girl pursued, “what would you
say?”
“I would say, ‘Come home,’” cried Christina. “Over and over I would say,
‘Come home. If it is only for a week or a day between voyages,’ I would
say, ‘come still, no matter what happened before you went away.’”
Beatrice felt in the pocket of her riding skirt. There were a note-book
and pencil there, she felt sure, for she had made a list of supplies to
be bought in the village before she set out on her ride.
“Do you want me to put down the address and write to your son for you?”
she offered.
“Oh, if you would!” cried Christina. “And you would never tell Thorvik?”
“There is no danger of that,” Beatrice assured her. “And I think somehow
that your boy will come back.”
She could not tell, herself, what made her offer such a definite
opinion.
There was something she liked about the words of the letter. “I went
ashore at Marseilles, and it is such a strange place that before I had
been there an hour I wanted to stay a year. But loafing doesn’t suit me,
so I am off again for Hong-Kong, but I’ll not forget you, Mother, not
even on the other side of the world.”
She folded the worn page once again, gave it to Christina, and rode on.
To her own surprise, she had that pleasant, satisfied feeling, that
comes with the making of a new friend. After a few rods, she turned to
look back and saw the Finnish woman still looking after her. Beatrice
raised her hand in a quick gesture of leave-taking. It was a slight move
but it had important consequences, since it seemed to cement their
regard for each other and to strengthen Christina in a wavering
resolution. She came swiftly down the road, calling in her clear, full
voice:
“Stop, I must tell you something.”
When she came to Buck’s side she began with quick questioning that would
have sounded impertinent, had it not been so earnest.
“Why did you come here, to Ely? How long are you going to stay?”
Briefly Beatrice explained about her aunt’s health and the arrangements
her father had made.
“I believe Aunt Anna wanted to come because she had been here once
before,” she concluded rather vaguely. “I don’t seem to remember if she
told me when or why she came.”
“The place has changed since she was here, even since your father was
here.” Christina declared. “There is a whole army of foreign laborers,
Slavs, Poles, what the men call Bohunks, working on this irrigation
project to water the valley. There is a strike brewing. Ah, do I not
know? My brother Thorvik talks of nothing else. It is he who urges them
on. When such a thing breaks out, Ely will not be a good place for you
and your aunt and your sister.”
“But strikes mean just parades and people carrying banners and talking
on street-corners,” Beatrice protested. She had seen industrial unrest
at home and had thought very little of it. What she did fear was the
long journey which had been so difficult for her aunt and which it
seemed impossible to face soon again.
“Strikes are not the same in the West. Men carry something besides
banners in the parades, and talking on street-corners ends in fights.
You had better take your aunt away.”
“It does not seem possible,” Beatrice replied, “but thank you for
telling me.” Again she said good-by and rode on, feeling only a little
uneasy, for, she reflected, “To live with a man like that brother would
make any one think that things were going wrong.”
There were lamps showing in some of the windows of the Village, as she
rode clattering up the street, and streaks of light dropping through the
rickety shutters of a big, ramshackle building in the center of the
town. A stream of men was moving up the steps of this place, which
seemed, as its door swung open, to be a public meeting hall. Its benches
were crowded with rough-looking men, and someone on a platform at the
far end was addressing the close-packed audience. She turned Buck loose
at her own door to find his way home, as she had been instructed by Dan
O’Leary. Then, tired, stiff, and with much to tell, she hurried into the
house.
Dinner that night, in the candle-lit dining-room with the noiseless
Chinaman serving them delicious food, was very welcome to the hungry
Beatrice. Aunt Anna, looking very frail and weary, but still able to sit
up in her cushioned chair, was at the head of the table, with one tall
chestnut-haired niece at her right and with the other, the younger one,
the pink and plump Nancy who was always laughing and nearly always
asking questions, sitting at her left.
“Joe Ling is a good cook,” observed Beatrice with satisfaction, when
their white-jacketed chef had gone into the kitchen for the dessert.
“Yes, but he wouldn’t let me come into the kitchen to get Aunt Anna a
glass of milk; and when I told him about the broth she needed, I
couldn’t make out whether he heard or not, for he paid no attention at
all. I don’t think I understand Chinamen. Their faces don’t change, you
can’t tell what they are thinking about, and they look as though they
knew everything in the world.”
Nancy sighed as she spoke, for she had undertaken the housekeeping,
since she had more domestic tastes than her sister. The new and strange
difficulties in this establishment in Ely were, however, sometimes
rather appalling.
Aunt Anna said very little; she seemed to have small appetite and to be
too tired to talk. After dinner Nancy went out to give orders for
breakfast, but she came in again looking much discouraged. It seemed
impossible for her to get used to Joe Ling with his mask-like face and
silent Oriental manners.
The next day Nancy was to try the new horse; but she was not so good a
rider as Beatrice, and the astute Buck, guessing that fact at once, took
liberties with her that she did not enjoy. She gave her sister a lively
account of her misadventures in the evening when they were going to bed.
“I wanted to ride up to your cabin, but Buck had other plans. I saw most
of the town and part of this end of the valley and then the pony decided
to take me home. Some workmen, coming in from the place where they are
digging that big ditch, scowled and stared at me and I didn’t like it. I
sometimes wonder a little why Aunt Anna wanted to come here.”
“Who was with her when she was here long ago?” Beatrice asked. “It seems
to me that I heard her talking of it to dad, and that she said something
about her—her brother.”
“Her brother—why, she hasn’t any but our father,” objected Nancy. “If
she had one he would be our uncle, and we would know him. It couldn’t
be!”
Beatrice was thinking so deeply that she paused in brushing her hair.
“It does seem as though I remembered about some such person, oh, a very
long time ago when we were little. It was some one younger than father
or Aunt Anna, with yellow hair like hers. He used to come up to the
nursery to play with us, and then all of a sudden he didn’t come any
more and no one talked about him, so I just forgot.”
“It is very puzzling,” returned Nancy. “Perhaps we might write home
about it, but it would never do to worry Aunt Anna with asking her.
Meanwhile we will sleep on it, for it is time to go to bed.”
Sleeping on it, however, was the one thing that they did not do. Nancy
had put out the light and was putting up the curtains when she aroused
her drowsy sister with a sudden cry:
“O, Beatrice, come here and look.”
They stood together at the open window, startled and terrified by what
they saw. The big hall in the next block was plainly visible, with its
shutters down and its door wide open, as though the air within had
become close and stifling beyond endurance. The place was still packed
with men, but no orderly company now. They were all standing, some of
them had climbed upon the benches, and every one seemed to be shouting
at once. In the depths of the building, almost beyond where they could
see, somebody was waving a red flag. Presently a group of men came
rushing down the steps, then more and more, until the street was filled
with an irregular, shouting throng, waving hats, bandannas, and banners
and shrieking together, so many of them in foreign tongues that it was
impossible to guess what they said.
“It is the strike,” Nancy gasped. “Christina did not tell you it would
begin so soon or be so—so terrible.”
“That man walking at the head of them all is her brother Thorvik,” said
Beatrice. “I wonder where they are going and what they mean to do.”
They lingered at the open window until Nancy, sniffing suddenly,
declared, “I smell smoke.”
Before Beatrice could answer, they heard in the next room the voice of
Aunt Anna, who had been awakened by the uproar.
“It is just a public meeting breaking up,” Beatrice reassured her,
although the sharp smell of burning wood began to fill the room as the
blue smoke drifted in at the window. The girls were about to go on with
some explanation when Nancy caught her sister’s arm and, by a sign, made
her look out.
The side door, just below them, was opening and closing silently, to
allow the passing of a stealthy figure. Joe Ling, with a pole balanced
over his shoulder and at either end of it a heavy basket, was slipping
away into the dark with that short-stepping trot of a hurried Chinaman.
He had brought those same baskets, containing all his worldly
possessions, to their house three days before. It was plain that he not
only considered his term of employment with them at an end but that he
was about to shake the dust of Ely from his silent, Chinese-slippered
feet.
“And oughtn’t we to go too?” Beatrice wondered desperately.
She looked at Aunt Anna, thin, weak, and exhausted, lying on the bed.
She heard outside the crash of falling timbers and a great shout as a
shower of red sparks went sailing past the window. A moment later there
came a violent knocking at the door.
Was it Christina she wondered as she ran down the stairs, or had some of
those shouting men——?
She called softly before she dared draw the bolt, and was relieved to
hear the sound of a woman’s voice. Christina stood on the threshold, and
with her Dan O’Leary’s helper at the livery-stable, Sam.
“Things have broken loose quicker than we thought,” the woman began
quickly, since there was no need for explanations with that red flare
lighting up the whole village. “The men are burning the empty warehouse,
just to show what devilment is in them. With this wind the whole town
may catch and they don’t care. You and your aunt must get away as
quickly as you can. There is a train goes through in less than half an
hour, so you must hurry. We couldn’t find Dan, but Sam here has hitched
up and will take you down.”
“We will go at once,” Beatrice agreed, beginning to gather up their
possessions in the living-room and to make ready for a hasty packing. In
the midst of her wild preparations, however, there was a step on the
stair and Aunt Anna came slowly down, looking very white and frightened.
“What is all this? What are you doing?” she questioned and, from the
combined explanations of Christina, Sam, and her nieces, all given at
once, she seemed somehow to divine what had happened.
“There are only twenty minutes now,” Beatrice urged. “We must be quick.”
But Aunt Anna did not move.
“You may take the girls to the station,” she said to Sam. “They can
travel back alone, but I am not going.”
“But you must,” cried Beatrice desperately. “You will not be safe. You
can never get well in a tumult like this.”
Aunt Anna gave her a strange look.
“I did not come here to get well,” she said. “I came for something very
different. And I am not going back.”
She swayed—caught at the railing, too faint and ill to argue further.
Nancy ran to help her but she still struggled to make them understand.
She sent Beatrice a desperate, imploring glance and strove to speak
again, but no words would come.
“You must make her go,” insisted Christina. “Sam can lift her on the
train. She will thank you in the end.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“I don’t understand at all why she wants to stay,” she said, “but stay
she shall. There is only one other thing to do. We will go to the cabin
up on the mountain. Sam, can you get the keys from Dan O’Leary’s house?
The place has been used lately, and it is safe from this fire, at least.
Nancy, pack Aunt Anna’s things and I will gather up the rest. We can’t
start too soon.”
Half an hour later the rickety old carriage was groaning and lurching up
the mountain road. No one said a word as they climbed steadily upward.
Beatrice, looking back, saw the red flames still leaping madly, still
heard, though faintly, the shouts of the men as they ran here and there
to bring fresh fuel to the fire. The responsibility of choice had in the
end rested upon her; it would be her part to make life in the mountain
cabin possible. Could she do it? Had she chosen well? They came into the
shadow of the forest, and, in the stillness, following the uproar below,
they heard the weird yapping of a coyote somewhere in the hills.