10. Chapter X
But it was well into October before the Irishman got the letter which he had been waiting for--the one which sent the color mounting gladly in his lean cheeks. It was not long, but it fairly sang with jubilance and the feel of it in his hand was warm.
On a Gold and Scarlet Afternoon.
Michael Daragh, I'm at work! Steadily, sanely, surely, at work again!
Long ago, before I began to run after strange gods, I got a story back from the
New England Monthly--that Dean of Magazines in her sober brown frock with no jewels or adornments at all,--with a quite wonderful personal note. If I had followed it up, I do believe I'd have landed on that stern and rock-bound coast, but I went over to the flesh pots instead. Now I have made a stern and rock-bound compact with myself. I'm not coming back to New York, and you are not to write me a line, until I've written a tale that brown-gowned magazine will take. "Where there is no vision, the people perish," the Deacon thundered, at a meeting. I was very near to perishing, when you scolded me awake, Michael Daragh, M.D., Miracle Do-er, God save you kindly!
That vaudeville work--and I shall do more of it, some day--was like a fast and furious game of tennis under a scorching sun; now I'm delving in a dim, cool library.
I'm going to be as patient as a locust bridge-builder. I know that flocks of long envelopes are coming back, bringing their tales behind them, but one day I shall hear a jubilant note in the
klip-klup of Lizzie's hoofs and Uncle Robert will hand me an envelope of bewitching smallness, with a tiny typed letter inside.... "It is with very great pleasure...."
Until
that day break, and the shadows flee away----
J. V.
It was Michael Daragh's custom to read these letters three times, carefully, and then to tear them in pieces which would be annoyingly and impossibly small to the chambermaid, and to throw them into his waste-paper basket, but this time, after his third perusal, instead of destroying it he put it away in his worn leather wallet. "I'll be keeping it, just, till the next one comes," he told himself, silently, "so I can be comparing the way she's coming on--God love her."
But the next letter to come and several following held no mention of her task. It was as if she had opened the heart of her mind further than she meant to do, and was shyly standing in front of it, now, talking of things remote and removed.
Friday Morning.
I've found a way to make Dan'l happy, M.D. I was reading to him last night, and suddenly he said in his shy, repressed way, "Was you ever to a circus?" I started to say that they bored me to the bone, even in infancy, but I happened to glance up and see his eyes. He's been following his beloved vagabond about in his heart, you see. So I tried to create a circus for him--the round rag rug was the sawdust ring, the steaming kettle was the calliope, wheezing a strident song about a wooden leg, and out of thin air came the haughty ringmaster and the clown and the pink acrobats, and I remembered thankfully that I'd memorized Vachel Lindsey's "Kallyope" long ago----
"Tooting joy, tooting hope, I am the Kallyope! Hoot, toot, hoot, toot, Willy, willy wah hoo, Sizz--fizz----"
Dan'l held his breath, his eyes starry, and his mother stopped her work, and I could see that the old man was listening slyly. Do you know it, Michael? It's pure witchcraft of words.
"See the flags; snow-white tent;
See the bear and elephant;
See the monkey jump the rope;
Listen to the lion roar,
LISTEN TO THE LION ROAR!
Listen to the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!"
(He must have been thinking of the Deacon's sort:)
"I will blow the proud folk low,
Humanize the dour and slow,
I will shake the proud folk down----"
Dan'l went to sleep pink and happy. So did I!
J. V.
Wednesday.
I haven't told you about the "Low-down Wilkes," have I? They're the pleasantest people in Three Meadows and we're very clubby. The nice old maid on the wharf at Bath told me about them and advised me to have the woman do my washing, but warned me that I should have to come unto her delicately, like Agag. Being the poorest and most destitute family on the Island they are correspondingly proud and "techy."
Shiftlessness is a fine art with them, they've carried it so far. Last winter they lived in a very good two-story house, and as it was a very bitter season and Mr. L.D.W. was "kinder run down, someway," he very ingeniously burnt it for fuel while they were living in it,--first the partitions in the second story, then the floor, then the stairs, then the downstairs walls and doors. Wasn't that clever of him? Now it's just a charred shell, and--grace of a more opulent relative--they are camping in an unused barn. They fish a little, and pick blueberries, and wonder, vaguely, "jest how they'll make out, come wintuh."
I wish you might have seen her when, after a long social call, I subtly introduced the subject of laundry and dilated on my helpless predicament. She weighed and considered and consulted with her spouse, and said at last, "Wall, I don't keer if I do--but I wunt fetch'n kerry fer nobuddy!" Since when I have myself fetched and carried my garments, and they are rapidly taking on the tinge of prevailing Island grayness. The L.D.W.'s are gentle and gay, and they love Dan'l and "Angerleek" even if she is "a furriner," and they sigh that the Deacon is "a good man, but ha'ad." His severity has driven all the older children away from home, two of them girls. (Wasn't I right about the Erring Daughters and the Snow?)
I asked Mrs. L.D.W. if I might bestow upon her a tailored suit which has almost worn me out. She hesitated, shifted the 1920 model in Low-Down Wilkes to the other hip (babies are their only lavish luxury!) and allowed she didn't mind, if I was a mind to fetch it down to the graveyard corner some night after dusk. Every human being in Three Meadows has seen me wear it and could describe it to the last stitch and button, and every one will know where she got it. Nevertheless, in a world of foot-lickers, isn't pride like that delicious?
I did for myself when I started that indoor circus effect; sentenced to be Scheherazade! Lady chariot drivers and spotted clowns and strange beasts swarm through the prim, gray farmhouse. Dan'l has stayed in bed for two days, and Uncle Robert's chirp is growing husky.
Between circus performances I'm working like a riverful of beavers. The best story I've ever written is almost ready to launch.
J. V.
Tuesday.
DEAR MICHAEL DARAGH, I can't
bear it about Dan'l! I don't mean about his going,--the old doctor is right about that, but oh, that wretched rover! Dan'l makes loyal excuses for him--he must be sick again or out of work or too busy; the flame of his faith never burns dim.
This morning I went to the Deacon. "Look here," I said, "that fellow will never pay up and Dan'l is breaking his heart." He nodded. "Well," I went on, "I mean to make up a letter and put in twenty dollars and send it to a friend of mine in New York to mail back to Dan'l."
His eagle eye grew bleak. "Falsehood and forgery!" he thundered. "I'm a plain man, sinful, Adam's seed as we all are, but I never yet soiled my lips with a lie."
"Oh, you needn't bother about it at all," I assured him. "I'll do the whole thing. You see, my lips aren't so immaculate, or so fussy!"
"I wunt act a lie, neither," he said.
I could feel myself generating temper, and it was a relief for it deadened my grief over Dan'l to be fine and mad at his father. I looked him straight in his ice-blue eye. "Just what do you mean by that, Mr. Gillespie?"
"I wunt have the boy deceived. Ain't no peace comin' from a lie! Land t' goodness," he regarded me mournfully, "don't we have to strive night an' day, 'thout takin' any extry sins on our souls?"
"Why, no, Deacon Gillespie," I told him sweetly, "I don't have a bit of trouble being good. It just seems to come naturally to me!"
I know he yearned to box my ears. Instead, he roared, "We are as prone to evil as the sparks to fly upward!"
"
You may be," I said. "I shouldn't wonder at all if you are. But as for me, I'm not a miserable sinner and I never was. I shouldn't know an evil impulse if I met it in my mush bowl!" Then I left him, purple with scandalized rage, and found Angelique and told her my pretty plan. Oh, Michael, if you could have seen the poor thing! Her knees fairly gave way under her and she sank into a chair and put her apron over her head. I said, "I thought if you were willing, perhaps the Deacon--" but she cried out, "No, no! One time the oldes' boy, Lem," she still has a bit of the soft
habitant accent, "he do something bad, an' I tell a lie, so hees father shall not beat heem. By and by, he fin' out ..." she shut her eyes and shivered. "Heem he beat twice as hard ... me, he nevair believe again, all these years...."
Michael Daragh, I hate the Deacon. I know you consider hate the lowest form of human activity, but I hate the Deacon with a husky, hearty, healthy hate and it has a tonic effect which I'm sure must be good for me. I feed my fancy on boiling him in oil.
Gibbering with perfectly proper rage,
J. V.
The next note which came to the Irishman was only a line in length and a coolly typed line, but even so the letters seemed fairly to sing and to dance----
The story is done. It is good, Michael Daragh.
The letter which followed it went back to the human concerns about her.
Friday.
I'm sitting on the gravestone of the four-time widower, M.D., my sweater turned up about my ears, my fingers navy blue, my nose magenta. The world is bleak and bare, indoors and out. Dan'l grows hourly weaker, but he brightens at mail time, and grins his gallant little grin at disappointment. "But he
will," he stoutly whispers.
Gentle old Uncle Robert grows fierce. "Ef I had that varmint here, I vum I c'd wring his neck!"
I'm sorry to report that I am not getting on very well with hating the Deacon. (Of course, you've kept the intervening air quivering with your admonitory wirelesses!) He is suffering so hideously, and so determinedly, like a fakir. He feels he must speed the parting soul with the Scriptures and he reads terrifying things about weird beasts,--lion-mouthed leopards with feet like bears--and when he goes downstairs I try--very clumsily, M.D.--to tell Dan'l about the God you know, the one who goes with you into dark alleys and dark hearts. I wish you were here to do it.
Dan'l's faith is indeed the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, but I want to put a warm, tangible lie into his thin little claws before he goes.... Uncle Robert has "been an' went" since I began this letter, and again I must go up to Dan'l and tell him "Not
to-day."
I'm a coward, M.D. I've never seen death so close before, and I want to run away. But I won't.
J. V.
P.S. I called on the Low Down Wilkes this morning. Mrs. L.D.W. was wearing my suit over a wrapper of faded red calico, but there was nothing in her manner to indicate that I had ever seen it before.
Saturday.
Here is my story, Michael Daragh, and it is your story, too, for you shamed me into doing it. I am sending it off to the brown-gowned monthly on the stern and rock-bound coast, and this carbon to you. Now will you write and tell me if you like it?
Honestly! (I know I said I didn't want you to write me until I had landed a story there, but all this grief and grimness brings a sense of bleak loneliness, and
if you think I've won back what I've lost, if you think I've found the vision which will keep my soul from perishing, tell me so.)
J. V.
Sunday Night.
I've been making circus all day, M.D.----
"Tooting joy, tooting hope,
Willy wully wah hoo ...
I am the golden dream,
Singing science, singing steam--
Listen to the lion roar--"
I've roared myself hoarse but I got him to sleep at last. I have figured it out and I see that I can't hear from either you or the Monthly before Wednesday at the earliest, and I won't let myself really look for anything before Friday.
J. V.
Again there came a single line----
Monday Night.
It's too heart-breaking to write about, M.D., even to you.
Tuesday Morning.
I've had to stop hating the poor old Deacon altogether; this morning he carried S.A.B.B. upstairs with his own hands and put him on the bed beside the boy.
J. V.
Tuesday Night.
It's very late, Michael Daragh, but there are things I must tell you before I sleep.
I went for a walk this morning, and when I came back I saw Angelique waving to me from the window. I
knew, and I ran into the house and upstairs. The Deacon was praying aloud, a terrible, cast-iron prayer, and Angelique was sobbing and S.A.B.B. was whining and shivering. I knelt down beside Dan'l and he opened his eyes. I could just make out the whisper--"My ... letter?"
I jumped up and ran over to his father and took him by the elbow and marched him into my room and shut the door and stood with my back against it. My teeth were chattering so I could hardly speak. "He's dying," I said. "
Now will you let me?"
He was shaking, too, but he quavered, "I wunt bear false witness! I wunt take a lie on my soul!"
Then something boiled up and over in my heart, Michael Daragh. I caught hold of him and shook him and I was so strong I scared myself. "You pitiful, craven-hearted old coward," I said, "all you can think of is your sour old self! If you loved him--if you knew the first faint beginning of love--" I snatched up the letter I had addressed to Dan'l and ran over to the dresser for my purse. "You stay in here with the truth and keep your musty little soul safe! I'm going in there and tell him a beautiful lie!"
But he fumbled some bills from his lean old wallet. "Wait! Here's twenty dollars! I'm a-comin', too!"
We went in together, and he bent over the bed and held the bills close to the boy's eyes. "Look a-here, Dan'l! Look a-here, boy! Here's your money! Here's your
money, Dan'l!" (Wasn't it pitiful, Michael? Even then, he still thought the money meant most.)
Dan'l opened his eyes and I said, "You were right all along, Danny! You were right to trust and believe in him! He
was grateful!"--and I held the envelope where he could see it,--the one I had addressed in a silly, flowing screed.
His pinched little face lighted up from within--cheerily, exquisitely, and his chin went up the tiniest fraction in glad pride. "
I ... knew ..." He just barely breathed it, Michael, and then he sort of relaxed all over and gave a long, comfortable sigh, like a tired puppy, and--and went to sleep.
His mother screamed and fell down beside the bed, and the Deacon said, "Loose him an' let him go, Angerleek!"--but he lifted her up and kept his arms around her.
I went away and left them there with Dan'l and S.A.B.B. I had forgotten all about mail time, but I found myself presently at the graveyard corner. It was one of those gentle, warmed-over summer days and the air was mild and filled with little whispers. I was so happy, Michael Daragh, that in my heart I heard the "harpers harping with their harps," but by and by I was aware of a nearer, more intimate sound--not "
klip-klup" as on other days, but
klipety-klipety-KLIPETY--a panic of frantic speed.
Down the road they came, Old Lizzie's hoofs scattering dust and pebbles, Uncle Robert leaning far forward, laying on the lash. When he saw me he cried out:--"Oh, it ain't too late? Oh, my dear Lord'n Saviour, it
ain't too late?"
Then he handed me a plump registered letter, addressed in a foolish, flowing screed which looked as if it had been done up in curl papers over night, and I began to cry for the first time.
"No," I said, "oh, no, it's not too late!" And I ran up to Dan'l's still little room and gave it to the Deacon and he took it with a great wonder in his ice-blue eyes and slipped it under the cold little claw, beside our merciful lie.
Then I went into my own room, and I noticed for the first time that Uncle Robert had given me two other letters and I stopped crying and stared at them.
One was a very small envelope and the name printed in the corner was that of the brown-gowned magazine on the stern and rock-bound. The other was yours.
J. V.
P.S. Guess which one I opened first, Michael Daragh, Do-er of Miracles?