CHAPTER VII
WANZA BAKES A CAKE
ONE sunny afternoon in the following week I again took my canoe and slipped down the river to the small aperture in the willows. This time I did not hesitate, but entered the lead boldly. And I was no sooner afloat upon the green-fringed waterway than my temerity was rewarded. A canoe appeared around a bend ahead of me, and in the craft sat Haidee plying the paddle. She was almost a dazzling vision as she approached me. She was in white, and the shadows were green all about her, and the ribband snood on her head was blue, and blue flowers were heaped around her feet. When she saw me she called out: “Have you forgotten that you were to send me Wanza Lyttle?” and there was an amused light in her brilliant eyes.
In my confusion I stammered and was unable to make a coherent reply, and after a quick glance at my face, she exclaimed:
“Never mind! I have seen her for myself.”
“You have seen her?”
“Yes. I rode into Roselake village this morning and enquired right and left for Miss Lyttle. Every one smiled and said: ‘Who? Wanza?’ Then I met her in her cart on the river road. I knew her by the green umbrella.” Haidee paused and ruminated, wrinkling her brows. “I know why she lined her umbrella with pink.”
“Well,” I cried, disregarding the seeming irrelevance, “is she coming to stay with you? That’s the main thing.”
“She’s asked for a week or so in which to consider. But—yes, I think she’s coming to stay with me.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then that’s settled.”
She went on evenly: “Now that you have found the waterway I hope, very often, after I have secured the services of that distracting girl of the green umbrella—when I am lonely—and you are lonely too—you will take your canoe and seek us out. Not,” she amended quickly, “that I mind my solitude. All my life I have hungered for the quiet places. But I must confess I have an eerie feeling—at times—on moonless nights—and sometimes just at twilight—and always when a coyote howls in the night.” Her bright face clouded, then she shrugged. “Never mind! We all have our haunted hours. In the daytime I am gloriously happy and carefree. I take my mare and follow any casual, wee road I can find. I sketch in the woods, and along the river. I tramp too, and climb the hills. But Sonia, my mare, and I are good company. I have hired that funny bent man who lives back on the mountain to take care of my mare for me.”
“Lundquist?” I asked, quickly.
“Yes. He has been very neighborly,” she replied, with a slight emphasis on the pronoun. She smiled, meeting my eyes, and I said quickly: “I shall be only too happy to call on you and Wanza. I can understand how one not accustomed to solitude would find the environs of Hidden Lake depressing.”
Her face grew thoughtful. “I have been wondering lately what attracted me so strongly to the place. It is a drab, unlikely spot, I know. The lake is like a black tarn at night, the dense growth of cedars and pines is repellant, at times. In the moonlight the trees stand up so threatening and ghostly. And when the wind blows they wave gaunt, bearded arms abroad as if warning the too venturesome wayfarer against intruding here. I have roughhewn my life, Mr. Dale, but I must believe some force beyond me is shaping it. I have been fascinated against my better judgment by Hidden Lake! I had to pitch my tent here, for a time! I had no choice.”
It seemed a strange confession. All at once a question leaped to my lips, and I spoke hurriedly:
“I wish you would tell me something of yourself—where your home is—your real home!”
“My real home?”
“I can picture you with surroundings better suited to you. Even I say to myself, ‘God grant that this be not my house and my homestead, but decree it to be only the inn of my pain.’”
The quick carmine stained her cheeks. She lifted the blue flowers and held them, plucking nervously at the petals. Then she looked up at me, and uttered something like a little cry of scorn. “Why, it’s a painter’s paradise—in spite of the loneliness that abounds! Can’t you see that?”
“I can see that, of course,” I answered.
“And I am an artist. So you are answered. Years ago, with my father, who had mining interests in this section, I spent one whole summer on the Swiftwater, painting. Since then I have hungered to get back to this adorable river country. I have always wanted a painting retreat in this marvelous lake-jeweled meadow-land, where the mountains shift and merge their colors, and the rivers have such cameo-like reflections. No matter where I may wander,” she went on with enthusiasm, “I shall always be glad of this place of inspiration to work in and dream in—I don’t look upon it as a permanent habitation, simply as a delightful camp in the wilderness I love.”
Paddling home I recalled Haidee’s enthusiasm with a smile. And then I bethought me that she had not after all told me the slightest thing concerning herself or any recent home.
Some two hours later as I bent over the stove in the kitchen, intent on frying some thick slices of cornmeal mush for Joey’s supper, I heard the whir and grind of wheels and the creaking of harness through the open window. I glanced out. A buckskin pony and two-wheeled cart were skirting the ploughed field and approaching the cabin. I glimpsed a familiar figure beneath the pink glow of the lining of the green umbrella. When the buckskin pony was near enough for me to see the green paper rosettes on its harness, I called out to Joey, who was laying the table in the front room:
“Put on another plate, lad. Wanza is coming.”
Something was amiss with Joey. His face had displayed unmistakable signs of perturbation during the day, and there was something infinitely pathetic about the droop of his brown head, usually held so gallantly. I had thought best to disregard his melancholy attitude, knowing that bed-time would bring an unburdening of his heart. In response to my announcement, he gave a fairly frenzied shriek of joy.
“Good—ee!” he shouted, with such a clatter of hob nails as he crossed to the cupboard that I could picture in my mind the jig steps that carried him thither. “There’s a wee bit of molasses in the jug,” he called to me, “I was saving it for taffy—you said I might. I’ll just put it on. And the spring is ’most full of cress, Mr. David,—I’ll scoot out and get a panful before she gets here.”
He was off like a flash through the kitchen to the spring as Wanza entered by the front door.
I went to meet her. I found her standing in the centre of the living room. The door was open behind her, and her hair was like a pale silver flame in the light. As I drew near to her I saw that her cheeks were splashed with crimson, her eyes dark with some tempestuous stress of feeling. There was something unfriendly in her bearing. But I held out my hand and cried blithely:
“You are just in time to have a bite of supper with us, Wanza. We heard the rattle of your cart, and Joey has gone to the spring for cress.”
She met my glance dourly. Her brows came together and she ignored my outstretched hand.
“Mr. David Dale,” she said with great dignity, “perhaps I am wrong, but it’s my opinion you’ve forgotten what day it is.”
I smiled into the sullen face. “Oh, no,” I said airily, “I have not forgotten! To-day is wash day—therefore Monday.”
“Yes, and whose birthday is it, Mr. Dale?”
I stared at her.
“Whose birthday, whose? Just his—his—as never had a birthday that’s known of! Except that you vowed he should keep a day for his own every year, and named a day for him, which I thought you meant to keep sacred as Christmas, ’most.”
A light dawned on me. Some years before Wanza and I had decided that Joey must keep one day each year as his birthday, and I had dedicated the fifth of June to my little lad; planning to keep each fifth of June as if it were indeed the anniversary of his birth, as it was the anniversary of his coming to me. A week since I had bethought me of this, yes, even yesterday I had remembered it. But to-day I had visited a charmed spot, I had seen a radiant being, I had listened to a seraphic voice—I had forgotten. I hung my head.
Wanza spoke again. “The poor boy,” she said, “poor Joey!” There was a break in her accusing tones. “I didn’t think that you’d be the one to forget him, Mr. Dale.”
“I’m ashamed of it, Wanza,” I confessed. My heart turned heavy within me. I felt a traitor to my trusting lad who would never in his most opulent moment have forgotten me. “I am heartily ashamed of it,” I repeated.
After an uncomfortable pause I ventured to raise my eyes from the floor. I saw then that Wanza’s arms were filled with mysterious weighty looking bundles. As I would have taken them from her she shook her head, then nodded in the direction of the kitchen.
“You’ve got a good fire going, I see. Let’s get busy! Split up some good dry wood. I want a hot oven in ten minutes. I’ve brought raisins and spices and brown sugar—I’ll stir up a birthday cake. And as for you—” she paused in her progress kitchenward to favor me with an ominous frown—“as for you, Mr. David Dale, don’t let that boy know you went and forgot his birthday or—or I’ll never speak to you again.”
She passed on to the kitchen and I seized the ax and betook myself to the chopping block. I had just laid my hand on a piece of resinous wood when I heard a joyous confused babble of tongues in the kitchen I had quitted. Joey had entered by the front door and shouted Wanza’s name gleefully. And then I heard:
“Bless your old heart! Have you a birthday kiss for Wanza? Well I am late getting round this birthday—I usually come at noon, don’t I, Joey?—but better late than never! It’s getting too hot to eat in the middle of the day. We thought—Mr. Dale and me—that we would change the doings this year. We didn’t want you to imagine, Master Joey, that we couldn’t think up anything new for your celebration. We ’lowed as how you were getting a big boy now, and would like more grown-up doings.”
Joey responded chivalrously:
“You’re terrible good to me, Wanza. I like any doings, ’most. I’ll remember this birthday forever and ever, I know. Why, it’s been the funniest birthday! Mr. David has been on the river ’most all afternoon. I was ’most sure he’d forgot what day it was. But soon as I heard your cart, Wanza, I knew what it was—a surprise party! Like folks give ministers. And that was why Mr. David would not let on. I guess not many boys have spice cake on their birthday, and can help bake it, too.”
I heard the sound of a kiss, and Wanza saying in a choked voice:
“There’s a bit of store candy in that brown paper sack, Joey. My, the heat of the oven smarts my eyes! See, Joey! You can stone the raisins for me while I beat the eggs for the frosting.”
“Of course Mr. David wouldn’t forget my birthday,” I heard my loyal lad resume as I stole forward to the door with my armful of wood, “I’m ’bout the same as his boy, ain’t I, Wanza?”
I swung open the door, and dropping my load of wood to the floor, cried cheerily:
“Here’s the wood to cook the boy’s birthday supper, Wanza. Come and give me a hug, Joey. I think you’re old enough to have a few nickels to spend, boy,—put your hand in my pocket, the pocket where we keep our jack-knife. There! What do you find?”
“A dollar,” shrieked Joey with bulging eyes.
“It’s yours,” I said.
His eyes opened wide, gazed incredulously into mine; his face grew white; and then tears gushed forth. “And I thought—I thought you’d forgot my birthday,” he sobbed.
Wanza’s nose was pink when I turned to hold the oven door open for her. But her eyes were friendly, and her full, exquisite lips were smiling.
“It’s going to be a perfectly grand cake,” she breathed.
Joey had run whooping out of doors to bathe his face in the spring. Emboldened by the girl’s smile I touched her smooth round cheek lightly.
“There’s a tear here still, Wanza,” I teased, though my voice was somewhat husky. “You’re April’s lady—sunshine and shadow—tears and laughter; but you’re a good girl, Wanza, a fine staunch friend to Joey and me. Don’t hold my thoughtlessness of to-day against me, please.”
She dashed the drop away. Her cornflower blue eyes blazed suddenly into mine.
“I ’most hated you a little while ago, Mr. David Dale, when I knew why you’d forgotten poor Joey’s birthday—” she hesitated, then repeated defiantly, “when I knew why you’d forgotten.”
“Now,” I said, challenging her, “I defy you to say why I forgot the lad’s birthday.”
“And I’ll tell you why. Because you’re thinking so much about the woman as has taken old Russell’s cabin you haven’t got time to remember other folks. Old Lundquist says you watch her light o’ nights from Nigger Head.”
“Lundquist is a meddlesome, prying old idiot,” I cried angrily.
Seeing me aroused, Wanza’s anger cooled. “I dare say he is,” she admitted, as she stepped to the oven door. “Why should you be taken with a creature like her, I should like to know! Such a flabby, white-faced, helpless moon-calf.”
She laughed, shut the oven door, straightened her fine shoulders and went to the window to cool her cheeks. I looked at her as she stood there, I saw her smile and wave her hand to Joey, who was performing sundry ablutions at the spring. She was wearing a collarless pink cotton frock, spotless and fresh as water and starch and fastidious ironing could make it; her face was as ardent as a flame, her eyes glowed deep and impassioned, her lips were smooth as red rose petals. Her mop of fine, blond curls was massed like a web of silk about her colorful face. I looked at her with appreciation. But as I looked I sighed. Hearing my sigh she gave me an odd glance, then crossed the room and stood before me.
“Mr. Dale,” she said soberly, “I am sorry I told you what old Lundquist said. I allow you’ve a right to watch a light on Hidden Lake if you’ve a mind to. Look ahere, do you want I should go and stay with her?”
“Why,” I replied, “I think it would be kind, Wanza.”
She bit her lip, shot a keen glance at me, and said shortly:
“Then I’ll go, as soon as I have done my own house cleaning.”
“You’re a good girl, Wanza,” I said again.
She turned from me, sniffing the air. “That cake’s about done, I’ll warrant. Call Joey, Mr. Dale, and I’ll put the mush on the table, and see to the icing.”
Somehow the meal did not pass off with the degree of festivity I had hoped for. Wanza watched me from under her thick lashes in a most disconcerting manner as we chatted desultorily, and my little lad was unusually silent. I felt that I had not atoned to Joey for the long, arduous day through which he had passed, that its memory lay like a shadow over the present gala hour. To lighten it in some measure I ventured a proposal.
“Joey,” I said, speaking abruptly as a silence threatened to engulf us, “how would you like to go gipsying with me for a few days?”
“Gipsying,” Joey repeated. His face was illumined as he caught my eye and partially sensed my meaning. “Does gipsying mean living in a covered wagon, Mr. David, and cooking bacon on sticks over a camp fire?”
I nodded. “All that and more, Joey. It means wonderful things, lad. It means faring forth into the greenwood in a caravan in the rosy dawn of a summer day, finding the most alluring trail that leads to the most secretive of trout streams, lounging in the shade of spreading trees at noon time, eating a snack of bread and cheese, poring over a treasured book for an hour while you drowse back half dreaming to all the pleasant happenings of your youth. Then when it’s cooler faring on again, till the sun begins to drop behind the mountains and hunger seizes you by the throat—”
I broke off, catching sight of Joey’s rapt face. It was radiant and eager and wistful all at once.
“Mr. David,” he said, pushing back his plate, “let’s go!”
“If you don’t go after saying what you’ve just said—” Wanza shook her head at me, and left her sentence unfinished.
“I could not have found it in my heart to paint such a picture, Wanza girl,” I replied, “had I not intended to give Joey the opportunity to compare it with the reality. We will stretch the old tarpaulin over the ranch wagon in the morning, stow away some bacon and cornmeal and a frying pan, harness Buttons to the caravan, and go out into the greenwood to tilt a lance with fortune.”
I laughed as I spoke; but a weariness of spirit that I had been struggling all the evening to combat lay heavily upon me. Well, would it be for me, I said to myself, to get away from Cedar Dale for a few days. I had felt an impelling hunger to see my wonder woman again; I had been restless for days consumed with the hunger; now I had seen her, and a new strange pain had been born to replace the former craving. I was in worse stress than before.