CHAPTER XX
“PERHAPS I SHALL GO AWAY”
ALONE the next day I took up the search for Joey, beating back and forth between Roselake and Cedar Dale, and penetrating to Wallace and Wardner. It was to Wanza that I spoke my conviction at last, sitting my cayuse on the river road, while she sat stiff and tearful-eyed in her cart, pale even beneath the pink-lined umbrella.
“It looks to me, Wanza girl,” I said wearily, “like a plain case of kidnapping.”
“But who would kidnap him, Mr. Dale?” Wanza queried pitifully.
“Why—that’s the question,” I returned. “Have you ever seen him talking to any one—any stranger—when you have met him going and returning from school?”
She shook her head. “Once,” she replied, “Joey was with me, and Mr. Batterly stopped us. He asked me all about Joey—seeming so keen! And I told him—thinking it no harm—just how a dying woman gave him to you, saying he was a waif that had been picked up after a storm over on the Sound by her dead brother, who had been a fisherman.”
“Where is Batterly now,” I asked.
“Gone away—this week past.”
“Oh, well,” I sighed, “we’ll acquit him. I’m sure he was not over fond of Joey.” After a pause I asked brusquely: “Where has he gone?”
“I don’t know—sure I don’t, Mr. Dale. The last I heard of him he was going to hire a swift-water boat and a poler, and try the swift-water fishing above St. Joe.”
“Then he hasn’t left the country,” I said. And my heart sank leaden and my hate of the man boiled up in my veins fiercely, as I pictured him still skulking about, a menace to Haidee’s peace of mind.
The time went very heavily past. All my days and many nights were spent in the saddle, and the evenings that I passed at Cedar Dale were consumed in feverish plans for the scoutings that I made. I did not even now attempt to visit Haidee at Hidden Lake; but one morning, at sunrise, hearing a soft tap on my door, I opened to see Wanza standing there with a covered basket on her arm.
“I saw your light last night,” she quavered. “I have brought you some good nourishing food. I can see you’re not cooking for yourself. You’re growing white and thin.”
Her womanly act in coming thus to offer me comfort stirred me strangely, appealed to the finest fibre in my nature. Her simplicity, her self-forgetfulness made me falter at her feet.
But at last I gave over my scoutings. I made a cedar chest for Joey’s room, and in this I placed all his little kickshaws, his few clothes, and his flute, along with the gay Indian blanket he had reveled in, and the quilt Wanza had pieced for him. The room thus became to me a sort of shrine. And finding me here at the close of a long day with tears of which I was not ashamed in my eyes, Wanza broke down and sobbed beside me.
“I’d like to kill whoever it is as has taken Joey away,” she cried, brandishing a resentful fist.
“If we knew any one had taken him,” I said, thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think—I think, Wanza, that Joey is dead.”
“I don’t think so! No, indeed!” Wanza returned with thrilling earnestness. “Oh, I feel sure he ain’t dead! He’ll be found—some day. He sure will, Mr. Dale.”
She helped me by her sturdy optimism.
Soon after this Wanza and I fell into the habit of tramping through the gleaming golden woods together almost daily, breathing the crisp sweet autumn air. Wanza in her bright sweater, with her tawny hair, and the carmine in her cheek flitted in and out of the wood paths like a forest dryad, exclaiming at every frost-touched leaf, and reveling in the painted glory about us.
“But the birds are gone,” she said, a tear in her tones, as we looked into an empty king-bird’s nest one day. “I love the king-birds—they’re sleek dandies—that’s what they are! Oh, Mr. Dale, what a heartache an empty nest gives me! The dear little birds are gone—”
“And Joey is not here,” I ended sadly.
After awhile I went on: “Yes, summer has gone. It is the most evanescent time of the year. It slips and slips away—and just as you grasp it and thrill to its sweetness it melts into—this—as happiness merges into sorrow.”
Her face quivered, and her eyes came to mine. “I guess that is so,” she said in a low tone.
Looking in Wanza’s face lately I always turned away. I did so now. The look of questioning I found there—the mute appeal—the suffering—these unmanned me. But it grew to be a strange satisfaction to be with her, through long crisp daylight hours, in the hush of pink sunsets, in the gilded autumn twilights, while we rested after a meagre supper cooked over a camp fire, chatting desultorily, and watching the big pale stars came out to lie like white-tipped marguerites on the purple bosom of the sky above our heads.
One day I spoke my thought.
“I am thinking, Wanza—perhaps I shall go away.”
We were in the heart of the woods. A tinkling, sly little brook made the forest musical, the rustle and purr of the pines sounded about us like fluty organ notes. Wanza’s eyes were lifted to the sprightly shivering leaves of a cottonwood, and her face was very still. She did not move as I spoke, and I repeated my sentence.
“I thought you’d go,” she said. She spoke harshly.
“I can’t stop on here without Joey. I can’t bear it,” I said, haltingly.
“But I’ve got to stay on without either of you—and bear it.”
I saw her eyes. I recoiled at the depth of pain revealed.
“Mr. Dale,” she said gropingly, after a pause, “where are you going?”
“I don’t know, Wanza. But inaction is intolerable. I must be doing something. I must get away for awhile, at least. It is better.”
Wanza’s eyes were very bright. Her hands that were smoothing a maple leaf were trembling. Her voice sounded dry and hard as she asked:
“When do you reckon you’ll go?”
“Why, child, I do not know! Each day I say to myself I cannot bear another.”
“It’ll be the same wherever you are.”
“Perhaps so, Wanza,” I sighed. And then because I knew the tears were on her cheeks, I sprang to my feet, saying: “This may be our last day in the woods together, who knows? Come, let us try to forget—let us make the best of what we have.”
Wanza rose. She came close to me. When our eyes met she gave a cry: “If you go you may never come back!”
“Never fear. I have no home but Cedar Dale,” I replied, and I am afraid my voice was bitter. And when she put her hand on my arm I shook it off and would have strode away, but again as in the woods on the occasion of our gipsying I saw her face close to my own, and caught my breath in marvel. No, there was never such a girl-face! Such an elf-face! I stooped suddenly and framed the face with my hands. What were her wonderful eyes saying, back of all the tears, all the mystery? Why—when I was in love with Haidee—did they draw me like a lodestar? Why now and then did she stir me in this strange fashion till I gazed and gazed, and needs must curb my will to keep from taking her in my arms and crushing her against my heart?
I had never faced the question. I did not care to face it now. I put it away for some future time, feeling vaguely that it remained to be reckoned with.
“I have no home but Cedar Dale,” I repeated.
“And I am glad of that,” she whispered.
She pressed nearer to me, and I released her face, and drew her slowly within the circle of my arms. But when I held her so, when the floating hair meshes were just beneath my chin, and her face brushed my sleeve, I steadied myself.
“Wanza,” I said, “I am almost glad, too, that I have no other home. When I think of the good friends I have here—you and your father and Father O’Shan—I realize that I am ungrateful to despise my humble place among you. Keep it for me, little girl, and I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back better equipped for the future among you. If it must be without Joey—” I hesitated and bit my lip—“without Joey,” I continued more firmly, “I shall at least try to earn your respect by holding up my head, and forging on to some goal. I shall attain to something at last, I hope. And I hope I shall be able to serve my neighbors in many ways, and make myself needed in the community.”
I held her for a moment after saying this, and then I bent down and for the first time in my life kissed her. But it was on the brow that I kissed her. And I am sure no brother could have saluted her more respectfully.
She drew back. Her head fell against my shoulder. I saw deep into her splendid eyes,—deep, deep. Back of all the tears and the smiles and the mystery I read at last what they were saying. I read—and I was humbled and abashed. I knew the truth at last. Wanza loved me.
I saw clearly now, indeed. I recalled Father O’Shan’s words: “Be careful in your dealings with that child.” I had been blind, and a fool. I blamed myself, and I hated myself. I stood stupidly staring into the face so near my own until with a sudden wrench Wanza jerked away from me, and ran on down the purpling wood-aisle before me, dashing the tears from her eyes as she fled.
I walked home slowly, astounded and perplexed by the revelation I had had.