WANZA’S father had always been an interesting personality to me. He was a portly, ponderous-speaking man, with a rubicund visage, a twinkling eye, and a jovial smile. There was a humourous twist to each sentence he turned, and this in connection with an undeniable stutter made conversation with him an unending source of joy.
He had been a sea captain in his youth. He could spin me yarns by the hour. And many a snug winter evening I had spent in the little room under the eaves of his comfortable cottage, listening to tales of the high seas, and songs of the rolling main. His room with its slanting ceiling, its built-in bunks, its nautical equipment of compass and sextant, charts and logbook and maps, smacked pleasantly of the sea; and when the wind roared in the chimney and the snow and sleet twanged on the window panes, I used to shut my eyes and fancy myself aboard the good ship Wanderer bound for the North Seas.
There was always a glass on the table, and a bottle of home-made root beer was always forthcoming, and though I was not over fond of this drink a glass of it had a grateful tang, when I drank with Old Grif Lyttle, the captain of the bonny brig Wanderer, in the small cubby hole he called his cabin.
The captain invariably wore a blue jacket with brass buttons. His nether garments might be what one would call shabby and uncouth, but the jacket was always neatly brushed, the buttons burnished. Wanza was like the Hebe in Pinafore—she kept his buttons bright. And had he owned a sword to polish I am well satisfied it would have been immaculate. Wanza’s pride in her father was unbounded. It was equaled only by his pride in her.
“The smartest gal—and the prettiest,” he would say, “you’ll f-find in the whole state. Jest like her dead mother, Mr. Dale, jest like her. Smart as a s-sand piper. Named herself—she did. Did I ever tell you about that now?” Here he would pause and look at me sharply. And though the tale was a familiar one to me I would always affect deep interest and bid him proceed. “It was this a-way,” he would continue, “when her mother was my sweetheart, being of a fanciful turn, and with a decided hankerin’ after me,—as was to be expected, when I was gone for months on the sea and everything uncertain like,—she called me her wanderer. I was her wanderer, and her wandering boy, and finally her wandering husband. So when I got my ship at last it was natural—although I was in favor of naming the craft after her—for us to decide that the name should be The Wanderer. In due time Wanza was born. Well, it had been easy enough naming the ship, but there warnt no name good enough for the babe! ‘Let her alone,’ I used to say, ‘she’s a s-smart child, she’ll name herself.’ And sure enough when she was old enough to prattle she began calling herself Wanzer, from hearing her mother and me speak of the craft, sir. I reckon sometimes hearing us call it endearin’ titles she thought we was referrin’ to her babyship. At least my wife she allowed as much. Howsoever, from Wanzer she got it changed to Wanza, and my wife allowed that Wanza was a genteel enough name, so we stuck by it.”
The small, four-roomed cottage where Wanza and her father lived was at the edge of the village. It stood on a slight rise of ground, overlooking the lake. From the narrow front porch one could look abroad and see fertile fields, stretches of smooth, glossy meadow-land, and the craggy grey-blue mountains in the distance. In summer Grif Lyttle could be found customarily on his porch. And it was here I discovered him, when in my new restlessness I thought of him and wondering how he fared, sought him out.
He made me welcome. His ruddy face broke into smiles at the sight of me, and he rose from his rocker, and shoved me, with a playful poke in the ribs, into the seat he had vacated, saying:
“By golly, ship-mate, I thought you’d passed me up for good and all.”
He sat down in a red-cushioned Boston rocker opposite me. A small table stood between us, and as he spoke he gave me a sly wink, and whisked off a white cloth that covered a tray that reposed there. A bottle and two glasses stood revealed, a plate of pretzels, and one of cheese cakes.
“My lunch,” he explained. “That is to say—our lunch, boy.”
“But you thought I had passed you by. The extra glass is not for the likes of me. Come now—whom do I rob?”
“It’s Father O’Shan from the Mission. Here’s to him! He’s an hour late, and the man who is an hour late had better not come at all.”
“Not if he comes for cakes and ale,” I assented, biting into a cheese cake with relish.
“No—nor if he comes for nothing. Punctuality is my hobby. Yes, it be, s-ship-mate. There’s twice the spice to an adventure if it’s pulled off when it should be. Cool your heels fifteen minutes, or a half hour, waiting for the party of the second part, and you don’t give a—ahem!—what becomes of the expedition. Yes, sir! the keen whet has gone if you have to wait over long for the other fellow. That chap is a borrowin’—no! he’s stealin’ your time. And I don’t borrow—and I don’t like to lend—and you can’t respect a thief. So there you are!” He looked at me, grinned mendaciously, and continued: “The other fellow gets the cream of the whole adventure. He’s probably takin’ a drink with some other old crony while you’re waitin’.”
“But that doesn’t apply in this case,” I reminded him, calmly helping myself to another of Wanza’s delicious cheese cakes.
“Not in this case. No, sir! Father O’Shan’s probably been held up by some one with a long-winded yarn of how the poor wife’s adyin’ of consumption, and the kids of starvation. The Father’s heart’s that s-soft he’d s-strip the coat from his back to give it to a beggar.”
“Yes,” I said, “I well know that. Wanza has told me as much.”
“Wanza knows she hasn’t any better friends than Father O’Shan and the sisters at the old Mission up De Smet way.” The smiling face lengthened, he filled his pipe from the tobacco jar at his elbow, and tamped down the weed with a broad forefinger. “Wanza’s a high strung girl, Mr. Dale, she’s peppery, and she’s headstrong, but Sister Veronica can do almost anything with her, ay! since the time when I brought her out to the river country with me, a poor, sick, wee, motherless lass, pretty nigh sixteen years ago. She’s larned all she knows of the sisters about cooking and sewing and the like.”
“And we know that is considerable,” I said.
“She’s quite some cook, I make no doubt. There ain’t much Wanza don’t know about a house.”
“How do you manage during Wanza’s busy season when she is absent so much in her cart? She seems to be a very busy saleswoman these days,” I remarked.
“Well, the days are lonesome like. But she’s hardly ever gone more’n a night or two at a time—the gal never neglects her old dad. Once a week she tidies and bakes regular. I am used to bachin’ it too, it seems natural to cook vittles, and sweep—jest like old times. I allow it’s great. The most bothersome thing I have to do nowadays is ’tendin’ the flowers. Wanza’s got such a posy garden it sure gets to be a nuisance some days when my joints be stiffer than common.”
He chuckled and waved in the direction of the garden plot at the side of the house. “Not but what I take a pride in it myself,” he added as he caught my interested and not wholly unappreciative glance.
To glance at Wanza’s garden was to receive a dizzying impression of pink and white bloom, pranked round by shining smooth rocks of uniform size and whiteness. The flash and dazzle of it struck blindingly on the eyes. It was Wanza-like. I got up, descended the porch steps, and went to the garden, the better to inspect its glamour and richness. Rows of pink holly-hocks, clusters of sweet William, trellises of sweet peas, fluffy red peonies, pink and white poppies bordering beds of tea roses breathed of Wanza. And yet—the wild things at Cedar Dale pleased her best, I knew.
Captain Lyttle seemed to be reading my thoughts, for he said facetiously:
“It’s a fairly purty garden, to my notion, but there ain’t anything in it as good as the swamp laurel and lupine at Cedar Dale, accordin’ to Wanza. She don’t hold by cultivated flowers no more, she says. Give her the wood-flowers as grows wild and hides away, she says. And that reminds me, Mr. Dale, I got that bird you give her at Christmas on my hands, too. ‘Poor old Dad,’ she says, ‘will have him for company. He’s mine,’ she says, ‘he’s mine. But, Dad, what’s mine is yours.’ Meanin’ I’m to take care ’o him.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come along in to Wanza’s room and have a look at him.”
I was getting new side lights on Wanza’s character to-day. Even her room was an elucidation. It was small, with a long narrow window on the south side and a door that opened into the garden. The walls were bright with gay sprigged paper, the bed was white as a snow heap, the curtain at the window was spotless and looped with pink ribbon. Wood-work and floor were painted green, also the wooden bed and small dresser. There was a green tissue paper shade on the lamp on the table; and green paper rosettes were wreathed around cheap prints and fastened with gilt headed tacks to the walls. But in spite of its tawdriness the room had a fragrance of lavender, a nicety that was comforting. It was a little girl’s room. Indeed, I spied a fat-faced wax doll in one corner seated on a balloon-like pink silk cushion; and on a shelf with an impossible beaded lambrequin stood a Dresden-china lamb and a wax cupid in a glass case.
The canary’s cage hung in the window, clouded in folds of pink mosquito bar. But the canary itself was on the limb of a flowering currant bush outside the window. I chirruped to it, but it contented itself with chirruping back, and I left it unmolested. As I looked around the room again my eye was arrested by a snap-shot picture of Joey and myself framed in bark and covered with the inevitable pink mosquito netting, standing on a small table at the head of Wanza’s bed. Above it on the wall hung a Christmas card I had given Wanza, bearing Tiny Tim’s message “God bless us every one.”
Grif Lyttle evinced considerable pride as he showed me the room. His genial face beamed, and his eyes shone as he looked about him from the green rosettes to the beaded lambrequin and back to me.
“Snug little nest, eh?” he hazarded. Meeting my appraising eye his face twisted into an odd look of whimsical interrogation. “Some girl—what? Know any finer—ever see a prettier?”
“No,” I answered.
“Nowhere?”
“No.”
“Ever eat after a better cook?”
“Certainly I never have.”
“Ever expect to?”
“No.”
He gave his booming laugh, and led the way to the porch.
“Right-o, ship-mate! Have another glass now, and we’ll drink to the gal’s health, and finish the cheese cakes.”
Passing along the main street of the village some two hours later, I saw Father O’Shan, climbing out of a ramshackle gig at the door of the post-office. I went up to him and placed my hand on his shoulder, saying:
“Good afternoon, Father O’Shan, I want to confess.”
His fine, ascetic face turned round to me with a wave of quick sympathy overspreading it; then when he saw who it was who had accosted him he laughed, a musical, clear-timbred peal, good to hear.
“I have eaten your cheese cakes,” I vouchsafed.
He wrung my hand. “Good! Captain Grif doesn’t have much sympathy with the delinquent. I fancy his comments were characteristic.” A shadow fell athwart his face. “I was called to the bedside of a sick man—a dying man—a homesteader. He is dying in poverty and distress—alone—but for me, yonder in the mountains.”
My mood veered suddenly. “I know the man—if I can help,—” I began, and stumbled on; “In like straits I may find myself, some day.”
I felt my shoulder pressed. “No, David Dale. Not you! Will you walk with me a way?” he asked abruptly.
I turned with him and we left the dusty street, and took the road that bordered the river. Already the sun was slipping behind the western mountains, and the water ran rainbow colored, between its high, shelving banks. Father O’Shan took off his hat and bared his head to the breeze that was springing up.
“A day for gods to stoop—ay, and men to soar,” he quoted, favoring me with his warm smile. “I’ve had a hard day, Dale, a hard day.”
I think I have never seen so rare a face as his. Rugged and yet womanly sensitive and fine. He was a man ten years my senior, I dare say, and in his glance there was something gripping and compelling, something at once stern and gentle, whimsical and austere.
“A hard day—but you’ve been equal to it, Father O’Shan,” I cried impulsively. “When the day comes that I am broken in health, and old and friendless, I shall ask for no other physician, no truer companion, no more sympathetic assuager of pain than you.”
I grinned sheepishly as I spoke, but my companion answered earnestly:
“You speak as if you expected always to remain in your small corner, Dale. If I could prophesy I would say two years hence will not find you here.”
I shook my head, and we walked on in silence for awhile.
“You may marry,” he was beginning, but at the black cloud apparent on my face he caught himself up, saying: “I can’t believe you have no future ahead of you, man.” He went on, gravely: “Dale, I want to be assured that you look upon me as a friend. We know each other rather well, and I think we find each other congenial. We have had some rather interesting arguments during our jovial evenings with Captain Grif. At first I thought you were a genius. But I know you better now. I have studied you. You’re normal, splendidly balanced, healthy, resistant. You’re clever and plodding—you’ll make good. But you are not a genius. I like you immensely. Certain things I have gathered from Wanza make me feel that at times you need a friendly hand—that you are breasting treacherous currents, even now. Come, Dale, I’d be your friend.”
He held out his hand, mine went out to meet it and we struck palms warmly. I said then:
“I have not been a black sheep. It’s a shadow on my past that keeps me here, of course. But the story is not my own—it must be kept inviolate. But my present troubles and ambitions are for your ear—if you will have them. There’s my sordid, pinching poverty—you know of that—and—I am writing a book—”
He caught his lip between his teeth; his eyes flashed at me; he appraised me.
“What sort of book?”
“A novel. A story with a strong nature atmosphere. Someway I feel it will be a success.”
“Good! Success to you. Success to you—and Wanza.”
“Wanza!” I cried, starting uncontrollably. “What has she to do with it? Wanza—that child?” I finished smilingly.
“A child, is she?” He came to a halt in front of me. “David Dale, be careful in your dealings with that child. Forgive me—I asked you to bear me company that I might say this to you. Be careful.”
“But I do not understand,” I parried.
He said nothing more, meeting my eyes gravely and extending his hand. And so we parted. And I went home and smiled to myself over his last words as I reviewed them. No one so well as I knew what an incorrigible child Wanza was. I thought of the wax doll on the pink silk cushion and was convinced.
Father O’Shan was the first person to whom I had confided my ambition concerning the novel I was engaged on. I had labored at it many months. It was progressing satisfactorily to me. By autumn I hoped to complete it. I had a fond hope that Christmas would find it sold to the publishing firm in the East to whom I proposed to send it. If it sold—if it sold!—my plan was to support myself and Joey by the sale of my cedar chests and wood carvings until I could make good in the world of literature.