CHAPTER XXVI
THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE
AND so I came to the day that was sacred to Joey!
I began it by ploughing in the field back of the cabin. I went not near the shop. I did not venture into the cabin for lunch at noon. I had made up my mind to work doggedly till sundown and then go to the village inn for supper, and later join Father O’Shan at Captain Grif’s. Someway it comforted me to think of the evening; of the snug little nook beneath the eaves; and of the welcome that awaited me there. I saw Wanza’s face, in fancy—solicitous, pleased; I saw her figure there in the centre of the room, clasped by the yellow light of the swinging lamp, her hair gilded by its rays, on her cheek an eager flush. Kind heart! Dear, helpful girl! Cheerful, buoyant, valiant little wander-friend!
The sun for a June sun was unduly fervid, so that by four o’clock I was weary and dripping with perspiration, and longing for a dip in the river. I rested, and leaning on my plough, looked away through the cedars and cottonwoods to the green of the river flashing in the sunlight. I heard the rattle of the stage on the road, and when I was certain it had passed I went to the cabin and put on my bathing suit. I went in at the back door of the cabin, and out at the front, passed through the yew grove, crossed the bridge to the shop, and so gained the river bank and my favorite swimming hole beneath the cedar trees.
The spreading trees threw a deep shade over the pool. It was almost twilight beneath their network of branches. And I was on the bank prepared for a dive before I saw a small figure below me seated on a boulder at the edge of the water, half hidden from view by the steep slope of the bank. I saw the flash of bare feet in the water. Poised ready to spring I gave a shout, “Look out,” and shot out over the small figure and into the pool.
When I came up, blowing like a porpoise, the figure was standing waist deep in water and waving thin excited arms abroad. I saw the face. It was gaunt, fever-bright, and not like my lad’s as I had seen it last, but it was Joey who stood there.
I lifted him up and he clasped my neck almost to strangulation, wrapping his long legs around me, and I raced with him to the house. Once inside I stripped him, seized a towel and rubbed his cold little body until it glowed, and he laughed and cried and laughed again, and clutched my neck and finally stammered:
“I got—got here! I come for my birthday—all the way from the East alone.”
“Alone!”
“Yep! And I’m going to stay. Going to stay forever—Bell Brandon said so. They’s a letter in my satchel for you.”
I hugged him to my breast.
“But what were you doing in the swimming hole, Joey?”
He looked at me, smiled his shrewd young smile, and said:
“Washing off the dust and—and tidying myself. Let’s see the cake, now, Mr. David.”
“The cake?”
He nodded. “Hasn’t Wanza baked it yet?”
“Why, Joey lad, we haven’t any ready to-day! Can’t you understand?”
His face grew blank, his eyes filled, and he shivered suddenly; he seemed to shrivel in my arms, and he turned his head away from me.
“I—I—don’t anybody want me?”
“Want you?” I was aghast. “There, and there, and there,” I cried, giving him a rapid succession of hugs. “Doesn’t this look as though I wanted you?”
“Is Wanza sick?” There was something hopeful in his tone.
“No,” I said, “Wanza is very well, lad.”
Again that blank look, that delicate shiver.
“We’ll have a fire going in no time, lad, and a cake in the oven, and the blue dishes on the table. And say the word and I’ll slap the saddle on Buttons and ride post-haste to Wanza and tell her I have a wonderful, wonderful surprise for her—that Joey has come back, after we had given up hoping. I’ll bring her here—shall I, Joey?—to help bake the cake. Oh, dear, dear lad!—” I cried, and broke down.
Such a shout as he gave. He had me by the neck and was clinging to me like a wild young savage. “You didn’t get my letter—you didn’t, you didn’t!”
“Did you write, Joey?”
“Yep, sure I wrote. Course I wrote. Soon as Bell Brandon told me I belonged to you really and truly I wrote and I let Bell Brandon put a letter in the envelope with mine. I put your name on the outside. I printed Mr. David, as careful, and Bell Brandon watched me. She made me write Dale on it, too. But when she wasn’t looking I rubbed out the Dale part, and I mailed it myself on the corner. I told you to spect me on my birthday, and Bell Brandon told you to meet me at Spokane ’cause I was coming all alone from Chicago.”
Poor lad! Poor disappointed lad! He gave a strange, tired sigh, but meeting my somber eyes, brightened. “I like traveling alone. Pooh! I’d liever travel alone than—than anything. But when you didn’t meet me at Roselake even, I thought—I thought p’r’aps you didn’t want me! And when I got out of the stage at the meadow and cut across, and peeked at the cabin and you wasn’t around, I was ’most sure you didn’t want me. And then I saw how dirty I was, and I thought I’d tidy up first before you saw me, anyhow.”
I went back to the river bank, sought for and found Joey’s traveling bag and carried it to the house. Joey brought out of its depths a letter and handed it to me. But I did not read it at once. I put my lad in a big chair in the kitchen, and I built a fire in the stove and I set out flour and sugar and molasses, all the while praying that Wanza would appear. I laid the table in the front room with the best blue china, and I got out the pressed glass comport; and I gathered handfuls of syringa and honeysuckle, and brought them in the big yellow pitcher to Joey, saying:
“You may arrange these, Joey, for the table.”
But to my surprise he took the flowers listlessly, and when I glanced around after a few moments I saw that he had set the pitcher down on the floor and was leaning back in the chair with closed eyes. I went and stood at his side, but he did not open his eyes.
“Tired, Joey?”
He yawned. “Terrible tired, Mr. David.”
I looked at him irresolutely, then gathered him up in my arms.
“Come along, old fellow, lie down on your bed in the cedar room, and sleep till supper’s ready,” I suggested.
His hand stroked my cheek with the old caress. He yawned again. I lifted him and carried him to the cedar room and placed him on the bed. I took off his shoes and drew the shawl-flower quilt over him. He spoke then:
“Tell Wanza when she comes, to wake me first thing. I love Bell Brandon—but I love Wanza best. I guess—I’ll—sleep pretty good—with this dear old quilt over me—” his voice grew indistinct, he stretched, blinked once or twice, closed his eyes, and snuggled luxuriously into his pillows. I tiptoed from the room.
In the front room I sat down by the window, took Haidee’s letter from my pocket and read it.
“I hope nothing will prevent you from meeting Joey in Spokane,” I read. “I have heard nothing from you on that point. But I am almost sure you received my letter telling you of my illness and inability to travel, and asking you to meet Joey on the fifth. I cannot but believe Bill Jobson’s story—strange as it seems. My own little boy is gone forever.
“When you receive this Joey will be with you—there in the old place that he loves so dearly. And you—how you will rejoice to have your lad again. Bless you both! David Dale, I shall not visit Hidden Lake this summer,—I have learned much in these past months. Do you not know your own heart yet? I have read carefully, searchingly all the letters you have written me this past winter, and I find Wanza, Wanza, between the lines. She is the true mate for you—can you not see this? Do you not feel it? Do you not know you love her—as she loves you? I knew I should reach a happy solution of our problem—given the much needed perspective; and the solution is this—you love Wanza Lyttle, and I care for you only as a dear, kind friend.
“No, I shall not visit Hidden Lake this year. Perhaps next summer—but ‘To-morrow is a day too far to trust whate’er the day be.’ I shall never forget Joey or you, or your wonderful kindness and friendship. Good-bye, Mr. Fixing Man,—or not good-bye! au revoir. Oh, all the good wishes in the world I send to you and Joey—and Wanza.
“JUDITH BATTERLY.”
When I finished this letter I sat quietly, watching curiously a white butterfly—a Pine White—skimming back and forth above a flowering currant bush that grew close to the window. I found myself strangely impassive. I said to myself that Haidee was mistaken about my feeling for Wanza; but I experienced no sense of bereavement because she had found that her own feeling for me was that of a friend, merely. I was not even surprised. “I have Joey,” I kept repeating over and over to myself, hugging this comfort to my breast. There was a fear back of my exultation in the lad’s possession. A fear that was strong enough to force the full significance of Haidee’s communication into the background of my mind. Was my lad ill? Was he really ill? I asked myself. He was thin, and his cheeks were feverishly bright, and his voice sounded tired,—but, was he a sick child?
I went back to the kitchen, looked at the ingredients set forth on the table and then out of the window anxiously. If only Wanza would come and a wonderful spice cake could be in the oven when Joey awakened. If only— But here I broke off in my musings, for I heard a strange sound from the cedar room.
I went as fast as my feet could carry me to the room where I had left my boy. I found him lying, face downward on the floor, where he had evidently fallen when he attempted to walk from his bed to the door. I lifted him, turned his face to me, and examined it. It was flushed so deep a red as to be almost purple. His eyes were open, but he did not seem to see me, his lips were parted, the breath was hot on my face. I placed him on the bed, and he murmured unintelligibly.
I knew then that my lad was ill, indeed, and when I heard a step behind me and saw Wanza on the threshold, I ran and caught her hand. “Thank God, you have come,” I exclaimed.
“They told me in Roselake Joey was back,” she cried, and brushed past me to the bed.
I turned and went from the room. A few moments later she came to me.
“What has she done to him? What has she done to him?” she burst forth.
“She has done nothing, Wanza.”
“Why did you say, ‘Thank God’?” she cried, fiercely. “Do you think I can save him? Mr. Dale, he is sick—he is very sick—he has pined and pined—for a sight of you, and Jingles and Buttons. What do you think he said just now?—raving as he is. ‘Will I go back soon, Bell Brandon? No, thank you, I can’t eat—I guess I want Mr. David, and Jingles and Buttons, and my own little cedar room.’ If he dies—David Dale—if he dies!—”
“Please—please, Wanza—”
She looked into my face, her eyes were black with emotion.
“Saddle Buttons and go at once for a doctor! I’ll put Joey in a cold pack while you’re gone; he’s burning with fever.”
“Practical, capable, ever ready to serve; lavish of her affection, staunch in her friendship, ‘steel true,—blade straight,’—that is Wanza,” I said to myself as I rode away.
The outcome of the doctor’s visit was that I sent for Mrs. Olds. Wanza and I got through the night somehow, and the next day Mrs. Olds came. I think this strange being entertained some slight tenderness for Joey, for when she saw him lying among his pillows with heavy-lidded eyes and fever-seared cheeks, she stooped and touched his brow very gently with her lips. Joey recognized her when she entered the room late at night in her heelless slippers and flannel dressing-gown, and set her small clock on the shelf above the bed. “Mrs. Olds,” he ordered distinctly, “take that clock out to the kitchen.”
Taken by surprise, Mrs. Olds protested: “There, there, Joey, don’t bother with me—that’s a good boy. Just close your eyes and go to sleep again.”
“I don’t watch the clock! Mr. David says the Now is the thing. Take it out! When the birds sing I’ll get up.”
But the birds sang and Joey did not awaken. He slept heavily all that day. And when he aroused toward midnight he did not know me. The following day he was worse, and that night I despaired. In his delirium he said things that well nigh crazed me. His mutterings were all of me, with an occasional reference to the collie and Buttons. “I don’t like to leave Mr. David alone, so long,” he kept repeating. “I ’most know he wants me back again—I been his boy so long.”
Presently when he sobbed out shrilly: “I just got to go back to Mr. David!” I arose precipitately, quitted the room and went out to the bench in the Dingle.
But some one already was sitting there. I could see her in the light from the room. A girl in a rose-colored dressing-gown with long braids down her back, sat there, looking up at the star-filled sky through the tree branches. I advanced and she made room for me at her side. I sat down, too stunned, too grief stricken for words. We sat there in silence. Presently her uneven breathing, her sobbing under-breaths, disturbed me.
“Please—please, Wanza—don’t,” I begged.
“I’ve been praying,” she stammered.
“That is well, dear girl.”
“Praying that Joey will live.”
“It seems a small thing for God to grant—in his omnipotence. It is everything in the world to me,” I murmured brokenly. “Why, girl, if my boy lives I shall be the happiest man on God’s footstool! I shall be immeasurably content. I shall ask nothing beside—nothing!”
She stirred. “Nothing, Mr. Dale—nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, Mr. Dale, you think so now—but you’ll be wanting her to come back—you can’t help wanting that!”
“I am very sure I shall never ask for that, Wanza. Joey brought me a letter. She is not coming back this year.”
“Not coming back?”
“She may never come again to Hidden Lake, Wanza. We may never see her again.”
“But I don’t understand, David Dale!—oh, I thought some day you would marry—you and she.”
Her voice was uneven and very low.
“Child,” I said gravely, “it is not to be. She cares for me only as a friend. And I—”
“You love her—you know you do!”
She spoke passionately.
“Wanza,” I said thoughtfully, “it has been a long winter, hasn’t it?”
“Pretty long,” she answered, surprised.
“You have learned much this winter.”
“Yes, Mr. Dale.”
“And I have learned, too—without knowing it. I have learned very gradually that I do not love Judith Batterly—so gradually, indeed, that I did not realize until to-day the extent of my knowledge. She told me in her letter it was so—then I knew.”
She sat very still, her head thrown back, her eyes on the sky. The stirring leaves made shadows on her gown, the moonlight flicked through the vines above her, and her hair glittered like gilt. Her eyes were big and shining, and something on her cheek was shining, too.
“Praying—still, Wanza?” I whispered, after a time.
She put out her hand.
“Please, Wanza, say a prayer for me.”
“I am praying that what you told me is true.”
“It is true. Pray that I be forgiven for being a stupid, clumsy fellow, unable to appreciate your true worth—” I stopped. I was being carried on and I knew not where I desired to pause. I checked myself, and bit my lip.
“I could not offer such a prayer,” I heard her say. “I am not worth anything to anybody, Mr. Dale, except to Father. I am going to try, though, to make myself all over—knowing you want me to improve, and to show you I take your kindness to heart. I think I am improving a little, don’t you? I don’t talk so loud, and I dress quieter—more quietly—and I speak better. Can’t you see an improvement, Mr. Dale?”
“Someway, Wanza,” I replied, speaking musingly, “I like you as you are—as you have always been. It is only for your own sake that I care to have you improve.” And as I said the words I realized that this thought had been in the back of my mind for some time, and that Wanza’s piquant utterances and lapses in English had never jarred on me—that it was strictly true that it was only for Wanza’s own sake I would have her changed.
“You like me as I am?”
The voice was incredulous.
“As well as I shall when you have finished your education, child.”
“As well?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t like me better then?”
“No, no better, Wanza.”
She rose and stood before me. The light from the open door of the cedar room was on her face, and I saw hopelessness in her eyes, and a tremulousness about her lovely child-mouth.
“You will never like me very, very much, then, I guess,” she said in a low tone.
She did not give me a chance to respond to this, but turned and went away through the cedars, and I sat still, saying over to myself: “Very, very much.”
And as I said the words I thrilled; my blood seemed to surge into my eyes and blind me. Something had me by the throat. It was a strange moment. In that moment I had a glimpse of the truth—a white light illumined my seeking, groping senses. Then it was gone. I was in darkness again. But in that brief lightning space I had stood on the brink of a revelation. In the weeks and months past, through the blinding—the fervid—gleam of my feeling for Haidee I had seen Wanza but obscurely—Wanza—tried day after day by homeliest duties, and not found wanting; I had seen that she had her own bookless lore as she had her own indisputable charm; I had known that at times she swayed me; but I had never come so near to knowing my heart as in that evanescent, stabbing, revealing, moment.
As I sat there I felt a sudden sense of rest, almost of emancipation. I was weary of cob-webbed dreams, sick of straining after the unattainable. My thoughts reverted to life as it had been in the old days before the coming of the wonder woman, to the days when Joey and Wanza and I had managed to go through the tedium of our hours placidly enough. I longed to take up the old, sane routine. I was impatient with suffering that chafed and gnawed the heart-strings.
I said to myself that all that was left of my former feeling for Haidee was admiration, reverence for her goodness, and a wonder—she was a dream woman—she would remain a dream woman always—an elusive, charming personality, something too fine for the common round of daylight duties. I thought of the poet’s lines:
“I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle light.”
Had I thought of Haidee so?
When I turned back to the cedar room, Mrs. Olds met me at the door with a whispered, “Joey is lucid—he is asking for you.” I crossed swiftly to the bed, knelt down and took my lad’s hand. He smiled at me in his old way, but his eyes went past me to Mrs. Olds. His voice was distinct as he ordered, “Go, get Wanza, Mrs. Olds, please.”
I heard Wanza’s step at that moment. She came softly forward and crouched beside me. “I am here, Joey,” she said in her rich young voice.
“That’s all right then! Wanza; if I don’t get well you got to marry Mr. David.”
The troubled face bending down over the gray one on the pillow, flamed. “Joey—dear!”
“Yes, Wanza,” pleadingly, “cause who’ll take care of him?”
I cleared my throat. “Come, lad, you will be well in a few days—up and around in the woods, feeding the squirrels.”
“Yes—but if I ain’t!” Tender, wistful, questioning, his loyal brown eyes sought Wanza’s. “You got to, Wanza. Say yes.”
The girl’s voice whimpered and broke. “I can’t!”
“Why, yes you can! They’s no one can cook like you, Wanza. Mr. David can’t live here alone when he’s old—he can’t live here alone no more—say you’ll come and take care of him. Why, you like the birds and the squirrels—you know you do, Wanza—and you like Mr. David, too. Will you, Wanza?” The soft wheedling accents wrung my heart.
At the girl’s head-shake he whispered to me, “You ask her, Mr. David.”
My hand groped for hers, closed over it, gripped it hard.
“If I ask her now—if she says yes, lad—it will be for your sake—all for your sake, Joey.”
The big eyes were understanding. “Go on, ask her.”
“Will you, Wanza?”
She was weeping.
“Because Joey asks it—because it will ease his mind,” I heard her choked voice stammer, “only because of that, Mr. Dale—only for Joey’s sake as you say—I promise if—if you need me—” she came to a dead stop.
“To marry me, Wanza.”
“For Joey’s sake, Mr. Dale.”
“There, Joey!” I shook up his pillow and laid him gently back. “It is all settled, lad. Go to sleep now.”
“Kiss me, once, Mr. David.”
I kissed him.
“Kiss Wanza, now.”
Weariness was heavy in his eyes, his voice was quavering and weak; and forgetting all else but his gratification, forgetting Mrs. Olds, propriety, the consequences of so rash an act, I took Wanza in my arms and kissed her lips, then stumbled blindly from the room.