The girl in the city deliberately set herself to forget.
The first few days after she left him were a mingling of ecstatic joy and deep depression, as she alternately meditated on the great love or faced its impossibility.
She scorched Milton Hamar with her glance of aversion and avoided him constantly despite her family’s protest, until he made an excuse and left the party at Pasadena. There, too, Aunt Maria relieved them of her annoying interference, and the return trip taken by the southern route allowed the girl to meditate undisturbed. She became more dissatisfied with herself and her useless, ornamental life. Some days she read the little book, and other days she shut it away and tried to return to her former life, telling herself it was useless to attempt to change herself. The book gave her a deep unrest and a sense that life held sweeter, more serious things than just living to please oneself. She began to long for home and the summer round of activities to fill the emptiness of her heart.
As the summer advanced, her plans to have a good time every minute seemed almost reckless sometimes; yet in the quiet of her own room the yearning awakened in the desert and refusing to be silenced would always return.
Sometimes, when she remembered the great deep love she’d heard expressed for her, the bitter tears came to her eyes, and one thought throbbed through her consciousness: “Not worthy! Not worthy!” He didn’t think her fit to be his wife. Her father and her world would think otherwise. They’d count him unworthy to mate with her, an heiress, the pet of society—and he a man who gave up his life for a whim, a fad, a fanatical fancy! But she knew it wasn’t so. She knew him to be a man of all men. She knew she wasn’t a woman a man like that could rightly marry, and the thought galled her constantly.
She tried to accustom herself to think of him as a pleasant experience, a friend who might have been if circumstances with them both were different; she tried to tell herself it was a passing fancy both would forget; and she tried with all her heart to forget, even locking away the precious little book and trying to forget it, too.
And then, one day in late summer, she traveled with a motoring party through New England, as lively a party as could be found among New York society transferred for the summer to nature. A dance or house party or something of the sort was planned at the end of the drive. Hazel scarcely knew and didn’t care. She was tiring of her butterfly life.
The day was hot and dusty, Indian summer intensified. They got lost through the chauffeur’s mistake, and suddenly on the edge of a quaint village the car broke down and refused to go on without a lengthy siege of coaxing and petting.
The members of the party, powdered with dust and not in a pleasant frame of mind from the delay, took refuge at the village inn, an old-time hostelry close to the roadside. It had a wide, brick-paved, white-pillared piazza across the front and a mysterious hedged garden at the side. Plain wooden rockers neatly adorned with white crash sat on the piazza, and a few late summer boarders loitered about with knitting or a book. The landlord brought cool, tinkling glasses of water and rich milk from the springhouse, and they dropped into the chairs to wait while the men of the party assisted the chauffeur in patching up the car.
Hazel sank wearily into her chair and sipped the milk without appetite. She wished she hadn’t come; that she might have planned something more interesting; that she’d chosen different people to be in her party; and that the day were over. She idly watched a white hen with yellow kid boots and a coral comb in her nicely groomed hair picking daintily about the green under the oak trees that shaded the street. And she listened to the drone of the bees in the garden nearby, the distant whetting of a scythe, the monotonous whang of a steam thresher not far away, and the happy voices of children, and thought how empty a life in this village would be—almost as dreary and uninteresting as living in a desert. Then suddenly she caught a name, and memory set her heart pounding.
The landlord was talking to a lingering summer boarder, a quiet, gray-haired woman who sat reading at the end of the piazza.
“Well, Miss Norton, so you’re goin’ to leave us next week. Sorry to hear it. Don’t seem nat’ral ‘thout you clear through October. Ca’c’late you’re coming back to Granville in the spring?”
Granville! Granville! Where had she heard of Granville? Ah! She knew instantly. It was his old home! His mother lived there! But then of course it must be another Granville. She wasn’t even sure what state they were in now, New Hampshire or Vermont. They’d wavered about on the state line several times that day, and she never paid attention to geography.
Then the landlord raised his voice again.
He was gazing across the road where a small white colonial house, white-fenced with pickets like clean sugar frosting, nestled in the luscious green grass. It seemed apart from the road dust and soil, as if nothing wearisome could enter there. A border of late flowers, double asters, zinnias, and peonies, bloomed with a flame of scarlet poppies breaking into the smokelike blue of larkspurs and bachelor buttons, as it neared the house. Hazel hadn’t noticed it until now, and she almost cried out with pleasure over the splendor of color.
“Wal,” said the landlord, chinking some loose coins in his capacious pockets, “I reckon Mis’ Brownleigh’ll miss yeh ’bout as much as enny us. She lots on your comin’ over to read to her. I’ve heerd her say as how Amelia Ellen is a good nurse, but she never was much on the readin’, an’ Amelia Ellen knows it, too. Mis’ Brownleigh, she’ll be powerful lonesome fer yeh when yeh go. It’s not so lively fur her tied to her bed er her chair, even ef John does write to her reg’lar twicet a week.”
And now Hazel noticed on the covered veranda in front of the wing of the house across the street, an old lady sitting on a reclining wheeled chair and another woman in a plain blue gown waiting on her. A luxuriant woodbine partly hid the chair, and the distance was too great to see the woman’s face.
But Hazel grew weak with wonder and pleasure. She sat still trying to gather her forces while the summer boarder expressed sincere regret at leaving her resting place so much earlier than usual.
At last Hazel’s friends began to rally her on her silence. She turned away annoyed and answered them crossly, following the landlord into the house and questioning him eagerly. She’d suddenly arrived at the conclusion that she must see Mrs. Brownleigh to know if she looked like her son and if she really was the kind of mother one would expect such a son to have. She felt that in seeing her might lie her emancipation from the enchantment that had bound her since her Western trip. She also secretly hoped it might justify her dearest dreams of what his mother was like.
“Do you suppose that lady across the street would mind if I went over to look at her beautiful flowers?” she asked the astonished landlord.
He had just tipped his chair back and prepared to browse over yesterday’s paper for the third time that day. But now he brought his chair down on its four legs with a thump and pushed his hat further back on his forehead.
“Not a bit, young lady. She’s proud to show off her flowers. They’re one of Granville’s sights. Mis’ Brownleigh loves to have comp’ny. Jest go right over an’ tell her I sent you. She’ll tell you all about ’em, an’ like ez not she’ll give you a bokay to take ‘long. She’s real generous with ’em.”
He tottered out to the door after her on his stiff rheumatic legs and suggested the other young ladies might like to go along. But they declined, to Hazel’s intense relief, and called out their ridicule after her as she picked her way across the dusty road and opened the white gate into the peaceful scene beyond.
When she drew close to the side piazza she saw one of the most beautiful faces she’d ever gazed upon. The features were delicate and exquisitely modeled, aged by years and much suffering, yet lovely with a peace that permitted no fretting. An abundance of waving silky hair white as snow was piled high upon her head against the snowy pillow, and soft brown eyes made the girl’s heart beat quickly with their likeness to those other eyes that once looked into hers.
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She was dressed in a simple muslin gown of white and gray with a white cloudlike finish at her throat and wrists, and across the helpless limbs was flung a light afghan of pink-and-gray wool. She made a sweet picture as she lay and watched her approaching guest with a smile of interest and welcome.
“The landlord said you wouldn’t mind if I came over to see your flowers,” Hazel said with a shy, half-frightened catch in her voice. Now that she was here she was almost sorry she’d come. It mightn’t be his mother at all, and what could she say anyway? Yet her first glimpse told her this was a mother to be proud of.
“The most beautiful mother in the world,” he’d called her, and surely this woman could be none other than the one who had mothered such a son. Hazel’s highest ideals of motherhood seemed realized as she gazed upon the invalid’s peaceful face.
And then the voice! The woman was speaking now, holding out a lily-white hand to her and bidding her be seated in the Chinese willow chair that stood close by the wheeled one. A green silk cushion sat at the back, and a large palm leaf fan lay on the table beside it.
“I’m so pleased you came over,” Mrs. Brownleigh was saying. “I’ve been wondering if someone wouldn’t come to me. I keep my flowers partly to attract my friends, for I can stand a great deal of company since I’m all alone. You came in the big motorcar that broke down, didn’t you? I’ve been watching the pretty girls over there, in their lovely ribbons and veils. They look like human flowers. Rest here and tell me where you’ve come from and where you’re going, while Amelia Ellen picks you some flowers to take along. Afterward you must go among them and see if you like any she missed.
“Amelia Ellen! Get your basket and scissors and pick a great many flowers for this young lady. It’s getting late, and they haven’t much longer to bloom. The rosebush has three white buds. Pick them all. I think they fit your face, my dear. Now take off your hat and let me see your pretty hair without its covering. I want to fix your picture in my heart so I can look at you after you’re gone.”
And so quite simply they fell into easy talk about each other, the day, the village, and the flowers.
“You see the little white church down the street? My husband was its pastor for twenty years. I came to this house a bride, and our boy was born here. Afterward, when his father was taken away, I stayed right here with the people who loved him. The boy was in college then, getting ready to take up his father’s work. I’ve stayed here ever since. I love the people, and they love me, and I couldn’t very well be moved, you know. My boy is out in Arizona, a home missionary!” She said it as Abraham Lincoln’s mother might have said, “My boy is president of the United States!”
Her face wore a kind of glory that bore a startling resemblance to the man of the desert. Hazel marveled and understood what made the son so great.
“I don’t see how he could go and leave you alone!” she exclaimed almost bitterly. “I’d think his duty was here with his mother!”
“Yes, I know,” the mother smiled. “Some of them say that, but it’s because they don’t understand. You see, we gave John to God when he was born, and it was our hope from the first he’d choose to be a minister and a missionary. Of course, John thought at first after his father went away that he couldn’t leave me, but I made him see I’d be happier this way. He wanted me to go with him, but I knew I’d only hinder the work, and it came to me that my part in the work was to stay at home and let him go. It was all I had left to do after I became an invalid. And I’m very comfortable. Amelia Ellen takes care of me like a baby, and there are plenty of friends. My boy writes me beautiful letters twice a week, and we have such nice talks about the work. He’s very like his father and growing more so every day.
“Perhaps,” she faltered and fumbled under the lap robe, “perhaps you’d like to read a bit of one of his letters. I have it here. It came yesterday, and I’ve only read it twice. I don’t let myself read them too often because they have to last three days apiece at least. Perhaps you’d read it out loud to me. I like to hear John’s words out loud sometimes, and Amelia Ellen never spends much time reading. She’s peculiar in her pronunciation. Do you mind reading it to me?”
She held a letter out, written in a strong free hand, the same that had signed the name John Chadwick Brownleigh in the little book. Hazel’s heart beat eagerly, and her hand trembled as she reached it shyly toward the letter. What a miracle this was! His very letter was being put into her hand to read! Was it possible? Could there be a mistake? No, surely not. There couldn’t be two John Brownleighs, both missionaries to Arizona.
“Dear little mother o’ mine,” it began and plunged at once into the breezy life of the Western country. He went to a cattle roundup the week before and described it minutely in terse, vivid language, with flashes of wit or touches of wisdom and an occasional boyish expression that showed him young at heart and devoted to his mother.
Then he wrote about visiting the Hopi Indians and about their strange villages, each like a gigantic house with many rooms, called a pueblo, built on the edges of lofty crags or mesas and looking like huge castles five or six hundred feet above the desert floor. He described Walpi, a village out on the end of a great promontory. Its only access was a narrow neck of land less than a rod wide, with one little path worn more than a foot deep in the solid rock by the feet of ten generations passing over it, where about 230 people lived in one building. Seven of these villages were built on mesas reaching out from the northern desert like three great fingers. Oraibi, the largest, had over a thousand people. He explained that Spanish explorers found these Hopis in 1540, long before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and called the country Tusayan.
Then he described a remarkable meeting in which the Indians manifested deep interest in spiritual things and asked many curious questions about life, death, and the hereafter.
“You see, dear,” said the mother, her eyes shining eagerly. “You see how much they need him, and I’m glad I can give him. It gives me a part in the work.”
Hazel turned back to the letter and went on reading to hide the tears that were gathering in her own eyes as she looked upon the mother’s glowing face.
He gave a detailed account of a missionary conference he rode ninety miles on horseback to attend. And at the close was an exquisite description of the spot where they’d camped the last night of their ride. She knew it from the first word almost, and her heart beat so wildly she could hardly keep her voice steady to read.
“I stopped overnight on the way home at a place I love. There’s a great rock, shelving and overhanging, for shelter from any passing storm, and nearby is a charming green ‘room’ of cedars on three sides and rock on the fourth. An abundant waterhole makes camping easy for me and Billy, and the stars overhead are good tapers. I build my fire here and boil the kettle, read my portion, and lie down to watch the heavens. Mother, I wish you knew how near to God one feels out in the desert with the stars. Last night about three o’clock I woke to replenish my fire and watched a great comet, the finest one for many years.
“I’d tell you about it, but this letter’s too long already, and Billy and I must be on our way again. I love this spot beside the big rock and often come back to it on my journeys—perhaps because I camped here once with a dear friend, and we had a pleasant conversation together around our brushwood fire. It makes the desert seem less lonely because I can sometimes imagine my friend still reclining over on the other side of the fire in the light that plays against the great rock.
“Well, little mother o’ mine, I must close. Cheer up, for it’s been intimated to me that I may be sent East to the general assembly in the spring—and then for three whole weeks with you! That will be when the wild strawberries are out, and I’ll carry you in my arms and spread a couch for you on the strawberry hill behind the house, and you’ll pick again with your own hands.”
With a sudden catch in her throat the reading ended, and Hazel, her eyes shining with tears, handed the letter reverently b
ack to the mother whose face was bright with smiles.
“Isn’t he a boy worth giving?” she asked as she folded the letter and slipped it back under the cover.
“He’s a great gift,” said Hazel in a low voice.
She was almost glad Amelia Ellen walked up with an armful of flowers just then and she might bury her face in their freshness and hide the tears that wouldn’t be stayed. Then before she’d half admired their beauty she heard a loud “Honk-honk!” from the road, followed by a more impatient one, that made Hazel aware she was being waited for.
“I’m sorry you must go, dear,” said the gentle woman. “I haven’t seen such a beautiful girl in years, and I’m sure you have a lovely heart, too. I wish you could visit me again.”
“I’ll come again sometime if you’ll let me!” said the girl impulsively. Then she stooped and kissed the soft cheek and fled down the path, trying to gain control of her emotions before meeting her companions.
Hazel was quiet the rest of the way and was reproached often for her solemnity. She pleaded a headache and closed her eyes, while each heartthrob carried her back over the months and brought her again to the little camp under the rock beneath the stars.
He remembered still! He cared! her glad thoughts sang as the car whirled on. And her companions forgot her as they chattered about their activities.
The Man of the Desert Page 9