II
MA PETTENGILL AND THE SONG OF SONGS
The hammock between the two jack pines at the back of the Arrowheadranch house had lured me to mid--afternoon slumber. The day was hot andthe morning had been toilsome--four miles of trout stream, rocky,difficult miles. And my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, hadridden off after luncheon to some remote fastness of her domain, leavingme and the place somnolent.
In the shadowed coolness, aching gratefully in many joints, I hadplunged into the hammock's Lethe, swooning shamelessly to a benignoblivion. Dreamless it must long have been, for the shadows of ranchhouse, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house were long to the eastwhen next I observed them. But I fought to this wakefulness through oneof those dreams of a monstrous futility that sometimes madden us fromsleep. Through a fearsome gorge a stream wound and in it I hunted onecertain giant trout. Savagely it took the fly, but always the line brokewhen I struck; rather, it dissolved; there would be no resistance. Andthe giant fish mocked me each time, jeered and flouted me, camebrazenly to the surface and derided me with antics weirdly human.
Then, as I persisted, it surprisingly became a musical trout. Itwhistled, it played a guitar, it sang. How pathetic our mildly amazedacceptance of these miracles in dreams! I was only the more determinedto snare a fish that could whistle and sing simultaneously, andaccompany itself on a stringed instrument, and was six feet in length.It was that by now and ever growing. It seemed only an attractivenovelty and I still believed a brown hackle would suffice. But then Ibecame aware that this trout, to its stringed accompaniment, everwhistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was"The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly toldmyself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic.Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showingthrough the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again andstill, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn,corral, and bunk house going long to the east. I stretched in thehammock, I tingled with a lazy well-being. The world was still; but wasit--quite?
On a bench over by the corral gate crouched Buck Devine, doing somethingneedful to a saddle. And as he wrought he whistled. He whistled "TheRosary" shrilly and with much feeling. Nor was the world still but forthis. From the bunk house came the mellow throbbing of a stringedinstrument, the guitar of Sandy Sawtelle, star rider of the Arrowhead,temporarily withdrawn from a career of sprightly endeavour by a sprainedankle and solacing his retirement with music. He was playing "TheRosary"--very badly indeed, but one knew only too well what he meant.The two performers were distant enough to be no affront to each other.The hammock, less happily, was midway between them.
I sat up with groans. I hated to leave the hammock.
"The trout also sang it," I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voicefrom the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of theArrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse ashe sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of acurrycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice nowattacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points. Jimmie mightbe said to prevail. There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and thethudding currycomb gave it spirit. Nor did he slur any of the affectingwords; they clave the air with an unctuous precision:
The ow-wurs I spu-hend with thu-hee, dee-yur heart, (The currycomb: Thud, thud!) Are as a stru-hing of pur-rulls tuh me-e-e, (The currycomb: Thud, thud!)
Came a dramatic and equally soulful interpolation: "Whoa, dang you! Youwould, would you? Whoa-a-a, now!"
Again the melody:
I count them o-vurr, ev-ry one apar-rut, (Thud, thud!) My ro-sah-ree--my ro-sah-ree! (Thud, thud!)
Buck Devine still mouthed his woful whistle and Sandy Sawtelle valiantlystrove for the true and just accord of his six strings. It was no placefor a passive soul. I parted swiftly from the hammock and made over thesun-scorched turf for the ranch house. There was shelter and surcease;doors and windows might be closed. The unctuous whine of Jimmie Timepursued me:
Each ow-wur a pur-rull, each pur-rull a prayer, (Thud, thud!) Tuh stu-hill a heart in absence wru-hung, (Thud, thud!)
As I reached the hospitable door of the living-room I observed Lew Wee,Chinese chef of the Arrowhead, engaged in cranking one of those deviceswith a musical intention which I have somewhere seen advertised. It isan important-looking device in a polished mahogany case, and I recall inthe advertisement I saw it was surrounded by a numerousenthralled-looking family in a costly drawing-room, while the ghost ofBeethoven simpered above it in ineffable benignancy. Something now toldme the worst, even as Lew Wee adjusted the needle to the revolving disk.I waited for no more than the opening orchestral strains. It is aleisurely rhythmed cacophony, and I had time to be almost beyond rangeere the voice took up a tale I was hearing too often in one day. Even soI distantly perceived it to be a fruity contralto voice with an expertsob.
A hundred yards in front of the ranch house all was holy peace, peace inthe stilled air, peace dreaming along the neighbouring hills and lyinglike a benediction over the wide river-flat below me, through which thestream wove a shining course. I exulted in it, from the dangers passed.Then appeared Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill from the fringe ofcottonwoods, jolting a tired horse toward me over the flat.
"Come have some tea," she cordially boomed as she passed. I returneduncertainly. Tea? Yes. But--However, the door would be shut and theAsiatic probably diverted.
As I came again to the rear of the ranch house Mrs. Pettengill, in khakiriding breeches, flannel shirt, and the hat of her trade, toweredbulkily as an admirable figure of wrath, one hand on her hip, onepoising a quirt viciously aloft. By the corral gate Buck Devine droopedcravenly above his damaged saddle; at the door of the bunk house SandySawtelle tottered precariously on one foot, his guitar under his arm, alook of guilty horror on his set face. By the stable door stood theincredibly withered Jimmie Time, shrinking a vast dismay.
"You hear me!" exploded the infuriated chatelaine, and I knew she wasrepeating the phrase.
"Ain't I got to mend this latigo?" protested Buck Devine piteously.
"You'll go up the gulch and beyond the dry fork and mend it, if youwhistle that tune again!"
Sandy Sawtelle rumpled his pink hair to further disorder and found a fewweak words for his conscious guilt.
"Now, I wasn't aiming to harm anybody, what with with my game laig andshet up here like I am--"
"Well, my Lord! Can't you play a sensible tune then?"
Jimmie Time hereupon behaved craftily. He lifted his head, showing theface of a boy who had somehow got to be seventy years old without evergetting to be more than a boy, and began to whistle softly andinnocently--an air of which hardly anything could be definitely saidexcept that it was not "The Rosary." It was very flagrantly not "TheRosary." His craft availed him not.
"Yes, and you, too!" thundered the lady. "You was the worst--you wassinging. Didn't I hear you? How many times I got to tell you? Firstthing you know, you little reprobate--"
Jimmie Time cowered again. Visibly he took on unbelievable years.
"Yes, ma'am," he whispered.
"Yes, ma'am," meekly echoed the tottering instrumentalist.
"Yes, ma'am," muttered Buck Devine, "not knowing you was anywheresnear--"
"Makes no difference where I be--you hear me!"
Although her back was toward me I felt her glare. The wretches winced.She came a dozen steps toward me, then turned swiftly to glare again.They shuddered, even though she spoke no word. Then she came on,muttering hotly, and together we approached the ranch house. A dozenfeet from the door she bounded ahead of me with a cry of baffled rage. Isaw why. Lew Wee, unrecking her approach, was cold-bloodedly committingan encore. She sped through the doorway, and I heard Lew Wee'sfrightened squeal as he sped through another. When I stood in the roomshe was putting violent hands to the throat of the thing
.
"The hours I spend with th--" The throttled note expired in a verydreadful squawk of agony. It was as if foul murder had been done, anddone swiftly. The maddened woman faced me with the potentially evil diskclutched in her hands. In a voice that is a notable loss to our revivalsof Greek tragedy she declaimed:
"Ain't it the limit?--and the last thing I done was to hide out thatrecord up behind the clock where he couldn't find it!"
In a sudden new alarm and with three long steps she reached the door ofthe kitchen and flung it open. Through a window thus exposed we beheldthe offender. One so seldom thinks of the Chinese as athletes! Lew Weewas well down the flat toward the cottonwoods and still going strong.
"Ain't it the limit?" again demanded his employer. "Gosh all--excuse me,but they got me into such a state. Here I am panting like a tuckeredhound. And now I got to make the tea myself. He won't dare come backbefore suppertime."
It seemed to be not yet an occasion for words from me. I tried for alook of intelligent sympathy. In the kitchen I heard her noisily fill ateakettle with water. She was not herself yet. She still muttered hotly.I moved to the magazine--littered table and affected to be taken withthe portrait of a smug--looking prize Holstein on the first page of the_Stock Breeder's Gazette_.
The volcano presently seethed through the room and entered its ownapartment.
Ten minutes later my hostess emerged with recovered aplomb. She haddonned a skirt and a flowered blouse, and dusted powder upon and abouther sunburned and rather blobby nose. Her crinkly gray hair had beendrawn to a knot at the back of her grenadier's head. Her widely set eyesgleamed with the smile of her broad and competent mouth.
"Tea in one minute," she promised more than audibly as she bustled intothe kitchen. It really came in five, and beside the tray she pleasantlyrelaxed. The cups were filled and a breach was made upon the cake shehad brought. The tea was advertising a sufficient strength, yet she nowraised the dynamics of her own portion.
"I'll just spill a hooker of this here Scotch into mine," she said, andthen, as she did even so: "My lands! Ain't I the cynical old Kate! Andsilly! Letting them boys upset me that way with that there fool song."She decanted a saucerful of the re-enforced tea and raised it to herpursed lips. "Looking at you!" she murmured cavernously and drank deep.She put the saucer back where nice persons leave theirs at all times."Say, it was hot over on that bench to-day. I was getting out that bunchof bull calves, and all the time here was old Safety First mumblinground--"
This was rather promising, but I had resolved differently.
"That song," I insinuated. "Of course there are people--"
"You bet there are! I'm one of 'em, too! What that song's done tome--and to other innocent bystanders in the last couple weeks--"
She sighed hugely, drank more of the fortified brew--nicely from the cupthis time--and fashioned a cigarette from materials at her hand.
In the flame of a lighted match Mrs. Pettengill's eyes sparkled with akind of savage retrospection. She shrugged it off impatiently.
"I guess you thought I spoke a mite short when you asked about Nettie'swedding yesterday."
It was true. She had turned the friendly inquiry with a rathermystifying abruptness. I murmured politely. She blew twin jets of smokefrom the widely separated corners of her generous mouth and thenshrewdly narrowed her gaze to some distant point of narration.
"Yes, sir, I says to her, 'Woman's place is the home.' And what youthink she come back with? That she was going to be a leader of the NewDawn. Yes, sir, just like that. Five feet one, a hundred and eightpounds in her winter clothes, a confirmed pickle eater--pretty enough,even if she is kind of peaked and spiritual looking--and going to leadthe New Dawn.
"Where'd she catch it? My fault, of course, sending her back East toschool and letting her visit the W.B. Hemingways, Mrs. H. being thewell-known clubwoman like the newspapers always print under her photo inevening dress. That's how she caught it all right.
"I hadn't realized it when she first got back, except she was pale andfar-away in the eyes and et pickles heavily at every meal--oh, mustard,dill, sour, sweet, anything that was pickles--and not enough meat andregular victuals. Gaunted she was, but I didn't suspect her mind wascontaminated none till I sprung Chester Timmins on her as a goodmarrying bet. You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy EightRanch over on Pipe Stone--a good, clean boy that'll have the ranch tohimself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can't be longnow. It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toyof any male--_male_, mind you! It seems when these hussies want to knockman nowadays they call him a male. And she rippled on about the freedomof her soul and her downtrod sisters and this here New Dawn.
"Well, sir, a baby could have pushed me flat with one finger. At first Ididn' know no better'n to argue with her, I was that affrighted. 'Why,Nettie Hosford,' I says, 'to think I've lived to hear my only sister'sonly child talking in shrieks like that! To think I should have to tellone of my own kin that women's place is the home. Look at me,' Isays--we was down in Red Gap at the time--'pretty soon I'll go up to theranch and what'll I do there?" I says.
"'Well, listen,' I says, 'to a few of the things I'll be doing: I'll bemarking, branding, and vaccinating the calves, I'll be classing andturning out the strong cattle on the range. I'll be having the coltsrid, breaking mules for haying, oiling and mending the team harness,cutting and hauling posts, tattooing the ears and registering thethoroughbred calves, putting in dams, cleaning ditches, irrigating theflats, setting out the vegetable garden, building fence, swinging newgates, overhauling the haying tools, receiving, marking, and brandingthe new two--year--old bulls, plowing and seeding grain for our workstock and hogs, breaking in new cooks and blacksmiths'--I was so mad Iwent on till I was winded. 'And that ain't half of it,' I says. 'Women'swork is never done; her place is in the home and she finds so much to doright there that she ain't getting any time to lead a New Dawn. I'llstart you easy,' I says; 'learn you to bake a batch of bread or do a tubof washing--something simple--and there's Chet Timmins, waiting to giveyou a glorious future as wife and mother and helpmeet.'
"She just give me one look as cold as all arctics and says, 'It'srepellent'--that's all, just 'repellent.' I see I was up against it. Nogood talking. Sometimes it comes over me like a flash when not to talk.It does to some women. So I affected a light manner and pretended tolaugh it off, just as if I didn't see scandal threatening--think ofhaving it talked about that a niece of my own raising was a leader ofthe New Dawn!
"'All right,' I says, 'only, of course, Chet Timmins is a good friendand neighbour of mine, even if he is a male, so I hope you won't mindhis dropping in now and again from time to time, just to say howdy andeat a meal.' And she flusters me again with her coolness.
"'No,' she says, 'I won't mind, but I know what you're counting on, andit won't do either of you any good. I'm above the appeal of a man's merepresence,' she says, 'for I've thrown off the age--long subjection; butI won't mind his coming. I shall delight to study him. They're allalike, and one specimen is as good as another for that. But neither ofyou need expect anything,' she says, 'for the wrongs of my sisters havearmoured me against the grossness of mere sex appeal.' Excuse me forgetting off such things, but I'm telling you how she talked.
"'Oh, shucks!' I says to myself profanely, for all at once I saw shewasn't talking her own real thoughts but stuff she'd picked up from thewell-known lady friends of Mrs. W.B. Hemingway. I was mad all right; butthe minute I get plumb sure mad I get wily. 'I was just trying you out,'I says. 'Of course you are right!' 'Of course I am,' says she, 'though Ihardly expected you to see it, you being so hardened a product of theancient ideal of slave marriage.'
"At them words it was pretty hard for me to keep on being wily, but Ikept all right. I kept beautifully. I just laughed and said we'd haveChet Timmins up for supper, and she laughed and said it would beamusing.
"And it was, or it would have been if it hadn't been so sad anddisgusting. Chet, you see, had
plumb crumpled the first time he ever seteyes on her, and he's never been able to uncrumple. He always choked upthe minute she'd come into the room, and that night he choked worse'never because the little devil started in to lead him on--aiming to showme how she could study a male, I reckon. He couldn't even ask for somemore of the creamed potatoes without choking up--with her all the timeusing her eyes on him, and telling him how a great rough man like himscared 'poor little me.' Chet's tan bleaches out a mite by the end ofwinter, but she kept his face exactly the shade of that new mahoganysideboard I got, and she told him several times that he ought to go seea throat specialist right off about that choking of his.
"And after supper I'm darned if she didn't lure him out onto the porchin the moonlight, and stand there sad looking and helpless, simplyegging him on, mind you, her in one of them little squashy white dressesthat she managed to brush against him--all in the way of cold study,mind you. Say, ain't we the lovely tame rattlesnakes when we want to be!And this big husky lummox of a Chester Timmins--him she'd called amale--what does he do but stand safely at a distance of four feet in thegrand romantic light of the full moon, and tell her vivaciously allabout the new saddle he's having made in Spokane. And even then he notonly chokes but he giggles. They do say a strong man in tears is aterrible sight. But a husky man giggling is worse--take it from one whohas suffered. And all the time I knew his heart was furnishing enoughactual power to run a feed chopper. So did she!
"'The creature is so typical,' she says when the poor cuss had finallystumbled down the front steps. 'He's a real type.' Only she called it'teep,' having studied the French language among other things. 'He is ateep indeed!' she says.
"I had to admit myself that Chester wasn't any self-starter. I saw he'dhave to be cranked by an outsider if he was going to win a place of hisown in the New Dawn. And I kept thinking wily, and the next P.M. whenNettie and I was downtown I got my hunch. You know that music store onFourth Street across from the Boston Cash Emporium. It's kept by C.Wilbur Todd, and out in front in a glass case he had a mechanical banjothat was playing 'The Rosary' with variations when we come by. Westopped a minute to watch the machinery picking the strings and in aflash I says to myself, 'I got it! Eureka, California!' I says, 'it'scome to me!'
"Of course that piece don't sound so awful tender when it's done on abanjo with variations, but I'd heard it done right and swell one timeand so I says, 'There's the song of songs to bring foolish males andfemales to their just mating sense.'"
The speaker paused to drain her cup and to fashion another cigarette,her eyes dreaming upon far vistas.
"Ain't it fierce what music does to persons," she resumed. "Right off Iremembered the first time I'd heard that piece--in New York City fouryears ago, in a restaurant after the theatre one night, where I'd gonewith Mrs. W.B. Hemingway and her husband. A grand, gay place it was,with an orchestra. I picked at some untimely food and sipped ahighball--they wouldn't let a lady smoke there--and what interested mewas the folks that come in. Folks always do interest me somethingamazing. Strange ones like that, I mean, where you set and try tofigure out all about 'em, what kind of homes they got, and how they actwhen they ain't in a swell restaurant, and everything. Pretty soon comesa couple to the table next us and, say, they was just plain Mr. and Mrs.Mad. Both of 'em stall-fed. He was a large, shiny lad, with pink jowlsbarbered to death and wicked looking, like a well-known clubman orvillain. The lady was spectacular and cynical, with a cold, thin noseand eyes like a couple of glass marbles. Her hair was several shades offa legal yellow and she was dressed! She would have made handsome loot,believe me--aigrette, bracelets, rings, dog collar, gold-mesh bag,vanity case--Oh, you could see at a glance that she was one of themBroadway social favourites you read about. And both grouchy, like Isaid. He scowled till you knew he'd just love to beat a crippledstep-child to death, and she--well, her work wasn't so coarse; she kepther mad down better. She set there as nice and sweet as a pet scorpion.
"'A scrap,' I says to myself, 'and they've only half finished. She'sthreatened to quit and he, the cowardly dog, has dared her to.' Plainenough. The waiter knew it soon as I did when he come to take theirorder. Wouldn't speak to each other. Talked through him; fought it outto something different for each one. Couldn't even agree on the samekind of cocktail. Both slamming the waiter--before they fought the orderto a finish each had wanted to call the head waiter, only the other onestopped it.
"So I rubbered awhile, trying to figure out why such folks want tofinish up their fights in a restaurant, and then I forgot 'em, lookingat some other persons that come in. Then the orchestra started this songand I seen a lady was getting up in front to sing it. I admit the piecegot me. It got me good. Really, ain't it the gooey mess of heart-throbswhen you come right down to it? This lady singer was a good-lookingsad-faced contralto in a low-cut black dress--and how she did get thetears out of them low notes! Oh, I quit looking at people while herchest was oozing out that music. And it got others, too. I noticed lotsof 'em had stopped eating when I looked round, and there was so muchclapping she had to get up and do it all over again. And what you think?In the middle of the second time I look over to these fighters, anddarned if they ain't holding hands across the table; and more, she's gota kind of pitiful, crying smile on and he's crying right out--cryinginto his cold asparagus, plain as day.
"What more would you want to know about the powers of this here piece ofmusic? They both spoke like human beings to the scared waiter when hecome back, and the lad left a five-spot on the tray when he paid hischeck. Some song, yes?
"And all this flashed back on me when Nettie and I stood there watchingthis cute little banjo. So I says to myself, 'Here, my morbid vestal,is where I put you sane; here's where I hurl an asphyxiating bomb intothe trenches of the New Dawn.' Out loud I only says, 'Let's go in andsee if Wilbur has got some new records.'
"'Wilbur?' says she, and we went in. Nettie had not met Wilbur.
"I may as well tell you here and now that C. Wilbur Todd is a shrimp.Shrimp I have said and shrimp I always will say. He talks real brightlyin his way--he will speak words like an actor or something--but forbrains! Say, he always reminds me of the dumb friend of the greatdetective in the magazine stories, the one that goes along to the sceneof the crime to ask silly questions and make fool guesses about theguilty one, and never even suspects who done the murder, till thedetective tells on the last page when they're all together in thelibrary.
"Sure, that's Wilbur. It would be an ideal position for him. Instead ofwhich he runs this here music store, sells these jitney pianos andphonographs and truck like that. And serious! Honestly, if you seen himcoming down the street you'd say, 'There comes one of these heremusicians.' Wears long hair and a low collar and a flowing necktie andtalks about his technique. Yes, sir, about the technique of working amachinery piano. Gives free recitals in the store every second Saturdayafternoon, and to see him set down and pump with his feet, and pushlevers and pull handles, weaving himself back and forth, tossing hislong, silken locks back and looking dreamily off into the distance,you'd think he was a Paderewski. As a matter of fact, I've seenPaderewski play and he don't make a tenth of the fuss Wilbur does. Andafter this recital I was at one Saturday he comes up to some of usladies, mopping his pale brow, and he says, 'It does take it out of one!I'm always a nervous wreck after these little affairs of mine.' Wouldthat get you, or would it not?
"So we go in the store and Wilbur looks up from a table he's setting atin the back end.
"'You find me studying some new manuscripts,' he says, pushing back theraven locks from his brow. Say, it was a weary gesture he done itwith--sort of languid and world-weary. And what you reckon he meant bystudying manuscripts? Why, he had one of these rolls of paper with themusic punched into it in holes, and he was studying that line that tellsyou when to play hard or soft and all like that. Honest, that was it!
"'I always study these manuscripts of the masters conscientiously beforeI play them,' says he.
"Such is Wilbur. Such
he will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie andasked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had iton two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by amezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had itwith variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for us. Ittook him three minutes to get set right at the piano and to dust hisfingers with a white silk handkerchief which he wore up his sleeve. Andhe played with great expression and agony and bending exercises, everand anon tossing back his rebellious locks and fixing us with a look ofpained ecstasy. Of course it sounded better than the banjo, but you gotto have the voice with that song if you're meaning to do any crookedwork. Nettie was much taken with it even so, and Wilbur played itanother way. What he said was that it was another school ofinterpretation. It seemed to have its points with him, though hefavoured the first school, he said, because of a certain almost ruggedfidelity. He said the other school was marked by a tendency to idealism,and he pulled some of the handles to show how it was done. I'm merelytelling you how Wilbur talked.
"Nettie listened very serious. There was a new look in her eyes. 'Thatsong has got to her even on a machinery piano,' I says, 'but wait tillwe get the voice, with she and Chester out in the mischievousmoonlight.' Wasn't I the wily old hound! Nettie sort of lingered to hearWilbur, who was going good by this time. 'One must be the soul behindthe wood and wire,' he says; 'one rather feels just that, or one remainsmerely a brutal mechanic.'
"'I understand,' says Nettie. 'How you must have studied!'
"'Oh, studied!' says Wilbur, and tossed his mane back and laughed in alofty and suffering manner. Studied! He'd gone one year to a businesscollege in Seattle after he got out of high school!
"'I understand,' says Nettie, looking all reverent and buffaloed.
"'It is the price one must pay for technique,' says Wilbur. 'And to-dayyou found me in the mood. I am not always in the mood.'
"'I understand,' says Nettie.
"I'm just giving you an idea, understand. Then Wilbur says, 'I willbring these records up this evening if I may. The mezzo-soprano requiresa radically different adjustment from the barytone.' 'My God!' thinks I,'has he got technique on the phonograph, too!' But I says he must comeby all means, thinking he could tend the machine while Nettie andChester is out on the porch getting wise to each other.
"'There's another teep for you,' I says to Nettie when we got out of theplace. 'He certainly is marked by tendencies,' I says. I meant it for anasty slam at Wilbur's painful deficiencies as a human being, but shetook it as serious as Wilbur took himself--which is some!
"'Ah, yes, the artist teep,' says she,'the most complex, the mostbaffling of all.'
"That was a kind of a sickish jolt to me--the idea that something as lowin the animal kingdom as Wilbur could baffle anyone--but I thinks,'Shucks! Wait till he lines up alongside of a regular human man likeChet Timmins!'
"I had Chet up to supper again. He still choked on words of onesyllable if Nettie so much as glanced at him, and turned all sorts ofpainful colours like a cheap rug. But I keep thinking the piece will fixthat all right.
"At eight o'clock Wilbur sifted in with his records and something elseflat and thin, done up in paper that I didn't notice much at the time.My dear heart, how serious he was! As serious as--well, I chanced to bepresent at the house of mourning when the barber come to shave old JudgeArmstead after he'd passed away--you know what I mean--kind of like himWilbur was, talking subdued and cat-footing round very solemn andprofessional. I thought he'd never get that machine going. He cleanedit, and he oiled it, and he had great trouble picking out the rightfibre needle, holding six or eight of 'em up to the light, doing secretthings to the machine's inwards, looking at us sharp as if we oughtn'tto be talking even then, and when she did move off I'm darned if hedidn't hang in a strained manner over that box, like he was the one thatwas doing it all and it wouldn't get the notes right if he took hisattention off.
"It was a first-class record, I'll say that. It was the malebarytone--one of them pleading voices that get all into you. It wasn'thalf over before I seen Nettie was strongly moved, as they say, only shewas staring at Wilbur, who by now was leading the orchestra with onegraceful arm and looking absorbed and sodden, like he done itunconsciously. Chester just set there with his mouth open, likesomething you see at one of these here aquariums.
"We moved round some when it was over, while Wilbur was picking out justthe right needle for the other record, and so I managed to cut that lumpof a Chester out of the bunch and hold him on the porch till I gotNettie out, too. Then I said 'Sh-h-h!' so they wouldn't move when Wilburlet the mezzo-soprano start. And they had to stay out there in thegolden moonlight with love's young dream and everything. The lady singerwas good, too. No use in talking, that song must have done a lot ofheart work right among our very best families. It had me going again soI plumb forgot my couple outside. I even forgot Wilbur, standing by thebox showing the lady how to sing.
"It come to the last--you know how it ends--'To kiss the cross,sweetheart, to kiss the cross!' There was a rich and silent moment and Isays, 'If that Chet Timmins hasn't shown himself to be a regular maleteep by this time--' And here come Chet's voice, choking as usual, 'Yes,paw switched to Durhams and Herefords over ten years ago--you seeHolsteins was too light; they don't carry the meat--' Honest! I'mtelling you what I heard. And yet when they come in I could see thatChester had had tears in his eyes from that song, so still I didn't givein, especially as Nettie herself looked very exalted, like she wasn't atthat minute giving two whoops in the bad place for the New Dawn.
"CHESTER JUST SET THERE WITH HIS MOUTH OPEN, LIKESOMETHING YOU SEE AT ONE OF THESE HERE AQUARIUMS"]
"Nettie made for Wilbur, who was pushing back his hair with a weak butgraceful sweep of the arm--it had got down before his face like aportiere--and I took Chet into a corner and tried to get some of thejust wrath of God into his heart; but, my lands! You'd have said hedidn't know there was such a thing as a girl in the whole KulancheValley. He didn't seem to hear me. He talked other matters.
"'Paw thinks,' he says, 'that he might manage to take them hundred andfifty bull calves off your hands.' 'Oh, indeed!' I says. 'And does hethink of buying 'em--as is often done in the cattle business--or is hemerely aiming to do me a favour?' I was that mad at the poor worm, buthe never knew. 'Why, now, paw says "You tell Maw Pettengill I might bewilling to take 'em off her hands at fifty dollars a head,"' he says. 'Ishould think he might be,' I says, 'but they ain't bothering my handsthe least little mite. I like to have 'em on my hands at anything lessthan sixty a head,' I says. 'Your pa,' I went on, 'is the man thatstarted this here safety-first cry. Others may claim the honour, but itbelongs solely to him.' 'He never said anything about that,' says poorChester. 'He just said you was going to be short of range this summer.''Be that all too true, as it may be,' I says, 'but I still got mybusiness faculties--' And I was going on some more, but just then I seenNettie and Wilbur was awful thick over something he'd unwrapped from theother package he'd brought. It was neither more nor less than a bigphoto of C. Wilbur Todd. Yes, sir, he'd brought her one.
"'I think the artist has caught a bit of the real just there, if youknow what I mean,' says Wilbur, laying a pale thumb across the upperpart of the horrible thing.
"'I understand,' says Nettie, 'the real you was expressing itself.'
"'Perhaps,' concedes Wilbur kind of nobly. 'I dare say he caught me inone of my rarer moods. You don't think it too idealized?'
"'Don't jest,' says she, very pretty and severe. And they both gazedspellbound.
"'Chester,' I says in low but venomous tones, 'you been hanging roundthat girl worse than Grant hung round Richmond, but you got to rememberthat Grant was more than a hanger. He made moves, Chester, moves! Do youget me?'
"'About them calves,' says Chester, 'pa told me it's his honestopinion--'
"Well, that was enough for once. I busted up that party sudden and firm.
"'It has meant much to me,' says Wilbur a
t parting.
"'I understand,' says Nettie.
"'When you come up to the ranch, Miss Nettie,' says Chester, 'you wantto ride over to the Lazy Eight, and see that there tame coyote I got. Itlicks your hand like a dog.'
"But what could I do, more than what I had done? Nettie was looking atthe photograph when I shut the door on 'em. 'The soul behind the woodand wire,' she murmurs. I looked closer then and what do you reckon itwas? Just as true as I set here, it was Wilbur, leaning forward allnegligent and patronizing on a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano, hishair well forward and his eyes masterful, like that there nobleinstrument was his bond slave. But wait! And underneath he'd writ a barof music with notes running up and down, and signed his name to it--notplain, mind you, though he can write a good business hand if he wantsto, but all scrawly like some one important, so you couldn't tell if itwas meant for Dutch or English. Could you beat that for nerve--in a day,in a million years?
"'What's Wilbur writing that kind of music for?' I asks in a cold voice.'He don't know that kind. What he had ought to of written is a bunch ofthem hollow slats and squares like they punch in the only kind of musiche plays,' I says.
"'Hush!' says Nettie. 'It's that last divine phrase, "To kiss thecross!"'
"I choked up myself then. And I went to bed and thought. And this iswhat I thought: When you think you got the winning hand, keep onraising. To call is to admit you got no faith in your judgment. Betterlay down than call. So I resolve not to say another word to the girlabout Chester, but simply to press the song in on her. Already it hadmade her act like a human person. Of course I didn't worry none aboutWilbur. The wisdom of the ages couldn't have done that. But I seen I hadgot to have a real first-class human voice in that song, like the one Ihad heard in New York City. They'll just have to clench, I think, whenthey hear a good A-number-one voice in it.
"Next day I look in on Wilbur and say, 'What about this concert andmusical entertainment the North Side set is talking about giving for thestarving Belgians?'
"'The plans are maturing,' he says, 'but I'm getting up a Brahmsconcerto that I have promised to play--you know how terrificallydifficult Brahms is--so the date hasn't been set yet.'
"'Well, set it and let's get to work,' I says. 'There'll be you, and theNorth Side Ladies' String Quartet, and Ed Bughalter with a bass solo,and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale with the "Jewel Song" from Faust,and I been thinking,' I says, 'that we had ought to get a goodprofessional lady concert singer down from Spokane.'
"'I'm afraid the expenses would go over our receipts,' says Wilbur, andI can see him figuring that this concert will cost the Belgians moneyinstead of helping 'em; so right off I says, 'If you can get agood-looking, sad-faced contralto, with a low-cut black dress, that cansing "The Rosary" like it had ought to be sung, why, you can touch mefor that part of the evening's entertainment.'
"Wilbur says I'm too good, not suspicioning I'm just being wily, so hesays he'll write up and fix it. And a couple days later he says the ladyprofessional is engaged, and it'll cost me fifty, and he shows me herpicture and the dress is all right, and she had a sad, powerful face,and the date is set and everything.
"Meantime, I keep them two records het up for the benefit of myreluctant couple: daytime for Nettie--she standing dreamy-eyed while itwas doing, showing she was coming more and more human, understand--andevenings for both of 'em, when Chester Timmins would call. And Chethimself about the third night begins to get a new look in his eyes, kindof absent and desperate, so I thinks this here lady professional willsimply goad him to a frenzy. Oh, we had some sad musical week beforethat concert! That was when this crazy Chink of mine got took by thesong. He don't know yet what it means, but it took him all right; he gotregular besotted with it, keeping the kitchen door open all the time, sohe wouldn't miss a single turn. It took his mind off his work, too. Talkabout the Yellow Peril! He got so locoed with that song one day, whatdoes he do but peel and cook up twelve dollars' worth of the PiedmontQueen dahlia bulbs I'd ordered for the front yard. Sure! Served 'em withcream sauce, and we et 'em, thinking they was some kind of a Chinesevegetable.
"But I was saying about this new look in Chester's eyes, kind of far-offand criminal, when that song was playing. And then something give me apause, as they say. Chet showed up one evening with his nails allmanicured; yes, sir, polished till you needed smoked glasses to look at'em. I knew all right where he'd been. I may as well tell you that HenryLehman was giving Red Gap a flash of form with his new barbershop--tiled floor, plate-glass front, exposed plumbing, and a manicuregirl from Seattle; yes, sir, just like in the great wicked cities. Ithad already turned some of our very best homes into domestic hells, andno wonder! Decent, God-fearing men, who'd led regular lives and hadwhiskers and grown children, setting down to a little spindle-leggedtable with this creature, dipping their clumsy old hands into a pinksaucedish of suds and then going brazenly back to their innocentfamilies with their nails glittering like piano keys. Oh, that youngdame was bound to be a social pet among the ladies of the town, yes--no?She was pretty and neat figured, with very careful hair, though itscolour had been tampered with unsuccessfully, and she wore little,blue-striped shirtwaists that fitted very close--you know--with lowcollars. It was said that she was a good conversationalist and wouldtalk in low, eager tones to them whose fingers she tooled.
"Still, I didn't think anything of Chester resorting to that sanitaryden of vice. All I think is that he's trying to pretty himself up forNettie and maybe show her he can be a man-about-town, like them she hasknown in Spokane and in Yonkers, New York, at the select home of Mrs.W.B. Hemingway and her husband. How little we think when we had oughtto be thinking our darndest! Me? I just went on playing them tworecords, the male barytone and the lady mezzo, and trying to curse thatChinaman into keeping the kitchen door shut on his cooking, with Wilburdropping in now and then so him and Nettie could look at his photo,which was propped up against a book on the centre table--one of themlarge three-dollar books that you get stuck with by an agent and neverread--and Nettie dropping into his store now and then to hear himpractise over difficult bits from his piece that he was going to renderat the musical entertainment for the Belgians, with him asking her ifshe thought he shaded the staccato passage a mite too heavy, or someguff like that.
"So here come the concert, with every seat sold and the hall drapedpretty with flags and cut flowers. Some of the boys was down from theranch, and you bet I made 'em all come across for tickets, and oldSafety First--Chet's father--I stuck him for a dollar one, though he hadan evil look in his eyes. That's how the boys got so crazy about thishere song. They brought that record back with 'em. And Buck Devine, thatI met on the street that very day of the concert, he give me anotherkind of a little jolt. He'd been gossiping round town, the vicious waymen do, and he says to me:
"'That Chester lad is taking awful chances for a man that needs his twohands at his work. Of course if he was a foot-racer or something likethat, where he didn't need hands--' 'What's all this?' I asks. 'Why,'says Buck, 'he's had his nails rasped down to the quick till he almostscreams if they touch anything, and he goes back for more every singleday. It's a wonder they ain't mortified on him already; and say, itcosts him six bits a throw and, of course, he don't take no change froma dollar--he leaves the extra two bits for a tip. Gee! A dollar a dayfor keeping your nails tuned up--and I ain't sure he don't have 'em donetwice on Sundays. Mine ain't never had a file teched to 'em yet,' hesays. 'I see that,' I says. 'If any foul-minded person ever accuses youof it, you got abundant proofs of your innocence right there with you.As for Chester,' I says, 'he has an object.' 'He has,' says Buck. 'Notwhat you think,' I says. 'Very different from that. It's true,' Iconcedes, 'that he ought to take that money and go to some goodosteopath and have his head treated, but he's all right at that. Don'tyou set up nights worrying about it.' And I sent Buck slinking offshamefaced but unconvinced, I could see. But I wasn't a bit scared.
"Chet et supper with us the night of the concert and took Nettie
and Ito the hall, and you bet I wedged them two close in next each other whenwe got to our seats. This was my star play. If they didn't fall for eachother now--Shucks! They had to. And I noticed they was more confidentialalready, with Nettie looking at him sometimes almost respectfully.
"Well, the concert went fine, with the hired lady professional singergiving us some operatic gems in various foreign languages in the firstpart, and Ed Bughalter singing "A King of the Desert Am I, Ha, Ha!" verybass--Ed always sounds to me like moving heavy furniture round thatain't got any casters under it--and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingalewith the "Jewel Song" from Faust, that she learned in a musicalconservatory at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and "Coming Through the Rye"for an encore--holding the music rolled up in her hands, though the Lordknows she knew every word and note of it by heart--and the North SideLadies' String Quartet, and Wilbur Todd, of course, putting on more airsthan as if he was the only son of old man Piano himself, while heshifted the gears and pumped, and Nettie whispering that he always slepttwo hours before performing in public and took no nourishment but onecup of warm milk--just a bundle of nerves that way--and she sent him upa bunch of lilies tied with lavender ribbon while he was bowing andscraping, but I didn't pay no attention to that, for now it was coming.
"Yes, sir, the last thing was this here lady professional, getting upstern and kind of sweetish sad in her low-cut black dress to sing thesong of songs. I was awful excited for a party of my age, and I see theywas, too. Nettie nudged Chet and whispered, 'Don't you just love it?'And Chet actually says, 'I love it,' so no wonder I felt sure, when upto that time he'd hardly been able to say a word except about his pabeing willing to take them calves for almost nothing. Then I seen hiseyes glaze and point off across the hall, and darned if there wasn'tthis manicure party in a cheek little hat and tailored gown, settingwith Mrs. Henry Lehman and her husband. But still I felt all right,because him and Nettie was nudging each other intimately again whenProfessor Gluckstein started in on the accompaniment--I bet Wilburthinks the prof is awful old-fashioned, playing with his fingers thatway; I know they don't speak on the street.
"So this lady just floated into that piece with all the heart stopspulled out, and after one line I didn't begrudge her a cent of my fifty.I just set there and thrilled. I could feel Nettie and Chet thrilling,too, and I says, 'There's nothing to it--not from now on.'
"The applause didn't bust loose till almost a minute after she'd kissedthe cross in that rich brown voice of hers, and even then my coupledidn't join in. Nettie set still, all frozen and star-eyed, and Chesterwas choking and sniffling awful emotionally. 'I've sure nailed the youngfools,' I thinks. And, of course, this lady had to sing it again, andnot half through was she when, sure enough, I glanced down sideways andChet's right hand and her left hand is squirming together till they looklike a bunch of eels. 'All over but the rice,' I says, and at that Ifelt so good and thrilled! I was thinking back to my own time when I wasjust husband-high, though that wasn't so little, Lysander John being ascant six foot three--and our wedding tour to the Centennial and thetrip to Niagara Falls--just soaking in old memories that bless and bindthat this lady singer was calling up--well, you could have had anythingfrom me right then when she kissed that cross a second time, justpouring her torn heart out. 'Worth every cent of that fifty,' I says.
"Then everybody was standing up and moving out--wiping their eyes a lotof 'em was--so I push on ahead quick, aiming to be more wily than everand leave my couple alone. They don't miss me, either. When I look back,darned if they ain't kind of shaking hands right there in the hall.'Quick work!' I says. 'You got to hand it to that song.' Even then Inoticed Nettie was looking back to where Wilbur was tripping down fromthe platform, and Chester had his eyes glazed over on this manicureparty. Still, they was gripping each other's hands right there beforefolks, and I think they're just a bit embarrassed. My old heart wentright on echoing that song as I pushed forward--not looking back again,I was that certain.
"And to show you the mushy state I was in, here is old Safety Firsthimself leering at me down by the door, with a clean shave and his otherclothes on, and he says all about how it was a grand evening's musicalentertainment and how much will the Belgians get in cold cash, anyway,and how about them hundred and fifty head of bull calves that he waswilling to take off my hands, and me, all mushed up by that song as Iam telling you, saying to him in a hearty manner, 'They're yours, Dave!Take 'em at your own price, old friend.' Honest, I said it just thatway, so you can see. 'Oh, I'll be stuck on 'em at fifty a head,' saysDave, 'but I knew you'd listen to reason, we being such old neighbours.''I ain't heard reason since that last song,' I says. I'm listening to myheart, and it's a grand pity yours never learned to talk.' 'Fifty ahead,' says the old robber.
"So, thus throwing away at least fifteen hundred dollars like it was amere bagatelle or something, I walk out into the romantic night and beatit for home, wanting to be in before my happy couple reached there, sothey'd feel free to linger over their parting. My, but I did feelresponsible and dangerous, directing human destinies so brashly the wayI had."
There was a pause, eloquent with unworded emotions.
Then "Human destinies, hell!" the lady at length intoned.
Hereupon I amazingly saw that she believed her tale to be done. Ipermitted the silence to go a minute, perhaps, while she fingered thecigarette paper and loose tobacco.
"And of course, then," I hinted, as the twin jets of smoke were ratherviciously expelled.
"I should say so--'of course, then'--you got it. But I didn't get it fornear an hour yet. I set up to my bedroom window in the dark, waitingexcitedly, and pretty soon they slowly floated up to the front gate,talking in hushed tones and gurgles. 'Male and female created He them,'I says, flushed with triumph. The moon wasn't up yet, but you hadn't anytrouble making out they was such. He was acting outrageously like a maleand she was suffering it with the splendid courage which has longdistinguished our helpless sex. And there I set, warming my old heart init and expanding like one of them little squeezed-up sponges you see inthe drug-store window which swells up so astonishing when you put it inwater. I wasn't impatient for them to quit, oh, no! They seemed toclench and unclench and clench again, as if they had all the time in theworld--with me doing nothing but applaud silently.
"After spending about twenty years out there they loitered softly up thewalk and round to the side door where I'd left the light burning, and Islipped over to the side window, which was also open, and looked down onthe dim fond pair, and she finally opened the door softly and the lightshone out."
Again Ma Pettengill paused, her elbows on the arms of her chair, hershoulders forward, her gray old head low between them. She drew a longbreath and rumbled fiercely:
"And the mushy fool me, forcing that herd of calves on old Dave at thatscandalous price--after all, that's what really gaffed me the worst! Mystars! If I could have seen that degenerate old crook again thatnight--but of course a trade's a trade, and I'd said it. Ain't I the oldsilly!"
"The door opened and the light shone out--"
I gently prompted.
She erected herself in the chair, threw back her shoulders, and her widemouth curved and lifted at the corners with the humour that never longdeserts this woman.
"Yep! That light flooded out its golden rays on the reprehensible personof C. Wilbur Todd," she crisply announced. "And like they say in thestories, little remains to be told.
"I let out a kind of strangled yell, and Wilbur beat it right across mynew lawn, and I beat it downstairs. But that girl was like asleepwalker--not to be talked to, I mean, like you could talk topersons.
"'Aunty,' she says in creepy tones, 'I have brought myself to theultimate surrender. I know the chains are about me, already I feel theshackles, but I glory in them.' She kind of gasped and shivered inhorrible delight. 'I've kissed the cross at last,' she mutters.
"I was so weak I dropped into a chair and I just looked at her. At firstI couldn't speak, then I saw it was no good speaki
ng. She was free,white, and twenty-one. So I never let on. I've had to take a jolt or twoin my time. I've learned how. But finally I did manage to ask how aboutChet Timmins.
"'I wronged dear Chester,' she says. 'I admit it freely. He has a heartof gold and a nature in a thousand. But, of course, there could never beanything between him and a nature like mine; our egos function ondifferent planes,' she says. 'Dear Chester came to see it, too. It'sonly in the last week we've come to understand each other. It was reallythat wonderful song that brought us to our mutual knowledge. It helpedus to understand our mutual depths better than all the ages of eternitycould have achieved.' On she goes with this mutual stuff, till you'dhave thought she was reading a composition or something. 'And dearChester is so radiant in his own new-found happiness,' she says. 'What!'I yells, for this was indeed some jolt.
"'He has come into his own,' she says. 'They have eloped to Spokane,though I promised to observe secrecy until the train had gone. A veryworthy creature I gather from what Chester tells me, a MissMacgillicuddy--'
"'Not the manicure party?' I yells again.
"'I believe she has been a wage-earner,' says Nettie. 'And dear Chesteris so grateful about that song. It was her favourite song, too, and itseemed to bring them together, just as it opened my own soul to Wilbur.He says she sings the song very charmingly herself, and he thought itpreferable that they be wed in Spokane before his father objected. Andoh, aunty, I do see how blind I was to my destiny, and how kind you wereto me in my blindness--you who had led the fuller life as I shall leadit at Wilbur's side.'
"'You beat it to your room,' I orders her, very savage and disorganized.For I had stood about all the jolts in one day that God had meant meto. And so they was married, Chester and his bride attending theceremony and Oscar Teetz' five-piece orchestra playing the--" Shebroke off, with a suddenly blazing glance at the disk, and seized itfrom the table rather purposefully. With a hand firmly at both edges shestared inscrutably at it a long moment.
"I hate to break the darned thing," she said musingly at last. "I guessI'll just lock it up. Maybe some time I'll be feeling the need to hearit again. I know I can still be had by it if all the circumstances isright."
Still she stared at the thing curiously.
"Gee! It was hot getting them calves out to-day, and old Safety Firstmoaning about all over the place how he's being stuck with 'em, tillmore than once I come near forgetting I was a lady--and, oh, yes"--shebrightened--"I was going to tell you. After it was all over, Wilbur, thegallant young tone poet, comes gushing up to me and says, 'Now, aunty,always when you are in town you must drop round and break bread withus.' Aunty, mind you, right off the reel. 'Well,' I says, 'if I dropround to break any bread your wife bakes I'll be sure to bring ahammer.' I couldn't help it. He'll make a home for the girl all right,but he does something sinful to my nerves every time he opens his face.And then coming back here, where I looked for God's peace and quiet, andbeing made to hear that darned song every time I turned round!
"I give orders plain enough, but say, it's like a brush fire--you neverknow when you got it stamped out."
From the kitchen came the sound of a dropped armful of stove wood. Hardupon this, the unctuous whining tenor of Jimmie Time:
Oh-h-h mem-o-reez thu-hat blu-hess and bu-hurn!
"You, Jimmie Time!" It is a voice meant for Greek tragedy and a theatreopen to the heavens. I could feel the terror of the aged vassal.
"Yes, ma'am!" The tone crawled abasingly. "I forgot myself."
I was glad, and I dare say he had the wit to be, that he had not to facethe menace of her glare.