"We are, indeed."
"I saw the women who follow the road as it creeps across the plains.
They"re pitiful to see. If these had been like them, we"d have been obliged to take them in just the same, but Lord be merciful to them, I"m glad they"re not on my mountain." Larry shook his ponderous, grizzled head and turned again to his packages. "Since they love to sew, they may be making things for themselves next. Look you! Here is silk for gowns, for women love adornment, the best of them."
Harry paused, his arms full of wood with which he was replenishing the fire, and stared in amazement, as Larry unrolled a ma.s.s of changeable satin wherein a deep cerise and green coloring shifted and shimmered in the firelight. He held the rich material up to his own waist and looked gravely down on the long folds that dropped to the floor and coiled about his feet. "I told you we"re to live like lords and ladies now. Man! I"d like to see Amalia in a gown of this!"
Harry dropped his wood on the fire and threw back his head and laughed. He even lay down on the floor to laugh, and rolled about until his head lay among the folds of satin. Then he sat up, and taking the material between his fingers felt of it, while the big man looked down on him, gravely discomfited.
"And what did you bring for Madam Manovska?"
"Black, man, black. I"m no fool, I tell you. I know what"s discreet for an elderly lady." Then they gravely and laboriously folded together the yards of gorgeous satin. "And I"d have been glad of your measure to get you the suit of clothes you"re needing. Lacking it, I got one for myself. But for me they"re a bit too small. You"ll maybe turn tailor and cut them still smaller for yourself. Take them, and if they"re no fit, you"ll laugh out of the other corner of your mouth."
The two men stood a moment sheepishly eying each other, while Harry held the clothes awkwardly in his hands.
"I--I--did need them." He choked a bit, and then laughed again.
"So did I need them--yours and mine, too." Larry held up another suit, "See here. Mine are darker, to keep you from thinking them yours. And here are the buckskins for hunting. I used to make them for myself, but they had these for sale, and I was by way of spending money, so I bought them. Now, with the blouses the women have made for you, we"re decent."
All at once it dawned on Harry what a journey the big man had made, and he fairly shouted, "Larry Kildene, where have you been?"
"I rode like the very devil for three days. When once I was started, I was crazed to go--and see--Then I reached the end of the road from the coast this way. Did you know they"re building the road from both ways at once? I didn"t, for I never went down to get news of the cities, and they might have put the whole thing through without my even knowing of it, if you hadn"t tumbled in on me and told me of it.
"It stirred me up a bit. I left my horse in charge of one I thought I might trust, and then took a train and rode over the new rails clean through to San Francisco, and there I groveled around a day or two, taking in the ways of men. They"re doing big things. Now that the two oceans are to be united by iron rails, great changes will come like the wind,--the Lord knows when they will end! Now, the women will be wanting us to eat, I"m thinking, and I"m not ready--but eat we must when the hour comes, and we"ve done nothing this whole morning but stand here and talk."
Thus Larry grumbled as they tramped down to the cabin through the snow, with the rolls of silk under his arm, and the silver plates in his hand, while Harry carried the sack of coffee and the paper for Amalia. As they neared the cabin the big man paused.
"Take these things in for me, Harry. I--I--left something back in the shed. Drop that coffee and I"ll fetch it as I come along."
"Now, what kind of a lie would you call that, sir, since it"s your courage you"ve left?"
"Let be, let be. Can"t you see I"m going back after it?"
So Harry carried in the gifts and Larry went back for his "courage"
and donned his new suit of clothes to help him carry it, and then came walking in with a jovial swagger, and accepted the mother"s thanks and Amalia"s embrace with a marvelous ease, especially the embrace, with which he seemed mightily pleased.
CHAPTER XXIV
AMALIA"S FeTE
The winter was a cold one, and the snows fell heavily, but a way was always kept open between the cabin and the fodder shed, and also by great labor a s.p.a.ce was kept cleared around the cabin and a part of the distance toward the fall so that the women might not be walled in their quarters by the snow. With plenty to occupy them all, the weeks sped swiftly and pleasantly. Larry did a little trapping and hunting, but toward midwinter the sport became dangerous, because of the depth of the snow, and with the exception of stalking a deer now and then, for fresh food, he and Harry spent the most of their time burrowing in the mountain for gold.
Amalia"s crutches were gradually laid aside, until she ran about as lightly as before, but even had she not been prevented by the snow she would not have been allowed to go far away from the cabin alone. The men baited and lay in wait for the panther, and at last shot him, but Larry knew from long experience that when the snows were deep, panthers often haunted his place, and their tracks were frequently seen higher up the mountain where he was wont to hunt the mountain sheep.
Sometimes Harry King rode with Amalia where the wind had swept the way bare, toward the bend in the trail, and would bring her back glowing and happy from the exercise. Sometimes when the storms were fierce without, and he suspected Larry longed for his old-time seclusion, he sat in the cabin. At these times Amalia redeemed her promise to teach him French. Few indeed were the books she had for help in giving these lessons. One little unbound book of old sonnets and songs and a small pamphlet of more modern poems that her father had loved, were all, except his Bible, which, although it was in Polish, contained copious annotations in her father"s hand in French, and between the leaves of which lay loose pages filled with concise and plainly written meditations of his own.
These Amalia loved and handled with reverence, and for Harry King they had such vital interest that he learned the more rapidly that he might know all they contained. He no longer wondered at her power and breadth of thought. As he progressed he found in them a complete system of ethics and religious faith. Their writer seemed to have drawn from all sources intrinsically vital truths, and separated them from their enc.u.mbering theologic verbiage and dogma, and had traced them simply through to the great "Sermon on the Mount." In a few pages this great man had comprised the deepest logic, and the sweetest and widest theology, enough for all the world to live by, and enough to guide nations in safety, if only all men might learn it.
It was sufficient. He knew Amalia better, and more deeply he reverenced and loved her. He no longer quivered when he heard her mention the "Virgin" or when she spoke of the "Sweet Christ." It was not what his old dogmatic ancestry had fled from as "Popery." It was her simple, direct faith in the living Christ, which gave her eyes their clear, far-seeing vision, and her heart its quick, responsive intuition and understanding. She might speak of the convent where she had been protected and loved, and taught many things useful and good, other than legends and doctrines. She had learned how, through her father"s understanding and study, to gather out the good, and leave the rest, in all things.
And Harry learned his French. He was an apt scholar, and Larry fell in line, for he had not forgotten the scholastic Latin and French of his college days. He liked, indeed, to air his French occasionally, although his accent was decidedly English, but his grammar was good and a great help to Harry. Madam Manovska also enjoyed his efforts and suggested that when they were all together they should converse in the French alone, not only that they might help Harry, but also that they might have a common language. It was to her and Amalia like their native tongue, and their fluency for a time quite baffled Larry, but he was determined not to be beaten, and when Harry faltered and refused to go on, he pounded him on the back, and stirred him up to try again.
Although Amalia"s convent training had greatly restricted her knowledge of literature other than religious, her later years of intimate companionship with her father, and her mother"s truly remarkable knowledge of the cla.s.sics and fearless investigation of the modern thought of her day, had enlarged Amalia"s horizon; while her own vivid imagination and her native geniality caused her to lighten always her mother"s more somber thought with a delicate and gracious play of fancy that was at once fascinating and delightful. This, and Harry"s determination to live to the utmost in these weeks of respite, made him at times almost gay.
Most of all he reveled in Amalia"s music. Certain melodies that she said her father had made he loved especially, and sometimes she would accompany them with a plaintive chant, half singing and half recitation, of the sonnet which had inspired them, and which had been woven through them. It was at these times that Larry listened with his elbows on his knees and his eyes fixed on the fire, and Harry with his eyes on Amalia"s face, while the cabin became to him glorified with a light, no longer from the flames, but with a radiance like that which surrounded Dante"s Beatrice in Paradise.
Amalia loved to please Larry Kildene. For this reason, knowing the joy he would take in it, and also because she loved color and light and joy, and the giving of joy, she took the gorgeous silk he had brought her, and made it up in a fashion of her own. Down in the cities, she knew, women were wearing their gowns spread out over wide hoops, but she made the dress as she knew they were worn at the time Larry had lived among women and had seen them most.
The bodice she fitted closely and shaped into a long point in front, and the skirt she gathered and allowed to fall in long folds to her feet. The sleeves she fitted only to her elbows, and gathered in them deep lace of her own making--lace to dream about, and the creation of which was one of those choice things she had learned of the good sisters at the convent. About her neck she put a bertha, kerchiefwise, and pinned it with a brooch of curiously wrought gold. Larry, "the discreet and circ.u.mspect liar," thought of the emerald brooch she had brought him to sell for her, and knowing how it would glow and blend among the changing tints of the silk, he fetched it to her, explaining that he could not sell it, and that the bracelet had covered all she had asked him to purchase for her, and some to spare.
She thanked him, and fastened it in her bodice, and handed the other to her mother. "There, mamma, when we have make you the dress Sir Kildene have brought you, you must wear this, for it is beautiful with the black. Then we will have a fete. And for the fete, Sir Kildene, you must wear the very fine new clothes you have buy, and Mr. "Arry will carry on him the fine new clothing, and so will we be all attire most splendid. I will make for you all the music you like the best, and mamma will speak then the great poems she have learned by head, and Sir Kildene will tell the story he can relate so well of strange happenings. Oh, it will be a fine, good concert we will make here--and you, Mr. "Arry, what will you do?"
"I"ll do the refreshments. I"ll roast corn and make coffee. I"ll be audience and call for more."
"Ah, yes! Encore! Encore! The artists must always be very much praised--very much--so have I heard, to make them content. It is Sir Kildene who will be the great artist, and you must cry "Encore," and honor him greatly with such calls. Then will we have the pleasure to hear many stories from him. Ah, I like to hear them."
It was a strange life for Harry King, this odd mixture of finest culture and high-bred delicacy of manner, with what appeared to be a total absence of self-seeking and a simple enjoyment of everyday work.
He found Amalia one morning on her knees scrubbing the cabin floor, and for the moment it shocked him. When they were out on the plains camping and living as best they could, he felt it to be the natural consequence of their necessities when he saw her washing their clothes and making the best of their difficulties by doing hard things with her own hands, but now that they were living in a civilized way, he could not bear to see her, or her mother, doing the rough work. Amalia only laughed at him. "See how fine we make all things. If I will not serve for making clean the house, why am I? Is not?"
"It doesn"t make any difference what you do, you are always beautiful."
"Ah, Mr. "Arry, you must say those compliments only in the French. It is no language, the English, for those fine eloquences."
"No, I don"t seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It"s always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,--as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in s.p.a.ce, with nothing anywhere to rest on."
"No, no, you are mistake. Here is this floor, very real, and dirt on it to be washed away,--from your boots, also very real, is not? Go away, Mr. "Arry, but come to-night in your fine clothing, for we have our fete. Mamma has finish her beautiful new dress, and we will be gay. Is good to be sometimes joyful, is not? We have here no care, only to make happy together, and if we cannot do that, all is somber."
And that evening indeed, Amalia had her "fete." Larry told his best stories, and Harry was persuaded to tell them a little of his life as a soldier, and to sing a camp song. More than this he would not do, but he brought out something he had been reserving with pride, a few little nuggets of gold. During the weeks he had worked he had found little, until the last few days, but happening to strike a vein of ore, richer than any Larry had ever found, the two men were greatly elated, and had determined to interest the women by melting some of it out of the quartz in which it was bedded, and turning out for each a golden bullet in Larry"s mold.
They heaped hard wood in the fireplace and the cabin was lighted most gloriously. While they waited for the red coals to melt the gold, Amalia took her violin and played and sang. It was nearly time for the rigor of the winter to abate, but still a high wind was blowing, and the fine snow was piling and drifting about the cabin, and even sifting through the c.h.i.n.ks around the window and door, but the storm only made the brightness and warmth within more delightful.
When Larry drew his crucible from the coals and poured the tiny glowing stream into his molds, Amalia cried out with joy. "How that is beautiful! How wonderful to dig such beauty from the dark ground down in the black earth! Ah, mamma, look!"
Then Larry pounded each one flat like a coin, and drilled through a small hole, making thus, for each, a souvenir of the shining metal.
"This is from Harry"s first mining," he said, "and it represents good, hard labor. He"s picked out a lot of worthless dirt and stone to find this."
Amalia held the little disk in her hand and smiled upon it. "I love so this little precious thing. Now, Mr. "Arry, what shall I play for you?
It is yours to ask--for me, to play; it is all I have."
"That sonnet you played me yesterday. The last line is, ""Quelle est donc cette femme?" et ne comprenda pas.""
"The music of that is not my father"s best--but you ask it, yes." Then she began, first playing after her own heart little dancing airs, gay and fantastic, and at last slid into a plaintive strain, and recited the accompaniment of rhythmic words.
"Mon ame a son secret, ma vie a son mystere: Un amour eternel en un moment concu.
Le mal est sans espoir, aussi j"ai du le taire Et celle qui l"a fait n"en a jamais rien su."
One minor note came and went and came again, through the melody, until the last tones fell on that note and were held suspended in a tremulous plaint.