Wanza

“ Joey was sleeping peacefully indoors, watched over by Mrs. Olds, the doctor had just left, after assuring me that my lad would soon be convalescent, and Wanza and I walked on the river bank.
“Wanza,” I said, “is that a russet-backed thrush singing?”
“I think so, Mr. Dale.”
“His notes are wonderfully liquid and round, aren’t they?” I gave a sigh of pure happiness. “I feel like a ‘strong bird on pinions free,’ myself to-night. I feel emancipated—as though life were beginning all over for me. I am in love with life, Wanza. I want to awake to-morrow and begin life all over.” ”

“ Dear Wanza:
I am in trouble. Mrs. Batterly has met with an accident, and is here at my cabin, unable to be moved. I have also a very sick man—a stranger—on my hands. Joey and I need you—will you come?
Your old friend,
David Dale.
Wanza responded gallantly to my call for aid. In a couple of hours I heard the rattle of her cart and the jingle of harness, and the sound of Buttons’ hoof-beats on the river road, and emerged from my workshop to greet her. ”

“ They’s no one can cook like you, Wanza. Mr. David can’t live here alone when he’s old—he can’t live here alone no more—say you’ll come and take care of him. Why, you like the birds and the squirrels—you know you do, Wanza—and you like Mr. David, too. Will you, Wanza?” The soft wheedling accents wrung my heart.
At the girl’s head-shake he whispered to me, “You ask her, Mr. David.”
My hand groped for hers, closed over it, gripped it hard.
“If I ask her now—if she says yes, lad—it will be for your sake—all for your sake, Joey.” ”

“ Olds. Although I was in love with Haidee, and although Joey was an entertaining companion, and although I found Mrs. Olds’ pessimism a curious study, it was to Wanza that I turned most frequently for comfort and advice during these trying days. We had many a rueful laugh together at Mrs. Olds’ expense.
“The whole thing with her, I do think,” Wanza said, one day, “is drawing her pay.”
But Wanza maligned her. Mrs. Olds was a rare nurse, conscientious to a fault. ”

“ A canoe came slipping along in the shade of the willows. As I stared and stared, a voice hailed me, a voice compelling and shrill. Wanza sat, paddle in hand, the thick fair hair pleached low on her brows and bound with a crimson handkerchief, her young eyes disdainful, her lips sulky. When she met my eyes she frowned.
I swept my canoe close to hers. “Did you call me?” I asked, with marked respect.
She frowned still more deeply.
“Wanza,” I cried, with swift cajolery, “washed or unwashed your hair is wonderful. It is the color of corn silk, and your eyes are surely blue as the cornflowers. ”

“ Had I thought of Haidee so?
When I turned back to the cedar room, Mrs. Olds met me at the door with a whispered, “Joey is lucid—he is asking for you.” I crossed swiftly to the bed, knelt down and took my lad’s hand. He smiled at me in his old way, but his eyes went past me to Mrs. Olds. His voice was distinct as he ordered, “Go, get Wanza, Mrs. Olds, please.”
I heard Wanza’s step at that moment. She came softly forward and crouched beside me. “I am here, Joey,” she said in her rich young voice.
“That’s all right then! Wanza; if I don’t get well you got to marry Mr. David.” ”

“ I saw that she was terribly in earnest.
“A gipsy’s life isn’t all play, Wanza. It’s all right in poetry! And it’s all right for a gipsy. But Wanza Lyttle is better off in her peddler’s cart.”
“Well, I’d just like to try it for awhile!”
[108] I remembered a song I had heard in Spokane—at Davenport’s roof garden—on a rare occasion when an artist chap who had spent some weeks at my shack had insisted on putting me up for a day or two while I visited the art shops in the city. It was a haunting thing, with a flowing happy lilt. ”

“ I had just laid my hand on a piece of resinous wood when I heard a joyous confused babble of tongues in the kitchen I had quitted. Joey had entered by the front door and shouted Wanza’s name gleefully. And then I heard:
“Bless your old heart! Have you a birthday kiss for Wanza? Well I am late getting round this birthday—I usually come at noon, don’t I, Joey?—but better late than never! It’s getting too hot to eat in the middle of the day. We thought—Mr. Dale and me—that we would change the doings this year. ”

“ Dale?”
“Yes,” I said wearily, “I thought you had gone, Wanza. Why not?”
“And I’ll tell you why not! It’s because you decided Joey was to go that I could not go. I could not go and leave you when I found Joey was to go—oh, no!”
“But you must go some day, Wanza,” I said, scarce knowing what I said.
“And why must I go some day? Why must I? I tell you what I’m going to do, Mr. David Dale, I’m going to stay on here in Roselake, and I am going to live up to the very best there is in me. I am going to improve and grow big and fine and womanly. I’m going to do it right here. ”

“ But instead of telling me his name, he went on presently: “You are master of a somewhat unusual household, [215] Dale. I am vastly interested. You’re a lucky dog to have such a Hebe for a protégée as the girl Wanza, such an infant prodigy as that young scamp, who shows fine discrimination, and glowers at me from the kitchen door, for an adopted son,—and who is the interesting lady patient on whom Wanza waits and who is shut up in a Blue Beard’s closet next my room? I have a sly sure instinct that tells me she is the most wonderful of the lot.” ”

“ When you receive this Joey will be with you—there in the old place that he loves so dearly. And you—how you will rejoice to have your lad again. Bless you both! David Dale, I shall not visit Hidden Lake this summer,—I have learned much in these past months. Do you not know your own heart yet? I have read carefully, searchingly all the letters you have written me this past winter, and I find Wanza, Wanza, between the lines. She is the true mate for you—can you not see this? Do you not feel it? Do you not know you love her—as she loves you? ”

“ I nodded, pointing into the coals. “I see a lion, and an old witch, and a monkey. I don’t see any woman.”
“There! There!” I cried. “She’s just going through the postern gate. Oh, she’s gone, lad! Never mind! Next time you may see her.”
“And is she prettier’n Wanza, Mr. David?”
“Perhaps not prettier,” I responded. “Wanza looking out from beneath the pink-lined umbrella on her peddler’s cart is very charming, indeed. But the woman I see in the fire is—oh, she’s altogether different!”
This was the customary tenor of my conversation with Joey as we sat before our fire of pine knots of an evening. ”

“ Suddenly Wanza broke into a tempest of tears, and sobbed and shook, huddled against my shoulder, stammering: “Everything is upside down—upside down! But—yes, Mr. Dale, I am glad—glad—that Mrs. Batterly has got a husband living. He’s probably a bad man, and if she wanted to run away it was all right and nobody’s business. ”

“ All my days and many nights were spent in the saddle, and the evenings that I passed at Cedar Dale were consumed in feverish plans for the scoutings that I made. I did not even now attempt to visit Haidee at Hidden Lake; but one morning, at sunrise, hearing a soft tap on my door, I opened to see Wanza standing there with a covered basket on her arm.
[267] “I saw your light last night,” she quavered. “I have brought you some good nourishing food. I can see you’re not cooking for yourself. You’re growing white and thin.” ”

“ And I smiled to myself; but wonderingly. Still a doubt assailed me. I grew wary. And fate favored me. When Wanza stopped her cart at the meadow bars en route to Roselake one day, to pick up Joey, I saddled Buttons and rode to the village in their wake. At the post-office I swung out of my saddle.
“Give me your letters, Wanza,” I suggested. “Don’t get down. I’ll post them.”
Once inside the office I ran the letters through my fingers. There were two letters addressed to Miss Janet Jones, Spokane, Washington, and the writing was that with which I had grown familiar in Janet Jones’ letters to me. ”

“ That night at bed-time, Joey confidentially said to me:
“I won’t tell Wanza that the new woman is our wonder woman—’cause she mightn’t like it. Anyhow, is she any more of a wonder woman than Wanza, Mr. David?” ”

“ You will love the old home, and the river with its red clay banks—my childhood’s home. We will travel, too. Life seems very full, Wanza.”
“But we’ll always come back to Cedar Dale, won’t we, David Dale? We’ll come back to Dad—dear Dad—he’ll always be waiting. And the birds and the flowers—and the squirrels and woodsy things will be waiting. And Joey will want to come.” ”

“ Wanza shook her head at me, and left her sentence unfinished.
“I could not have found it in my heart to paint such a picture, Wanza girl,” I replied, “had I not intended to give Joey the opportunity to compare it with the reality. We will stretch the old tarpaulin over the ranch wagon in the morning, stow away some bacon and cornmeal and a frying pan, harness Buttons to the caravan, and go out into the greenwood to tilt a lance with fortune.” ”

“ There ain’t much Wanza don’t know about a house.”
“How do you manage during Wanza’s busy season when she is absent so much in her cart? She seems to be a very busy saleswoman these days,” I remarked.
“Well, the days are lonesome like. But she’s hardly ever gone more’n a night or two at a time—the [71] gal never neglects her old dad. Once a week she tidies and bakes regular. I am used to bachin’ it too, it seems natural to cook vittles, and sweep—jest like old times. I allow it’s great. The most bothersome thing I have to do nowadays is ’tendin’ the flowers. ”

“ And when the coyotes holler Bell Brandon’s frightened too.”
Later on the porch at parting, Haidee said to me:
“Have you worked long on the frame you are carving for Wanza’s picture?”
“Since—oh, I began it about the time Joey was lost,” I answered.
She looked at me curiously.
[306] “Wanza is very lovely in that picture.”
“She is. She is growing more beautiful every day,” I answered thoughtfully; “her soul shines in her face. I realize each time I see her how her character is rounding—how sturdy and fine she is in her trouble.” ”

“ A pretty girl is naturally vain. And as for the pink lining—it’s as natural for a fair, pale girl like you to line her umbrella with pink as it is for a fruit dealer to stretch pink gauze over his sallow fruit.”
“What do you mean by that?” Wanza demanded fiercely. She dropped the lines. “Now, what do you mean by that, I say?”
“Dear Wanza,” I said, soothingly, “I don’t [250] mean anything—except that pink lends a pretty glow to an alabaster skin like yours.”
Her eyes gleamed at me savagely in the moonlight, and she made a strange sound in her throat that sounded like a sob. ”

“ The [70] Father’s heart’s that s-soft he’d s-strip the coat from his back to give it to a beggar.”
“Yes,” I said, “I well know that. Wanza has told me as much.”
“Wanza knows she hasn’t any better friends than Father O’Shan and the sisters at the old Mission up De Smet way.” The smiling face lengthened, he filled his pipe from the tobacco jar at his elbow, and tamped down the weed with a broad forefinger. “Wanza’s a high strung girl, Mr. Dale, she’s peppery, and she’s headstrong, but Sister Veronica can do almost anything with her, ay! ”

“ I needed to grip hard a friendly hand. “Nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.” Walt Whitman spoke truly. Someway I knew that Wanza’s sympathy was true and exquisite, that her understanding was profound. ”

“ Wanza in her bright sweater, with her tawny hair, and the carmine in her cheek flitted in and out of the wood paths like a forest dryad, exclaiming at every frost-touched leaf, and reveling in the painted glory about us.
“But the birds are gone,” she said, a tear in her tones, as we looked into an empty king-bird’s nest one day. “I love the king-birds—they’re sleek dandies—that’s what they are! Oh, Mr. Dale, what a heartache an empty nest gives me! The dear little birds are gone—”
“And Joey is not here,” I ended sadly. ”

“ If danger ever threatens you—”
“If danger ever threatened me, I believe that you would intervene—you are a brave man, David Dale. But I shall live safely—going on with my even life—in my little cabin, with good Wanza for a companion. ”

“ We went forward to the pine tree and sat down together beneath it. Wanza did not speak. I was enchanted because she did not. I could just dimly see her face. Her head was thrown back, and I knew her eyes were lifted.
The light began to spread over the east. Soon the mountain tops were touched with orange fire. [339] A cool breeze sprang up, and the young hemlocks on the hillsides swayed and tossed their fringes. But the pines in our grove stood immovable and black, and the wood vistas were unlit. I heard the river, and the babble of a rillet in a draw hard by. ”

“ We have had some rather interesting arguments during our jovial evenings with Captain Grif. At first I thought you were a genius. But I know you better now. I have studied you. You’re normal, splendidly balanced, healthy, resistant. You’re clever and plodding—you’ll make good. But you are not a genius. I like you immensely. Certain things I have gathered from Wanza make me feel that at times you need a friendly hand—that you are breasting treacherous currents, even now. Come, Dale, I’d be your friend. ”