Part 8
She set the candle on the chimney. It showed her rock-built domicile, plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue china on the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the north wall. A corner staircase led to the second story of the tower, and on its lowest step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and panting. She was peculiarly dressed in the calico bloomers which the King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little feet, cased in strong shoes, appeared below the baggy trousers. The upper part of her person, her almond eyes, round curves and features were full of Oriental suggestions. Some sweet inmate of a harem might so have materialized, bruising her softness against the hard stair.
“Why, Rosanne Baker!” her hostess reiterated. Cecilia did not wear bloomers. She stood erect in petticoats. “I thought you went on one of the boats!”
“I didn't,” sobbed Rosanne. “When they were crowding us on I slipped among the lumber piles and hid. I've been hid all day, lying flat between boards—on top where they couldn't see me.”
“Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too! And you haven't had anything to eat?”
“I don't want to eat. I'm only frightened to death at the wicked Gentiles burning the island. I couldn't stay there all night, so I got down and ran to your house.”
“Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne, where's your husband?”
The trembling creature stiffened herself and looked at Cecilia out of the corners of her long eyes. “He's with Elizabeth Aiken.”
The only wife of one husband did not know how to take hold of this subject.
“But your father was there,” she suggested. “How could you leave your father and run the risk of never seeing him again?”
“I don't care if I never see him again. He said he was so discouraged he didn't care what became of any of us.”
Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic affection further, but she saw that four step-mothers could easily be given up. She turned helplessly to her husband who stood in the door.
“Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall we do?”
“Put her to bed.”
“Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you to-morrow?”
“There are two good guns on the rack over the chimney. I don't think anybody will hurt me or her either, to-morrow.”
“Rosanne, my dear,” said Cecilia, trying to lift the relaxed soft body and to open the stairway door behind her. “Come up with me right off. I think you better be where people cannot look in at us.”
Rosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, clinging to her friend. When they disappeared the young man heard her through the stairway enclosure sobbing with convulsive gasps:
“I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would kill Elizabeth Aiken! I hate her—I hate her!”
The light-house-keeper sat down again on his doorstep and faced the prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the situation with that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to burn lower, brands streaming away in the current which a fire makes. It was strange to be more conscious of inland doings than of that vast unsalted sea so near him, which moistened his hair with vaporous drifts through the darkness. The garnet redness of the temple shed a huger amphitheatre of shine around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his lips. He was considering that drunken fishermen might presently begin to rove, and he would be wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his candle, when by stealthy approaches around the light-house two persons stood before him.
“Is Ludlow here?” inquired a voice which he knew.
“I'm here, Jim! Are all the Mormons coming back?”
“Is Rosanne in your house?”
“Rosanne is here; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come inside, Jim. Have you Elizabeth with you?”
“Yes, I have Elizabeth with me.”
The three entered together. Ludlow shut the door and dropped an iron bar across it. The young men standing opposite were of nearly the same age; but one was fearless and free and the other harassed and haggard. Out-door labor and the skill of the fisheries had given to both depth of chest and clean, muscular limbs. But James Baker had the desperate and hunted look of a fugitive from justice. He was fair, of the strong-featured, blue-eyed type that has pale chestnut-colored hair clinging close to a well-domed head.
“Yes, Rosanne is here,” Ludlow repeated. “Now will you tell me how you got here?”
“I rowed back in a boat.”
“Who let you have a boat?”
“There were sailors on the steamer. After I found Rosanne was left behind I would have had a boat or killed the man that prevented me. I had to wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your wife would take care of her. I told myself that when I couldn't find any chance to land in St. James's Bay until sunset.”
“She's been hiding in the lumber on the dock all day.”
“Did any one hurt her?”
“Evidently not.”
The Mormon husband's face cleared with a convulsion which in woman would have been a relieving burst of tears.
“Sit down, Elizabeth,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “You look fit to fall.”
“Yes, sit down, Elizabeth,” James Baker repeated, turning to her with secondary interest. But she remained standing, a tall Greek figure in bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack was an accident of which the eye took no account. She had pushed her soft brown hair, dampened by the lake, behind her ears. They showed delicately against the two shining masses. Her forehead and chin were of noble and courageous shape. If there was fault, it was in the breadth and height of brows masterful rather than feminine. She had not one delicious sensuous charm to lure man. Her large eyes were blotted with a hopeless blankness. She waited to see what would be done next.
“Now I'll tell you,” said Baker to his friend, with decision, “I'm not going to bring the howling Gentiles around you.”
“I don't care whether they come or not.”
“I know you don't. It isn't necessary in such a time as this for you and me to look back.”
“I told you at the time I wouldn't forget it, Jim. You stood by me when I married Cecilia in the teeth of the Mormons, and I'll stand by you through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat's out yonder, and it's yours as long as you want it; and we'll provision it.”
“That's what I was going to ask, Ludlow.”
“If I were you I'd put for Green Bay. Old neighbors are there, my father among them.”
“That was my plan!”
“But,” Ludlow added, turning his thumb over his shoulder with embarrassment, “they're all Gentiles in Green Bay.”
“Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I told her the truth before God. We've agreed to live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any wife but Rosanne, and I don't want any wife but Rosanne now. You don't know how it happened; I was first of the young men called on to set an example. Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear that it was impossible to resist. He might have threatened till doomsday. But I don't know what he did with me. I told him it wasn't treating Elizabeth fair. Still, I married her according to Saints' law, and I consider myself bound by my pledge to provide for her. She's a good girl. She has no one to look to but me. And I'm not going to turn her off to shift for herself if the whole United States musters against me.”
“Now you talk like a man. I think better of you than I have for a couple of weeks past.”
“It ought to make me mad to be run off of Beaver. But I couldn't take any interest. May I see Rosanne?”
“Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put her to bed. The walls and floors are thick here or she would have heard your voice.”
“Poor little Rosanne! It's been a hard day for her.”
The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”
“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”
Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and remarked:
“It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have fair weather.”
“I think we are,” she answered.
Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the windows.
At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.
Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his weapons.
“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer. I'm going to open this window.”
A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way through the window.
“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun on the sill. “You're tramping down my wife's flowers.”
“It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen them shlipping in here!”
“It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own dacent wife that hard to come at, by raison of King Strang!”
“Augh! thim bloomers!—they do be makin' me sthummick sick!”
“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay the Mormons for fish barrels.”
The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us oat the divil forninst there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”
“I haven't any devil in the house.”
“It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”
“Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the women.”
“He'll not lave it alive.”
“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the torch-bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?”
“Do I moind it? I do!”
“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”
“No, bedad.”
“When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you, didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?”
“You did, bedad!”
“I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you. They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.”
“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.
“How many wives and children have you?”
“Is it 'how many wives,' says the haythen! Wan wife, by the powers; and tin childer.”
“Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?”
“Begobs, I have.”
“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her? Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it yourself.”
“No, bedad!”
“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”
The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for good.
“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his confederates.
“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not making a war on women.”
“We're not. Thrue for you.”
“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”
As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.
“I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim.”
In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.
“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says he'll build me a little house in your yard.”
“Oh, Elizabeth!”
Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself into the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.
The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights were not even recognized by the society into which she would be forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?
Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.
“Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!” said the man to whom Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law unhusbanded her.
Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal without touching him as he lurched over a rock.
He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.
“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up the lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think there'll be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”
“I'll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”
“Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give him news of us and our love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about Beaver.”
“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”
“Good-bye, Cecilia!”
A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the rush of water on each side of a boat's course, marked the fugitives' progress towards the anchored smack.
Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the smoke of her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the sense of a great company around her. The uninstructed girl from the little kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and loving in hopeless silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to their reward. For there is a development like the unfolding of a god for those who suffer in strength and overcome.
A BRITISH ISLANDER[2]
Well, I wish you could have been here in Mrs. Gunning's day. She was theoddest woman on Mackinac. Not that she exerted herself to attract attention. But she was such a character, and her manners were so astonishing, that she furnished perennial entertainment to the few families of us constituting island society.
[Footnote 2: This story is set down exactly as it was told by the Island Chronicler.]
She was an English woman, born in South Africa, and married to an American army surgeon, and had lived over a large part of the world before coming to this fort. She had no children. But her sister had married Dr. Gunning's brother. And the good-for-nothing pair set out to follow the English drum-beat around the world, and left a child for the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana Gunning was so deaf she could not hear thunder. But she was quits with nature, for all that; a wonderfully alluring kind of girl, with big brown eyes that were better than ears, and that could catch the meaning of moving lips. It seemed to strangers that she merely evaded conversation; for she had a sweet voice, a little drawling, and was witty when she wanted to speak. Juliana couldn't step out of the surgeon's quarters to walk across the parade-ground without making every soldier in the fort conscious of her. She was well-shaped and tall, and a slight pitting of the skin only enhanced the charm of her large features. She used to dress unlike anybody else, in foreign things that her aunt gave her, and was always carrying different kinds of thin scarfs to throw over her face and tantalize the men.
Everybody knew that Captain Markley would marry her if he could. But along comes Dr. McCurdy, a wealthy widower from the East, and nothing will do but he must hang about Mackinac week after week, pretending to need the climate—and he weighing nearly two hundred—to court Juliana Gunning. The lieutenant's wife said of Juliana that she would flirt with a half-breed if nothing better offered. But the lieutenant's wife was a homely, jealous little thing, and could never have had all the men hanging after her. And if she had had the chance she might have been as aggravating about making up her mind between two as Juliana was.
We used to think the girl very good-natured. But those three people made a queer family. Dr. Gunning was the remnant of a magnificent man, and he always had a courtly air. He paid little attention to the small affairs of life, and rated money as nothing. Dr. Gunning had his peculiarities; but I am not telling you about him. He was a kind man, and would cross the strait in any weather to attend a sick half-breed or any other ailing creature, who probably never paid him a cent. He was fond of the island, and quite satisfied to spend his life here.
The day I am telling you about, Mrs. Gunning had driven with me into the village to make some calls. She was very punctilious about calling upon strangers. If she intended to recognize a newcomer she called at once. We drove around to the rear of the fort and entered at the back sally-port, where carriages always enter; but instead of letting me put her down at the surgeon's quarters, she ordered the driver to stop in the middle of the parade-ground. Then she got out and, with never a word, marched down the steps to Captain Markley, where he was leaning against the front sally-port, looking below into the town. I didn't know what to do, so I sat and waited. It was the loveliest autumn morning you ever saw. I remember the beeches and oaks and maples were spread out like banners to the very height of the island, all crimson and yellow splashes in the midst of evergreens. There had been an awful storm the night before, and you could see down the sally-port how drenched the fort garden was at the foot of the hill.
Captain Markley had a fearfully depressed look. He was so down in the mouth that the sentinels noticed it. I saw the one in front of the western block-house stick his tongue in his cheek and wink at one pacing below. We heard afterwards that Captain Markley had been out alone to inspect target-ranges in the pine woods, and almost ran against Juliana Gunning and Dr. McCurdy sitting on a log. Before he could get out of the way he overheard the loudest proposal ever made on Mackinac. It used to be told about in mess, though how it got out Captain Markley said he did not know, unless they heard it at the fort.
“I have brought you out here,” the doctor shouted to Juliana, as loud as a cow lowing, “to tell you that I love you! I want you to be my wife!”
She behaved as if she didn't hear—I think that minx often had fun with her deafness—and inclined her head to one side.
So he said it all over again.
“I have brought you to this secluded spot to tell you that I love you! I want you to be my wife!”
It was like a steamer bellowing on the strait. Then Juliana threw her scarf over her face, and Captain Markley broke away through the bushes.
Mrs. Gunning never said a word to me about either of the suitors. It wasn't because she didn't talk, for she was a great talker. We had to postpone a card-party one evening, on account of the continuous flow of Mrs. Gunning's conversation, which never ceased until it was time for refreshments, there being not a moment's pause for the tables to be set out.
I was startled to see her rush down at Captain Markley, brandishing her parasol as if she were going to knock him down. I thought if she had any preference it would be for an army man; for you know an army woman's contempt of civilian money and position. Army women continually want to be moving on; and they hate bothering with household stuff, such as we prize.
Captain Markley did look poor-spirited, drooping against the sally-port, for a man who in his uniform was the most conspicuous figure to Mackinac girls in a ball-room. Maybe if he had been courting anything but a statue he might have made a better figure at it. Juliana was worse than a statue, though; for she could float through a thousand graceful poses, and drive a man crazy with her eyes. He wasn't the lover to go out in the woods and shoot a proposal as loud as a cannon at a girl; and it seems he couldn't get any satisfaction from her by writing notes.
Mrs. Gunning was drawing off her gloves as she marched at him with her parasol, and I remember how her emeralds and diamonds flashed in the sun—old heirlooms. I never saw another woman who had so many precious stones. She was tall, with that robust English quality that sometimes goes with slenderness. She and Juliana were not a bit alike. When she walked, her feet came down pat. I pitied Captain Markley. By leaning over the carriage I could see him give a start as Mrs. Gunning pounced at him.
“It's a fine day after the storm, Captain Markley,” says she; and he lifted his cap and said it was.
Then she made a rush that I thought would drive him down the cliff, and whirled her parasol around his head like sword-play, talking about the havoc of the storm. She rippled him from head to foot and poked at his eyes, and jabbed him, to show how lightning struck the rocks, Captain Markley all the time moving back and dodging; and to save my life I couldn't help laughing, though the sentinels above him saw it. They were pretty well used to her, and rolled their quids in their cheeks, and winked at one another.
When she had all but thrown him down-hill, she stuck the ferrule right under his nose and shook it, and says she: “Yet it is now as fine a day as if no such convulsion had ever threatened the island. It is often so in this world.”
He couldn't deny that, miserable as he looked. And I thought she would let him alone and come and say good-day to me. But no, indeed! She took him by the arm. Soldiers off duty were lounging on the benches, and Captain Markley wouldn't let them see him haled like a prisoner. He marched square-shouldered and erect; and Mrs. Gunning says to me as they reached the carriage:
“The captain will help you down if you will come with us. I am going to show him my Shanghai rooster.”
I thanked her, and gladly let him help me down. I wasn't going to desert the poor fellow when Mrs. Gunning was dealing with him; and, besides, I wanted to see that rooster myself. We heard such stories of the way she kept her chickens and labored over all the domestic animals she gathered around herself at the fort.