by Gwen Bristow
She glanced at Hiram as she spoke. He was looking down at her. They had both paused by the door. For a moment they stood there, looking at each other. Then all of a sudden Hiram said, “You beautiful darling,” and Kendra found herself in his arms.
They had a moment. But it was only a moment. There was a sound of footsteps. Somebody was approaching.
Kendra pushed herself out of his arms and slipped into the empty card room. The door swung behind her; she did not look to see if it had closed or not. She crossed the room and stood by the window, aware of nothing but her new certainty.
—He does love me. And I love him. This is it. This is love. I never felt like this about any other man. It’s different because I’m different. What Hiram said is true.
She heard the door bang. Of course, the door would bang. Hiram could not come into any room without banging the door. Pocket could, and usually did, move so quietly that you had to see him before you knew he was there. But not Hiram. He made noise like an army.
She turned from the window. Hiram stood by the closed door, facing her. He spoke.
“There now, I’ve done it. Now you know I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since—I don’t know since when.”
Kendra remembered Loren. She exclaimed, “Don’t tell me since we were on the Cynthia!”
“Of course not. You were a pretty girl then, no more. That’s what I’ve just been telling you. And not since we rode up to Shiny Gulch, either. I don’t know when it began. All I know is, I’m in love with you now. Am I a fool?”
“No!” she returned quickly. “You are not a fool. I love you too.”
“Then—” he began, and stopped, tongue-tied with that same strange, baffling shyness. He stood, literally, with his back to the wall, and he looked as if he felt that way too.
They stood looking at each other across the card table. “Hiram,” she pled, “what is it you’ve been trying to tell me?”
Hiram pulled out a chair and slumped into it. He crossed his arms on the table and dropped his head upon them. His thick rust-colored hair tumbled all about.
A hard silence lay in the room. Neither of them ever knew how long a silence it was. But at last, Hiram raised his head and looked at her. He spoke, almost timidly.
“Kendra—you said you loved me back.”
She went around the table to him. Standing beside him, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Hiram, I do.”
He looked up, into her eyes. “Does that mean—” he smiled, like a little boy “—for always? Marriage?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
But he was still timid. “Even—even if I don’t belong to the club?”
“What club, Hiram?”
“The one I told you about. The most exclusive club in the world. The people who can take the wind as God sends it. You belong. I don’t.”
Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “Hiram, Hiram my dear, what are you trying to say?”
“I suppose,” he answered harshly, “I’m trying to say I’m the biggest coward this side of the Rocky Mountains.”
She waited. This was a time for her to say nothing.
Again there was a silence, and again it seemed a long silence. Kendra stood with her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her, and she wondered what he had to tell her. He looked so strong, he had seemed so sure of himself, but now he was not. Now he was frightened of something, something that he knew and she did not. At last he said,
“Sit down over there. I’ve got to tell you. I’ll tell you.”
She obeyed him. She went around to the other side of the table and sat down. Looking straight at her over his crossed arms, Hiram asked,
“Kendra, what do you know about me?”
She thought before she answered. “I don’t know much about what you left behind you,” she said at length. “I mean, what you did before you shipped on the Cynthia. You said you were a minister’s son and you grew up in New York State.”
“That’s not much, is it?” said Hiram. “Haven’t you ever wished you knew more?”
She had, but she spoke of what she did know. “Hiram, it’s been said a thousand times that all of us who came to California before the gold rush had some mighty good reason for leaving home. I don’t know what yours was. But I do know this. You’re the finest man I ever met. Whatever your reason was, I know it wasn’t anything low or mean or dishonorable.”
He was listening with eager intentness. Kendra smiled at him.
“I’m a lot wiser now, Hiram, than I was when I made a romantic hero out of Ted Parks. You’re another sort of man. You’re not a man who acts without thinking and then runs away. You’re not a halfway person.”
Almost breathlessly he said, “Thank you, Kendra. Thank you, my darling.”
“Now,” she asked, “whatever it is you’ve got to say, can’t you say it?”
Hiram drew a deep breath. On the table before him his big hard hands doubled into fists. “Kendra,” he blurted, “I don’t know who I am.”
Startled and perplexed, she did not answer at once. When she did answer, all she could say was, “What are you talking about?”
“Just that,” he retorted. His voice was rough, almost angry. Now that he was saying it, his words poured out in a torrent. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what my name is, where I came from, what I inherited, what sort of children I’d give you. Don’t you understand, for God’s sake? I don’t know who I am.”
“No,” she exclaimed, “I don’t understand.”
Hiram’s chin dropped to his chest. He rested his forehead on one hand and the fingers pushed up through his shaggy hair. “All right,” he said in a muffled voice. “I knew if I ever managed to tell you this I’d do it badly. I’ll say it as plainly as I can.”
She murmured, foolishly, “You said you were a minister’s son—”
Hiram jerked up his head and interrupted her. “I’m nobody’s son. They found me in a garbage can.”
He drew another deep hard breath. Kendra waited. After a while he went on.
“The church stood under some trees, a little way back from the highway that led up from New York City. At intervals the women of the congregation used to come in and give the place a house-cleaning. They would sweep and dust and polish and wash the windows, all that sort of thing. Afterward their husbands would join them and they would have supper in the social hall. The rubbish from the cleaning, and the leftover scraps of food, went into a garbage can that stood outside. The next morning the janitor would carry it to the town dump. Well, one morning after a cleaning party, on top of the trash in the garbage can the janitor found a newborn child.”
Hiram stopped. While he talked he had not been looking at her. He had been looking down at his big strong hands. It was a way he had, looking at his hands when he was confronted with a situation before which his own strength was no good. It was as if he was reproaching his hands for being useless. Now as he stopped talking he still did not raise his eyes.
Kendra kept quiet. She felt sure he had more to tell her and did not want to be interrupted till he was ready for an answer. She was right; after a moment or two he went on.
“That child was me. I was whimpering, so the janitor knew I was alive. If he had come by a little later I suppose I would have been dead. Poor fellow, he was shocked half out of his wits. He ran to the minister’s home and gasped out news of what he had found. The minister and his wife—Mr. and Mrs. Boyd—came and saw me. They carried me home and took care of me.”
Hiram gave his head a slow shake.
“They tried to find out who had put me there, but they couldn’t. In a small town where everybody knew everybody else, nobody knew anything about this. I had been brought there from somewhere else. In the night somebody had passed along the highway, with a child nobody wanted. Whoever that somebody was, he caught sight of the garbage can beside the chu
rch. Of course the church would be empty that time of night. A good chance to throw away the child and go on without being seen.”
Hiram stopped again, and drew another hard breath before he spoke again.
“The Boyds were kindly people. They kept me and gave me their name and let me grow up with their own children. I’m grateful for all they did for me. As long as I’m alive they won’t want for anything.”
There was another break. Hiram sat as if gathering strength to go on talking about the hurt that for so long had been festering within him.
“They were kind. But—children aren’t kind. Children are hideously cruel. They don’t know it. They don’t know they’re being cruel when they catch bugs and pull off the wings. I had been found in a garbage can. Everybody in town knew this. When I went to school the other boys taunted me with it. ‘Hiram’s a piece of trash! They found Hiram in a garbage can!’”
He smiled bitterly.
“Pretty soon, I learned. As I grew bigger, I grew bigger than most of them. I beat them up. That kept them quiet, but they never forgot it and neither did I. In little towns like that, nobody forgets anything. I made up my mind that when I grew up I would go out to the end of the world where nobody knew I came out of a garbage can. I’m here. But that doesn’t change the fact. I still don’t know who I am. Behind me, there’s still the garbage can.”
At last he looked up at her. He gave her another of those hard, bitter smiles.
“Kendra, telling you this is about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But now I’ve told it. Now you know. Do you still want me?”
Kendra gave him a smile in return. Unlike his, her smile was not bitter, but tender and gentle. She reached across the table and put her hands on his. She said softly,
“Hiram, is that all?”
“All?” He jerked his hands away and again he doubled them into fists. “All? Don’t you understand? For all I know my mother may have been a streetwalker and my father a murderer. Maybe I was born of imbeciles or lunatics. I don’t know. And you don’t know either, Kendra.”
“But I know you!” she retorted. “You’re not an imbecile nor a lunatic nor a murderer—Hiram, does anybody ever really know all about the ancestors behind him?”
As she spoke, his eyes had widened. His lips had parted with astonishment that was almost unbelief. In a voice low and strange for him, he asked, “You’ll risk it?”
“Yes, Hiram,” she said quietly.
A smile broke over his face like a light. For a little time neither of them said anything else. They simply sat there and looked at each other across the card table, and were happy. Then Kendra asked,
“Hiram, why was it so hard for you to tell me this?”
Hiram reached out and took both her hands in his. It cost him an effort to answer. But he answered. He said,
“Because—I was afraid—when you found out—you would say no. I could stand anything but that. I couldn’t stand being thrown away again. Or maybe I could—I mean, maybe I could stand being thrown away by somebody else. But not by you.”
His hands tightened on hers.
“Now you know everything,” he said, “and I’m glad you do. You know what a shivering coward I am and you love me anyway. Kendra, you genuinely don’t think it’s important?”
“No, Hiram,” she returned steadily. “I think you’ve been making it a great deal more important than it is.”
“You do? Why?”
“There are thousands of people,” said Kendra, “who have adopted their children. Those children grow up safe and happy.”
“But those children,” he exclaimed, “were wanted.”
Hiram pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Kendra,” he went on, “maybe I’ve been making it important because all my life I’ve known nobody wanted me. My parents, whoever they were, certainly didn’t want me or they wouldn’t have thrown me away. My foster-parents didn’t want me—why should they? They had their own children. I was an extra burden they carried from a sense of duty. They never said so, they were always kind. That’s it. They were kind.”
Hiram drew a short breath.
“You wouldn’t understand that,” he said slowly, as he stood looking down at her. “You had real parents. You were wanted, you were loved, you were somebody’s child—”
At this Kendra stood up too, so abruptly that her chair fell over behind her. Hiram stared at her in amazement. She was staring at him too. For the first time she was realizing that Hiram did not know about her parents’ elopement and her years of being put away in boarding schools because nobody wanted her. She had never told him about her lonely sense of being nobody’s child.
She knew who her parents were; she had that much advantage over him. They had not thrown her into a garbage can. But her mother had grasped at the first chance she had to get rid of her, by handing her over to her grandmother and ignoring her as much as appearances would allow. Her grandmother had kept her out of the way as much as possible. If ever there was an unwanted child, it was herself.
Hiram did not know this. He did not know how much understanding she had to give him, any more than she had known how much he needed it. She used to think of Hiram as being utterly strong and confident. It was dawning upon her that nobody was utterly strong and confident. Everybody needed help from other people.
Hiram stood still, where he was, speechless. Her own silence and her own surprise had given him a shock. Kendra walked around the table and stood before him and held out her hands. He took them in his and looked down at her with love and a wondering awe.
“You do want me then, Kendra?” he asked.
Kendra’s throat had closed up. She could not answer. She nodded, dumbly, then all of a sudden she found that his arms were around her and she was crying, her head on his shoulder while his big hands soothed her as if she had been a child. After a little while she managed to look up, tears still on her cheeks.
“Hiram,” she said chokily, “you need me, but no more than I need you. You and I—oh Hiram, I have so much to tell you!”
62
THEY HAD DINNER AT the Union Hotel, leaving the others to dine on whatever Lulu and Lolo saw fit to serve them. Before going out Hiram engaged this card room for the rest of the evening. When they came in they sat down to talk, and they talked for hours, and nothing they said seemed ordinary. Every line provoked laughter or tears, and sometimes both. Kendra had never laughed so much in one evening, nor cried so much either. But even the tears were delightful, for every time he saw her eyes grow misty Hiram kissed her and made her laugh again.
At last, when they heard Marny pass the door on her way to the kitchen for chocolate, they went to meet her, walking hand in hand like two children, and told her they were going to be married. Marny kissed them both and wished them all the joy in the world.
“Are you surprised?” asked Hiram.
Marny began to laugh. “Certainly not. Anybody could see you were in love with Kendra. But I thought you were never going to get around to saying so.”
“I suppose,” Hiram returned modestly, “I’m just a bashful swain.”
She laughed again and gave him an affectionate pat on the cheek. “I’ve observed,” she said, “that big tough men like you are often bashful when it comes to speaking tender lines. Don’t apologize.”
“I haven’t,” retorted Hiram, “and I won’t.”
When Marny came down the next morning Kendra told her letters had already come by messenger from both Pocket and Hiram. Pocket’s letter said he rejoiced at the news. Hiram’s letter said he would be over this evening to take her out to dinner again and then to a play, and would she please wear the blue silk dress with the flouncy sleeves because this was the one he liked best.
Marny smiled across her coffee cup. “He’s really in love with you, Kendra. I wish you so much happiness—” she sobered, and reached to take Kendra’s hand in hers. “And this time, dear, I think you’re going to have it.”
That evening
Kendra put on the blue dress with the flouncy sleeves, and when Hiram came in he brought her a blue silk folding fan with ivory sticks. He also brought silk-and-ivory fans for Marny and Hortensia and Lulu and Lolo—all chosen, he said, from among the five hundred dozen that had been advertised in the Alta. The fans, of varied colors and designs, were beautiful, and the girls thanked him. Hiram and Kendra went off together.
Marny had an unexciting dinner of beef and potatoes, prepared by Lulu. After dinner she went up to her room for a breathing space before going back to work.
Marny’s bedroom was well furnished, with soft deep rugs on the floor and a satin quilt on the bed, a long mirror, heavy curtains to keep her from being waked up by the morning light, and on the table a whale oil lamp with a shade of frosted glass. She lit the lamp and looked at herself in the mirror.
She was wearing a black satin dress with a flourish of white cobweb lawn across the bosom. Around her waist was a gun belt—black leather tonight, so as not to be too obvious against her black dress—with her little gun tucked into the holster. Her only ornaments were her nugget necklace and a pair of plain gold earrings. When she dealt cards she never wore rings or bracelets. Marny smiled at her reflection. She was a striking person, no doubt about it, with her trim figure, her flamboyant red hair and green eyes. After all this time in the mists of San Francisco she had no freckles left but a few golden dots that made a butterfly pattern, hardly more than a shadow, across her nose and cheeks. That trace of freckles seemed to be there to remind onlookers that while she was not really beautiful, she was uniquely herself.
She wanted to see how the kittens were. The big whale oil lamp was too heavy to be easily carried about, so lighting a smaller lamp she went into the boudoir. She set the lamp on the side table and bent to look into the hut.
The kittens were now eight days old, and how they had grown! They were still tiny, but so much bigger than they had been at first. No wonder, for they seemed to be always nursing. Luckily Geraldine was putting away prodigious quantities of food and could give them all the milk they wanted. Right now the kittens were curled up beside her, on a soft old blanket folded and tucked into the hut to make a bed. Geraldine was purring, happy as a cat could be.