“And he is dead? Did they bury him in the mountains? No? I wish I could
have put him where he could have heard those four voices calling down
the canyon.”
“Come back in the house,” I said; “you must come, indeed,” I said, as
she shrank from re-entering.
Jessica was dancing like a fairy with Leroy. They both saw us and smiled
as we came in, and a moment later they joined us. I made my excuses
and left my friends to Jessica's care. She was a sort of social
tyrant wherever she was, and I knew one word from her would insure the
popularity of our friends--not that they needed the intervention of any
one. Leroy had been a sort of drawing-room pet since before he stopped
wearing knickerbockers.
“He is at his best in a drawing-room,” said Jessica, “because there
he deals with theory and not with action. And he has such beautiful
theories that the women, who are all idealists, adore him.”
The next morning I awoke with a conviction that I had been idling too
long. I went back to the city and brushed the dust from my desk. Then
each morning, I, as Jessica put it, “formed public opinion” to the
extent of one column a day in the columns of a certain enterprising
morning journal.
Brainard said I had treated him shabbily to leave upon the heels of his
coming. But a man who works for his bread and butter must put a limit to
his holiday. It is different when you only work to add to your general
picturesqueness. That is what I wrote Leroy, and it was the unkindest
thing I ever said to him; and why I did it I do not know to this day. I
was glad, though, when he failed to answer the letter. It gave me a more
reasonable excuse for feeling out of patience with him.
The days that followed were very dull. It was hard to get back into the
way of working. I was glad when Jessica came home to set up our little
establishment and to join in the autumn gayeties. Brainard brought his
wife to the city soon after, and went to housekeeping in an odd sort of
a way.
“I couldn't see anything in the place save curios,” Jessica reported,
after her first call on them. “I suppose there is a cookingstove
somewhere, and maybe even a pantry with pots in it. But all I saw was
Alaska totems and Navajo blankets. They have as many skins around on
the floor and couches as would have satisfied an ancient Briton. And
everybody was calling there. You know Mr. Brainard runs to curios in
selecting his friends as well as his furniture. The parlors were full
this afternoon of abnormal people, that is to say, with folks one reads
about. I was the only one there who hadn't done something. I guess it's
because I am too healthy.”
“How did Mrs. Brainard like such a motley crew?”
“She was wonderful--perfectly wonderful! Those insulting creatures were
all studying her, and she knew it. But her dignity was perfect, and she
looked as proud as a Sioux chief. She listened to every one, and they
all thought her so bright.”
“Brainard must have been tremendously proud of her.”
“Oh, he was--of her and his Chilcat portieres.”
Jessica was there often, but--well, I was busy. At length, however, I
was forced to go. Jessica refused to make any further excuses for me.
The rooms were filled with small celebrities.
“We are the only nonentities,” whispered Jessica, as she looked around;
“it will make us quite distinguished.”
We went to speak to our hostess. She stood beside her husband, looking
taller than ever; and her face was white. Her long red gown of clinging
silk was so peculiar as to give one the impression that she was dressed
in character. It was easy to tell that it was one of Leroy's fancies. I
hardly heard what she said, but I know she reproached me gently for not
having been to see them. I had no further word with her till some one
led her to the piano, and she paused to say,--
“That poet you spoke of to me--the one you said was a friend of
yours--he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his
songs. I am going to sing one now.” She seemed to have no timidity at
all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a
Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice
a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of
passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, and
now sad:
“Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands,
Ah! longer, longer we.”
“She has a genius for feeling, hasn't she?” Leroy whispered to me.
“A genius for feeling!” I repeated, angrily. “Man, she has a heart and a
soul and a brain, if that is what you mean! I shouldn't think you would
be able to look at her from the standpoint of a critic.”
Leroy shrugged his shoulders and went off. For a moment I almost hated
him for not feeling more resentful. I felt as if he owed it to his wife
to take offence at my foolish speech.
It was evident that the “mountain woman” had become the fashion. I
read reports in the papers about her unique receptions. I saw her name
printed conspicuously among the list of those who attended all sorts
of dinners and musicales and evenings among the set that affected
intellectual pursuits. She joined a number of women's clubs of an
exclusive kind.
“She is doing whatever her husband tells her to,” said Jessica. “Why,
the other day I heard her ruining her voice on 'Siegfried'!”
But from day to day I noticed a difference in her. She developed a
terrible activity. She took personal charge of the affairs of her house;
she united with Leroy in keeping the house filled with guests; she got
on the board of a hospital for little children, and spent a part of
every day among the cots where the sufferers lay. Now and then when we
spent a quiet evening alone with her and Leroy, she sewed continually on
little white night-gowns for these poor babies. She used her carriage to
take the most extraordinary persons riding.
“In the cause of health,” Leroy used to say, “I ought to have the
carriage fumigated after every ride Judith takes, for she is always
accompanied by some one who looks as if he or she should go into
quarantine.”
One night, when he was chaffing her in this way, she flung her sewing
suddenly from her and sprang to her feet, as if she were going to give
way to a burst of girlish temper. Instead of that, a stream of tears
poured from her eyes, and she held out her trembling hands toward
Jessica.
“He does not know,” she sobbed. “He cannot understand.”
One memorable day Leroy hastened over to us while we were still at
breakfast to say that Judith was ill,--strangely ill. All night long
she had been muttering to herself as if in a delirium. Yet she answered
lucidly all questions that were put to her.
“She begs for Miss Grant. She says over and over that she 'knows,'
whatever that may mean.”
When Jessica came home she told me she did not know. She only felt that
a tumult of impatience was stirring in her friend.
“There is something majestic about her,-something epic. I feel as if
she were making me live a part in some great drama, the end of which I
cannot tell. She is suffering, but I cannot tell why she suffers.”
Weeks went on without an abatement in this strange illness. She did not
keep her bed. Indeed, she neglected few of her usual occupations. But
her hands were burning, and her eyes grew bright with that wild sort of
lustre one sees in the eyes of those who give themselves up to strange
drugs or manias. She grew whimsical, and formed capricious friendships,
only to drop them.
And then one day she closed her house to all acquaintances, and sat
alone continually in her room, with her hands clasped in her lap, and
her eyes swimming with the emotions that never found their way to her
tongue.
Brainard came to the office to talk with me about her one day. “I am a
very miserable man, Grant,” he said. “I am afraid I have lost my wife's
regard. Oh, don't tell me it is partly my fault. I know it well enough.
And I know you haven't had a very good opinion of me lately. But I am
remorseful enough now, God knows. And I would give my life to see her
as she was when I found her first among the mountains. Why, she used to
climb them like a strong man, and she was forever shouting and singing.
And she had peopled every spot with strange modern mythological
creatures. Her father is an old dreamer, and she got the trick from
him. They had a little telescope on a great knoll in the centre of the
valley, just where it commanded a long path of stars, and they used to
spend nights out there when the frost literally fell in flakes. When I
think how hardy and gay she was, how full of courage and life, and look
at her now, so feverish and broken, I feel as if I should go mad. You
know I never meant to do her any harm. Tell me that much, Grant.”
“I think you were very egotistical for a while, Brainard, and that is a
fact. And you didn't appreciate how much her nature demanded. But I
do not think you are responsible for your wife's present condition. If
there is any comfort in that statement, you are welcome to it.”
“But you don't mean--” he got no further.
“I mean that your wife may have her reservations, just as we all have,
and I am paying her high praise when I say it. You are not so narrow,
Leroy, as to suppose for a moment that the only sort of passion a woman
is capable of is that which she entertains for a man. How do I know
what is going on in your wife's soul? But it is nothing which even an
idealist of women, such as I am, old fellow, need regret.”
How glad I was afterward that I spoke those words. They exercised a
little restraint, perhaps, on Leroy when the day of his terrible trial
came. They made him wrestle with the demon of suspicion that strove to
possess him. I was sitting in my office, lagging dispiritedly over my
work one day, when the door burst open and Brainard stood beside me.
Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known,--not a hint
in this pale creature, whose breath struggled through chattering teeth,
and whose hands worked in uncontrollable spasms, of the nonchalant
elegant I had known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those angry and
determined eyes of the gayly selfish spirit of my holiday friend.
“She's gone!” he gasped. “Since yesterday. And I'm here to ask you what
you think now? And what you know.”
A panorama of all shameful possibilities for one black moment floated
before me. I remember this gave place to a wave, cold as death, that
swept from head to foot; then Brainard's hands fell heavily on my
shoulders.
“Thank God at least for this much,” he said, hoarsely; “I didn't know at
first but I had lost both friend and wife. But I see you know nothing.
And indeed in my heart I knew all the time that you did not. Yet I had
to come to you with my anger. And I remembered how you defended her.
What explanation can you offer now?”
I got him to sit down after a while and tell me what little there was
to tell. He had been away for a day's shooting, and when he returned he
found only the perplexed servants at home. A note was left for him. He
showed it to me.
“There are times,” it ran, “when we must do as we must, not as we would.
I am going to do something I have been driven to do since I left my
home. I do not leave any message of love for you, because you would not
care for it from a woman so weak as I. But it is so easy for you to be
happy that I hope in a little while you will forget the wife who yielded
to an influence past resisting. It may be madness, but I am not great
enough to give it up. I tried to make the sacrifice, but I could not.
I tried to be as gay as you, and to live your sort of life; but I could
not do it. Do not make the effort to forgive me. You will be happier if
you simply hold me in the contempt I deserve.”
I read the letter over and over. I do not know that I believe that the
spirit of inanimate things can permeate to the intelligence of man. I
am sure I always laughed at such ideas. Yet holding that note with its
shameful seeming words, I felt a consciousness that it was written in
purity and love. And then before my eyes there came a scene so
vivid that for a moment the office with its familiar furniture was
obliterated. What I saw was a long firm road, green with midsummer
luxuriance. The leisurely thudding of my horse's feet sounded in my
ears. Beside me was a tall, black-robed figure. I saw her look back with
that expression of deprivation at the sky line. “It's like living after
the world has begun to die,” said the pensive minor voice. “It seems as
if part of the world had been taken down.”
“Brainard,” I yelled, “come here! I have it. Here's your explanation. I
can show you a new meaning for every line of this letter. Man, she has
gone to the mountains. She has gone to worship her own gods!”
Two weeks later I got a letter from Brainard, dated from Colorado.
“Old man,” it said, “you're right. She is here. I found my mountain
woman here where the four voices of her cataracts had been calling to
her. I saw her the moment our mules rounded the road that commands the
valley. We had been riding all night and were drenched with cold dew,
hungry to desperation, and my spirits were of lead. Suddenly we got out
from behind the granite wall, and there she was, standing, where I had
seen her so often, beside the little waterfall that she calls the happy
one. She was looking straight up at the billowing mist that dipped down
the mountain, mammoth saffron rolls of it, plunging so madly from the
impetus of the wind that one marvelled how it could be noiseless. Ah,
you do not know Judith! That strange, unsophisticated, sometimes awkward
woman you saw bore no more resemblance to my mountain woman than I to
Hercules. How strong and beautiful she looked standing there wrapped in
an ecstasy! It was my primitive woman back in her primeval world. How
the blood leaped in me! All my old romance, so different from the common
love-histories of most men, was there again within my reach! All the
mystery, the poignant happiness were mine again. Do not hold me in
contempt because I show you my heart. You saw my misery. Why should
I grudge you a glimpse of my happiness? She saw me when I touched her
hand, not before, so wrapped was she. But she did not seem surprised.
Only in her splendid eyes there came a large content. She pointed to the
dancing little white fall. 'I thought something wonderful was going to
happen,' she whispered, 'for it has been laughing so.'
“I shall not return to New York. I am going to stay here with my
mountain woman, and I think perhaps I shall find out what life means
here sooner than I would back there with you. I shall learn to see large
things large and small things small. Judith says to tell you and Miss
Grant that the four voices are calling for you every day in the valley.
“Yours in fullest friendship,
“LEROY BRAINARD.”