CHAPTER XVIII
“THANK YOU, MR. FIXING MAN”
THE bathing and dressing of Joey on Sunday morning, with Sunday school in prospect, had always been an indeterminate process, a sort of blind bargain. But with each week that was added to his age it became not only precarious, but downright fagging, and nerve racking to a degree. When he was a wee urchin and could go into the wash tub in the kitchen for his weekly scouring, the process was comparatively simple, but now that his long legs precluded that possibility, a liberal soaping and sponge bath beside the tub was the alternative, and I found the operation decidedly ticklish.
He knew the minutiæ of the bath so well that if I neglected the least detail, or varied the prescribed form, I was called to severe account.
On the Sunday morning following our late evening at Captain Grif’s we arose late, and consequently there was a scramble to get our breakfast over and the water heated for the bath. But in due time all the preliminaries were adjusted and Joey, stripped to the waist, knelt down beside the tub according to our usual custom, that I might first give his hair a thorough washing.
“You shouldn’t rub soap on it,” he demurred, as I turned to the soap dish. “Bell Brandon says so. She says that’s what makes my hair so brash and funny.”
“Brash, Joey?”
“That’s what she said.”
My jaw dropped. “How shall we get it clean, boy?”
“You make a lather. Shave off little chunks of soap and put ’em in a bottle and shake ’em up with water.”
These directions were followed, and both Joey and I were gratified with the result, but precious moments were consumed in the process.
After that Joey got water in his ear, and had to dance like a Piute, on one leg, and shake his head until it was dislodged. Next he sat on the side of the tub and tipped it sufficiently to deluge the floor with half the contents. This necessitated a scurry for the mop, and when I rather curtly declined the lad’s services, tears came to the brown eyes, his head drooped, and quite a quarter of an hour was expended in salving his feelings, submitting to bear hugs and listening to assurances that he had not meant to spill his bath water.
After that we got down to business, and I stood Joey in the tub, soaped him well, soused him with the sponge quickly, and rubbed him with a coarse towel until his small body was in a glow. As I was drying his feet, he said gently:
“I guess I’m a little boy yet, ain’t I, Mr. David? I guess it’s a good thing you know how to take care of me.”
He rubbed his cheek against my arm.
“Where’s your shirt, boy?”
He pointed.
Oh, such a pitiful, faded, abject blue and white rag it seemed, hanging on the chair back! I turned it this way and that, regarding it dubiously.
“Will it do, Joey?”
“Why, yes, sure it’ll do. My, course it’ll do.”
I sighed. “We’ll have to get some new ones when you start to school, boy.”
“Well, but when I wear the tie Bell Brandon gave me, who sees the shirt,” he said absently.
I looked around at him. He was inspecting a red, angry looking mark on his chest. “Will that always be there, Mr. David?” he asked plaintively, touching it. “It always has been there. What makes it?”
“It’s a birth mark, Joey. If ever you should get stolen, and when I found you a bad man should say: ‘He’s not your boy,’ I could answer: ‘My boy has a round red mark on his chest.’ See how fine that would be.”
Joey laughed, and held out his arms for the shirt.
A few minutes later I was arranging the gaily striped Windsor tie beneath the turn down collar of the worn shirt, when the familiar sound of creaking harness and whirring wheels reached my ear. Wanza had not paid Cedar Dale a visit since the day she went away in tearful silence bearing the waxwing with her.
When I opened the door and saw her radiant face my spirits lightened suddenly, and a spray of sunshine seemed to sweeten the dingy kitchen as she stepped over the threshold.
“Am I in time?” she breathed.
“In time? In time for what, Wanza?” I asked.
She dropped a bundle on to the table.
“In time for Joey to wear one of these to Sunday school?” she said, portentously.
Joey crept closer. Her eyes as they turned to him were blue as summer skies and as shining. She snapped the string that held the bundle intact. Joey and I saw an amazing array of small shirts—checked shirts, striped shirts, white shirts.
“Where—where did they come from, Wanza?” stammered Joey.
But I had guessed.
“Well, it’s the first real present I’ve ever made you, Joey. It sure won’t be the last! Hustle into the cedar room now, and get into the white one with the frills—the white ones are for Sunday school.”
I could say nothing. And as for Joey, he gathered the shirts in his arms and went away to the cedar room snivelling. Wanza and I were left to look into each other’s faces questioningly. “How is it with you, Wanza?” I asked, just as she put the query, “How do you get along, Mr. Dale?”
We both laughed, and the awkwardness of the situation was relieved.
“I miss you terribly, Wanza,” I confessed. “My sour dough bread turns to dust and ashes in my mouth.”
Her soft eyes were commiserating. “I’ll fetch you a good sweet loaf of my baking, now and then,” she volunteered quickly.
“And don’t drive by as you have been doing. Are you too busy to stop as you used to do, girl?” I asked.
“I’m busy, all right.” She lifted the cover from a small tin pail on the back of the stove, and sniffed with the air of a connoisseur at the yeast it contained. “That needs more sugar!”
“It needs doctoring,” I conceded ruefully. “I set it last night and it has not risen.”
“Has Joey been having his bath here?”
“Yes.”
She looked about her.
“I’ll straighten around a bit, I believe. Empty that tub, and open the windows, Mr. Dale, and I’ll get the broom and give the cabin a thorough cleaning. And then before I go I’ll set some yeast for you that’ll raise the cover off the pail in no time.”
Later as I was holding the dust pan for Wanza, Joey came from the cedar room fresh and smiling in the white shirt, the Windsor tie in his hand. Wanza laid aside her broom, and with deft fingers fastened the tie into a wonderful bow beneath the boy’s chin. He kissed us both, and we went with him to the meadow bars where Buttons was tethered. I lifted him to the saddle and stood looking after him with a thrill of pride as he rode away. In his new white shirt and clean corduroy trousers, with his hair carefully brushed and his adorable brown face aglow and his big bright eyes radiant with happiness he was a charming enough picture of boyhood; and a prick of pleasure so sharp as to be almost pain ran through me as he jauntily blew me a kiss, and cried:
“I have my penny for the cradle-roll lady, and I have not forgot my handkerchief.”
That night I dropped asleep in the Dingle and again I dreamed of Wanza. She came in her pink gown and bare feet as she had come before; but this time she carried loaves of steaming, sweet-smelling bread in her arms; and she came straight to my side, saying: “This bread is sweet and wholesome, you poor, poor fellow.” It seemed to me that she knelt and fed me portions of the bread with pitying fingers. And never had morsel tasted more sweet.
As the days went by, in spite of Wanza’s promises, the girl came but seldom to Cedar Dale. And when I met her on the river road or in the village, she seemed distrait and strangely shy and awkward, and vastly uncommunicative, so that I felt forlorn enough; and I was wholly out of touch with my wonder woman.
I applied myself feverishly to my writing. All day long I labored in my shop, in order to earn the daily bread for Joey and myself, but each night I wrote. The novel was almost finished; and something told me it was good.
The weeks passed, and August was waning. The foliage was yellowing along the river that crawled like a golden, sluggish serpent in and out among the brittle rushes. September was waiting with lifted paint brush. The beauty of the dreamy, ripe hours made my senses ache. The earth seemed to lie in a trembling sleep, folded in fiery foliage. The hills were plumed with trees of flame. At night the moon’s face was warm and red, all day the sun burned copper colored through a light blue haze.
There was something melting and dreamy in the days as they slipped past—days when I found it hard to labor in the shop—the woods were melodious still with bird voices, and all outdoors called to me.
I took a week’s vacation and fished hard by the village, where the stream threads the meadows; companioned by Father O’Shan, I rode along the river bank in the sunset and tramped the illumined fields starred with sumach, and in the moonlight during that week, I sometimes allowed myself to drift in my canoe on the river, thinking, thinking, of Haidee—of the narrow oval of her face curtained in dark hair streams, of the shadowy eyes of her, of her sweet warm smile.
And then one day I made up my mind suddenly to go to her.
At the first glimpse I had of her cabin, standing a crude, warped, misshapen thing on the slight rise of ground beneath the cedars, all my former resolves to give to this habitation some slight air of comfort and refinement rose up and confronted me, and I saw myself a weak fellow, who had nursed his despair and disappointment and failed in his duty to the woman he loved, and who in his cowardice had absented himself from his loved one, when he might have brought her comfort and neighborly assistance.
On the back of an old envelope with a stub of a pencil I made a rough sketch of the improvements I had long since planned, and when Haidee and Wanza came to the door, I greeted them calmly and showed them the sketch. Haidee stood there, without her crutches, her hair unbound about her ivory face. Her gown was white, and a scarf of rose color swung from her shoulders. She looked at me for a long moment with eyes dull and faded as morning stars, and then gradually the old familiar light came back into her face, her eyes warmed and grew human. She stepped outside, and joined me on the porch.
“You have laid aside your crutches?” I ventured.
“Yes.”
“You are well?” I asked.
“Oh, yes! I work—hard—at various things. Do I not, Wanza? I sleep. I have a splendid appetite. And you?”
“I work. I sleep well, too. I drop asleep in the Dingle occasionally after a hard day’s work. The Dingle is Wanza’s retreat—she walks there. Do you know it, Wanza?”
She came to my side quickly. Her face displayed signs of perturbation. “I walk there! What do you mean? Have you seen me?”
“You come on tip-toe. It is hardly walking.”
Her eyes questioned me.
“I’ve seen you only a few times. But I suspect you come frequently.”
“I am sure I don’t, Mr. David Dale.”
She came closer, her cheeks like crimson roses, her bright eyes angry, her lips scornful.
“You come to visit Joey, I think. You came the first night after your departure from Cedar Dale. And you went into the cedar room.” I smiled into her troubled face.
“And what did I do there?”
“You took the magpie’s cage from its hook. You carried it away with you. But you were like a little trade rat—you left the cedar waxwing for Joey and me.”
But just here Wanza flung me an odd look and ran into the house, saying over her shoulder: “That was a funny, funny dream.”
Haidee favored me with a rather intent look, and dropped her gaze to the envelope in her hand. We walked around the cabin, and I explained how I planned to build a small rustic pergola with a trellis for wild honeysuckle at the back door to serve as a breakfast room next summer, and timidly at last, I told her that I wished that I might cover the rough walls of her sleeping room with cedar strips and build a pergola outside the door like the one I had built at Cedar Dale for Joey.
“We’ll plant some woodbine roots this fall, and set out a crimson rambler. We may as well have the place blooming like an Eden,” I said.
“And the wilderness shall blossom like the rose,” murmured Haidee. “Thank you, Mr. Fixing Man.”
I rode home happier than I had been in many a long day. When I told Joey of the proposed improvements at Hidden Lake he shouted with glee, and a few moments later I heard him tooting on his neglected flute that had lain strangely mute since the day when Haidee had sung “Bell Brandon” to its accompaniment, and we had seen the smile die from her curling lips and the light of joy go out in her sparkling eyes.
After this my days were trances. Through the glowing flame-like hours I worked to transform the sordid little cabin into a fitting habitation for my wonder woman. Together we planned the rustic porch at the rear of the kitchen, and when the foundation was laid I dug up wild honeysuckle roots and we planted them with a lavish hand, bending shoulder to shoulder above the sweet, moist earth, our hands meeting, Haidee’s breath on my face, her unsteady laughter in my ear, the charm of her rare, compelling personality stirring my senses to ecstasy.
I labored each day till the sun was well down behind Nigger Head; and then came a half hour of blissful idleness on the front porch with Haidee behind a tea tray facing me, Wanza handing around cheese cakes and sandwiches, and master Joey sitting on a three-legged stool, the picture of smug, well-fed complacency.
Wanza’s conduct puzzled me sorely during these days. At times she jested with me in her old bright rollicking way, but oftener her mood was fitful, and she was hot-tempered, difficult and distrait.
One evening I rode to the village with her in her cart on a special errand for Haidee. It was a mellow, moonlight evening. The air was ripe with a frosted sweetness, a tang that only autumn evenings hold. I was in boisterous spirits; and as Wanza drove I relapsed into my old way of alternately bantering and teasing and flattering my companion.
“When you no longer line your umbrella with pink, Wanza,” I said, “I will know that vanity and you have parted company.”
The blonde head turned restlessly.
“I ain’t half as vain as I used to be.”
“Oh, that’s bad, Wanza—very bad! A pretty girl is naturally vain. And as for the pink lining—it’s as natural for a fair, pale girl like you to line her umbrella with pink as it is for a fruit dealer to stretch pink gauze over his sallow fruit.”
“What do you mean by that?” Wanza demanded fiercely. She dropped the lines. “Now, what do you mean by that, I say?”
“Dear Wanza,” I said, soothingly, “I don’t mean anything—except that pink lends a pretty glow to an alabaster skin like yours.”
Her eyes gleamed at me savagely in the moonlight, and she made a strange sound in her throat that sounded like a sob.
“I don’t understand,” I continued, “why you’re so sensitive, of late. Why, it’s so hard to talk to you! You’re so difficult I feel like putting on a mental dress-suit and kid gloves when I converse with you. What’s come over you, Wanza?”
“Nothing’s come over me. It’s you,” she answered in a low tone.
“Oh, no,” I responded, “Wanza girl, I treat you just the same as I ever did, my dear!”
“But you don’t treat me the same as you do her—you don’t treat me just the same—” her voice sounded husky. She turned her head away.
What could I reply?
I ventured finally: “I don’t know exactly what you mean, child! But I hope I show by my manner to you how very much you count in my life,—how dear you are to Joey and me—how fine and staunch a friend we have ever found you—I hope I show this, Wanza. If I do not I am sorry indeed.”
There was a slight movement towards me on the girl’s part. Her hand crept out shyly and touched mine. I heard her whisper chokingly:
“If I mean a good deal to you and Joey I sure ought to be satisfied. It oughtn’t to matter—really matter—if you smile different when you speak to her.”
I took her hand. I was moved. Again I marveled that Wanza had the power to shake me so. “You have your own place, child,” I said. And when she questioned, “But what is my place, Mr. Dale?” I asked myself what indeed was her place. “I shall tell you some time,” I answered, which was not at all the remark I desired to make, and I spoke in palpable confusion.
After a short interval she took her hand from mine, and gathered up the lines, not looking at me as she said: “Mr. Batterly is back in Roselake.”
I caught her by the shoulder. I drew her quickly to me till I could see her face in the moonlight.
“When did he come back?” I asked, thickly.
She tugged at my restraining hand and shrugged away from me. “He’s been back two weeks, I calculate—may be more.”
“Don’t speak to him, Wanza—don’t look at him!” I implored quickly.
She faced me proudly at this. “Do you think I would,” she cried scornfully, “except to answer him when he speaks to me on the road?”
“I did not know, Wanza,” I murmured humbly.
“Did not know! It’s little you know me any way, David Dale, I am thinking. If you know me so little as not to know that, why should I care indeed how you treat me, or what my place is with you? Why should I care? Sometimes I think, David Dale, I think that I hate you. I’m thinking it now. Yes, yes, yes!”
“Please, please, Wanza—”
“Stop! I will ask a few questions, myself. I will put them to you, although I never—in loyalty to you—put them to myself. But it is not for you to tell me how to behave—how to walk so and so—say and do so and so! This is the question I will put: Is it right for you to spend each and every day at Hidden Lake? Is it? Answer that to yourself—not to me—before you tell me not even to speak civilly to Mrs. Batterly’s husband. I don’t want to speak to him! I don’t want him to speak to me! No, nor look at me. Can you say as much for her, David Dale?”
“I don’t know what to say,” I stammered, taken by surprise.
“You don’t have to say nothing—not to me. I’m not your judge. But answer the questions to yourself, quick, before you tell me what to do and what not, again! Go on, Rosebud, you’re a-getting to be slower and slower!”
I glanced at her face. It was pale, and her lips were unsteady.
About this time Joey began to take sudden trips down the river in the flat-bottomed swift-water boat, poling away industriously each morning with a fine show of mystery—unconsciously admonishing me to appear indifferent and uninterested. I carried my apathy too far, I imagine, for one day he said to me:
“Mr. David, do you mind the old hollow stump in the willows on the river bank—where the flycatcher’s left a funny big nest?”
I answered yes. I had marked it well. The secret waterway which led to Hidden Lake was close by.
“Well,” Joey continued, looking very important, and puffing out his chest like a pouter pigeon, “Bell Brandon and me have a post-office there. She leaves the most things for me there under the flycatcher’s nest in a box—cut-out pictures, and cookies, and fludge.”
“Fudge, Joey boy.”
“Yes—fludge. And say, Mr. David—any time you’re passing, look in, won’t you? ’Cause there might be something there would spoil.”