"I wonder if you can smoke in here," Billy observed, after a pause.
"I don"t believe you can!" Susan said, interestedly.
"Well, when he comes through I"ll ask him---"
Susan felt as if she should never speak spontaneously again. She was very tired, very nervous, able, with cold dispa.s.sion, to wonder what she and Billy Oliver were doing in this close, dirty train,--to wonder why people ever spoke of a wedding-day as especially pleasant,--what people found in life worth while, anyway!
She thought that it would be extremely silly in them to attempt to reach the cabin to-night; far more sensible to stay at Farwoods, where there was a little hotel, or, better yet, go back to the city. But Billy, although a little regretful for the darkness in which they ended their journey, suggested no change of plan, and Susan found herself unable to open the subject. She made the stage trip wedged in between Billy and the driver, climbed down silently at the foot of the familiar trail, and carried the third suitcase up to the cabin.
"You can"t hurt that dress, can you, Sue?" said Billy, busy with the key.
"No!" Susan said, eager for the commonplace. "It"s made for just this!"
"Then hustle and unpack the eats, will you? And I"ll start a fire!"
"Two seconds!" Susan took off her hat, and enveloped herself in a checked ap.r.o.n. There was a heavy chill in the room; there was that blank forbidding air in the dusty, orderly room that follows months of unuse. Susan unpacked, went to and fro briskly; the claims of housekeeping rea.s.sured and soothed her.
Billy made thundering journeys for wood. Presently there was a flare of lighted papers in the fireplace, and the heartening snap and crackle of wood. The room was lighted brilliantly; delicious odors of sap mingled with the fragrance from Susan"s coffee pot.
"Oh, keen idea!" said Billy, when she brought the little table close to the hearth. "Gee, that"s pretty!" he added, as she shook over it the little fringed tablecloth, and laid the blue plates neatly at each side.
"Isn"t this fun?" It burst spontaneously from the bride.
"Fun!" Billy flung down an armful of logs, and came to stand beside her, watching the flames. "Lord, Susan," he said, with simple force, "if you only knew how perfect you seem to me! If you only knew how many years I"ve been thinking how beautiful you were, and how clever, and how far above me----!"
"Go right on thinking so, darling!" said Susan, practically, escaping from his arm, and taking her place behind the cold chicken. "Do ye feel like ye could eat a little mite, Pa?" asked she.
"Well, I dunno, mebbe I could!" William answered hilariously. "Say, Sue, oughtn"t those blankets be out here, airing?" he added suddenly.
"Oh, do let"s have dinner first. They make everything look so horrid,"
said young Mrs. Oliver, composedly carving. "They can dry while we"re doing the dishes."
"You know, until we can afford a maid, I"m going to help you every night with the dishes," said Billy.
"Well, don"t put on airs about it," Susan said briskly. "Or I"ll leave you to do them entirely alone, while I run over the latest songs on the PIARNO. Here now, deary, chew this nicely, and when I"ve had all I want, perhaps I"ll give you some more!"
"Sue, aren"t we going to have fun--doing things like this all our lives?"
"_I_ think we are," said Susan demurely. It was strange, it had its terrifying phases, but it was curiously exciting and wonderful, too, this wearing of a man"s ring and his name, and being alone with him up here in the great forest.
"This is life--this is all good and right," the new-made wife said to herself, with a flutter at her heart. And across her mind there flitted a fragment of the wedding-prayer, "in shamefacedness grave." "I will be grave," thought Susan. "I will be a good wife, with G.o.d"s help!"
Again morning found the cabin flooded with sunlight, and for all their happy days there the sun shone, and summer silences made the woods seem like June.
"Billum, if only we didn"t have to go back!" said William"s wife, seated on a stump, and watching him clean trout for their supper, in the soft close of an afternoon.
"Darling, I love to have you sitting there, with your little feet tucked under you, while I work," said William enthusiastically.
"I know," Susan agreed absently. "But don"t you wish we didn"t?" she resumed, after a moment.
"Well, in a way I do," Billy answered, stooping to souse a fish in the stream beside which he was kneeling. "But there"s the "Protest" you know,--there"s a lot to do! And we"ll come back here, every year. We"ll work like mad for eleven months, and then come up here and loaf."
"But, Bill, how do we know we can manage it financially?" said Susan prudently.
"Oh, Lord, we"ll manage it!" he answered comfortably. "Unless, of course, you want to have all the kids brought up in white stockings,"
grinned Billy, "and have their pictures taken every month!"
"Up here," said Susan dreamily, yet very earnestly too, "I feel so sure of myself! I love the simplicity, I love the work, I could entertain the King of England right here in this forest and not be ashamed! But when we go back, Bill, and I realize that Isabel Wallace may come in and find me pressing my window curtains, or that we honestly can"t afford to send someone a handsome wedding present, I"ll begin to be afraid. I know that now and then I"ll find myself investing in finger-bowls or salted almonds, just because other people do."
"Well, that"s not actionable for divorce, woman!"
Susan laughed, but did not answer. She sat looking idly down the long aisles of the forest, palpitating to-day with a rush of new fragrance, new color, new song. Far above, beyond the lacing branches of the redwoods, a buzzard hung motionless in a blue, blue sky.
"Bill," she said presently, "I could live at a settlement house, and be happy all my life showing other women how to live. But when it comes to living down among them, really turning my carpets and scrubbing my own kitchen, I"m sometimes afraid that I"m not big enough woman to be happy!"
"Why, but, Sue dear, there"s a decent balance at the bank. We"ll build on the Panhandle lots some day, and something comes in from the blue-prints, right along. If you get your own dinner five nights a week, we"ll be trotting downtown on other nights, or over at the Carrolls", or up here." Billy stood up. "There"s precious little real poverty in the world," he said, cheerfully, "we"ll work out our list of expenses, and we"ll stick to it! But we"re going to prove how easy it is to prosper, not how easy it is to go under. We"re the salt of the earth!"
"You"re big; I"m not," said Susan, rubbing her head against him as he sat beside her on the stump. But his nearness brought her dimples back, and the sober mood pa.s.sed.
"Bill, if I die and you remarry, promise me, oh, promise! that you won"t bring her here!"
"No, darling, my second wife is going to choose Del Monte or Coronado!"
William a.s.sured her.
"I"ll bet she does, the cat!" Susan agreed gaily, "You know when Elsie Rice married Jerry Philips," she went on, in sudden recollection, "they went to Del Monte. They were both bridge fiends, even when they were engaged everyone who gave them dinners had to have cards afterwards.
Well, it seems they went to Del Monte, and they moped about for a day or two, and, finally, Jerry found out that the Joe Carrs were at Santa Cruz,--the Carrs play wonderful bridge. So he and Elsie went straight up there, and they played every afternoon and every night for the next two weeks,--and all went to the Yosemite together, even playing on the train all the way!"
"What a d.a.m.n fool cla.s.s for any nation to carry!" Billy commented, mildly.
"Ah, well," Susan said, joyfully, "we"ll fix them all! And when there are model poorhouses and prisons, and single tax, and labor pensions, and eight-hour days, and free wool--THEN we"ll come back here and settle down in the woods for ever and ever!"
CHAPTER VII
In the years that followed they did come back to the big woods, but not every year, for in the beginning of their life together there were hard times, and troubled times, when even a fortnight"s irresponsibility and ease was not possible. Yet they came often enough to keep fresh in their hearts the memory of great s.p.a.ces and great silences, and to dream their old dreams.
The great earthquake brought them home hurriedly from their honeymoon, and Susan had her work to do, amid all the confusion that followed the uprooting of ten thousand homes. Young Mrs. Oliver listened to terrible stories, while she distributed second-hand clothing, and filed cards, walked back to her own little kitchen at five o"clock to cook her dinner, and wrapped and addressed copies of the "Protest" far into the night.
With the deeper social problems that followed the days of mere physical need,--what was in her of love and charity rushed into sudden blossoming,--she found that her inexperienced hands must deal. She, whose wifehood was all joy and sanity, all sweet and mysterious deepening of the color of life, encountered now the hideous travesty of wifehood and motherhood, met by immature, ill-nourished bodies, and hearts sullen and afraid.
"You ought not be seeing these things now," Billy warned her. But Susan shook her head.
"It"s good for me, Billy. And it"s good for the little person, too.
It"s no credit to him that he"s more fortunate than these--he needn"t feel so superior!" smiled Susan.