The Desert and The Sown

M >> Mary Hallock Foote >> The Desert and The Sown

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Mother and daughter were pacing the colonel's veranda, behind a partial
screen of rose vines--October vines fast shedding their leaves. Every
breeze shook a handful down, which the women's skirts swept with them as
they walked. Mrs. Bogardus turned and clasped Christine's arm above the
elbow; through the thin sleeve she could feel its cool roundness. It was a
soft, small, unmuscular arm, that had never borne its own burdens, to say
nothing of a share in the burdens of others.

"Get your jacket," said the mother. "There is a chill in the air."

"There is no chill in me," laughed Christine. "You know, mamsie, you
aren't a girl. I should simply die in those awful things that you wear.
Did you ever know such a hot house as the colonel keeps!"

"The rooms are small, and the colonel is--impulsive," Mrs. Bogardus added
with a smile.

"There is something very like him about his fire-making. I should know by
the way he puts on wood that he never would have "--Mrs. Bogardus checked
herself.

"A large bank account?" Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which was
not of a highly sensitive order.

"He has a large heart," said her mother.

"And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like the
roof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head down
on it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree, and he
strokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a soldier he
shall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna complexion,
and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's waist-measure, do
you suppose?"

Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent woman
who has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how uncritical
she was of Christine's "unruly member."

"It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons like
your mother and the colonel," she said placidly. "You like it very much
out here?"

"Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life."

"And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?"

"Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way out."

"There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something."
Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost
oracular.

"Army people are sure of their way out," said Christine, "and I guess they
find it costs something."

"Why do they buy so many books, I wonder? If I moved as often as they do,
I'd have only paper covers and leave them behind."

"You are not a reader, mummy. You're a business woman. You look at
everything from the practical side."

"And if I didn't, who would?" Mrs. Bogardus spoke with earnestness. "We
can't all be dreamers like Paul or privileged persons like you. There has
to be one in every family to say the things no one likes to hear and do
the things nobody likes to do."

"We are the rich repiners and you are the household drudge!" Christine
shouted, laughing at her own wit.

"Hush, hush!" her mother smiled. "Don't make so much noise."

"I should like to know who's to be the drudge in Paul's privileged family.
It doesn't strike me it's going to be Moya. And Paul only drudges for
people he doesn't know."

"Moya is a girl you can expect anything of. She is a wonderful mixture of
opposites. She has the Irish quickness, and yet she has learned to obey.
She has had the freedom and the discipline of these little lordly army
posts. She is one of the few girls of her age who does not measure
everything from her own point of view."

"Is that a dig at me, ma'am?"

At that moment Moya came out upon the porch.

She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes that
mail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly aroused
curiosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintest
tinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board walk,
the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with the
mail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment not to
present his back to the ladies.

"Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. You
can't make them look at you." Moya looked at Christine in amazement. The
man himself might have heard her. It was not the first time this
privileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain directions
hardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed a little, and
said: "Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's daughter, or any
lady of the line."

"Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are as
pretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me."

Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the exercise
of one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its contents before
delivering it at the official door.

"All, all for you!" she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to Mrs.
Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. "All but
one," she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in the same
hand. She stood reading it in the hall.

Mrs. Bogardus presently followed and remained beside her. "Could I speak
to your father a moment?" she asked.

"Certainly, I will call him," said Moya.

"Wait: I hear him now." The study door opened and Colonel Middleton joined
them. Mrs. Bogardus leading the way into the sitting-room, the colonel
followed her, and Moya, not having been invited, lingered in the hall.

"Well, have the hunters started yet?" the colonel inquired in his breezy
voice, which made you want to open the doors and windows to give it room."
Be seated! Be seated! I hope you have got a long letter to read me."

Mrs. Bogardus stood reflecting. "The day this letter was mailed they got
off--only two days ago," she said. "Could I reach them, Colonel, with a
telegram?"

"Two days ago," the colonel considered. "They must have made Yankee Fork
by yesterday. Today they are deep in the woods. No; I should say a man on
horseback would be your surest telegram. Is it anything important?"

"Colonel, I wish we could call them back! They have gone off, it seems to
me, in a most crazy way--against the judgment of every one who knows. The
guide, this man whom they waited for, refused, it appears, to go out again
with another party so late in the fall. But the Bowens were determined.
They insisted on making arrangements with another man. Then, when 'Packer
John,' they call him, heard of this, he went to Paul and urged him, if he
could not prevent the others from going, to give up the trip himself. The
Bowens were very much annoyed at his interference, and with Paul for
listening to him. And Paul, rather than make things unpleasant, gave in.
You know how young men are! What silly grounds are enough for the most
serious decisions when it is a question of pride or good faith. The Bowens
had bought their outfit on Paul's assurance that he would go. He felt he
could not leave them in the lurch. On that, the guide suddenly changed his
mind and said he would go with them sooner than see them fall into worse
hands. They were, in a way, committed to the other man, so they took _him_
along as cook--the whole thing done in haste, you see, and unpleasant
feelings all around. Do you call that a good start for a pleasure trip?"

"It's very much the way with young troops when they start out--everything
wrong end foremost, everybody mad with everybody else. A day in the saddle
will set their little tempers all right."

"That isn't the point," Mrs. Bogardus persisted gloomily. As she spoke,
the two girls came into the room and stood listening.

"What is the point, then?" Christine demanded. "Moya has no news; all
those pages and pages, and nothing for anybody or about anybody!"

"'Such an intolerable deal of sack to such a poor pennyworth of bread,'"
the colonel quoted, smiling at Moya's bloated envelope.

"But what do you think?" Mrs. Bogardus recalled him. "Don't you think it's
a mistake all around?"

"Not at all, if they have a good man. This flat-footed fellow, John, will
take command, as he should. There is no danger in the woods at any season
unless the party gets rattled and goes to pieces for want of a head."

"Father!" exclaimed Moya. "You know there is danger. Often, things have
happened!"

"Why, what could happen?" asked Christine, with wide eyes.

"Many things very interesting could happen," the colonel boasted
cheerfully. "That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen. It
is the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff out of
him."

"Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen," Moya imprudently struck in, "and what
would you have left?" She had met Banks Bowen in New York.

"Tut, tut!" said the colonel. "Silence, or a good word for the
absent--same as the"--The colonel stopped short.

"You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!"
Christine's face turned red.

"Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I
beg your pardon; this is only for argument."

"I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are chaff!"
Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her speech.

"You need not go fancying things, Moya," she cried, in answer to a
quizzical look. "As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so high!"

"You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, and
not know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them."

The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was
considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special messenger
on the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left a wide margin
for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside from the lateness
of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted company for the woods.
There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all mail facilities ceased
at Challis.

VIII

A HUNTER'S DIARY

Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, a
packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed
by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the party
were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audience
which did not include her father.

"To-day," one of the first entries read, "we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin,
the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabin
cut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us,
_at the level of the snow!_

"These cabins are all deserted now; the tide of prospecting has turned
another way. The great hills that crowd one another up against the sky are
so infested and overridden by this enormous forest-growth, and the
underbrush is so dense, it would be impossible for a 'tenderfoot' to gain
any clear idea of his direction. I should be a lost man the moment I
ventured out of call. Woodcraft must be a sixth sense which we lost with
the rest of our Eden birthright when we strayed from innocence, when we
ceased to sleep with one ear on the ground, and to spell our way by the
moss on tree-trunks. In these solitudes, as we call them, ranks and clouds
of witnesses rise up to prove us deaf and blind. Busy couriers are passing
every moment of the day; and we do not see, nor hear, nor understand. We
are the stocks and stones. Packer John is our only wood-sharp;--yet the
last half of the name doesn't altogether fit him. He is a one-sided
character, handicapped, I should say, by some experience that has humbled
and perplexed him. Two and two perhaps refused to make four in his account
with men, and he gave up the proposition. And now he consorts with trees,
and hunts to live, not to kill. He has an impersonal, out-door odor about
him, such as the cleanest animals have. I would as soon eat out of his
dry, hard, cool hand, as from a chunk of pine-bark.

"It is amusing to see him with a certain member of the party who tries to
be fresh with him. He has a disconcerting eye when he fixes it on a man,
or turns it away from one who has said a coarse or a foolish thing.

"'The jungle is large,' he seems to say, 'and the cub he is small. Let him
think and be still!'"

"Who is this 'certain member' who tries to be 'fresh'?" Christine inquired
with perceptible warmth.

"The cook, perhaps," said Moya prudently.

"The cook isn't a 'member'!--Well, can't you go on, Moya? Paul seems to
need a lot of editing." Moya had paused and was glancing ahead, smiling to
herself constrainedly.

"Is there more disparagement of his comrades?" Christine persisted.

"Christine, be still!" Mrs. Bogardus interfered. "Moya ought to have the
first reading of her own letter. It's very good of her to let us hear it
at all."

"Oh dear, there's no disparagement. Quite the contrary! I'll go on with
pleasure if you don't mind." Moya read hurriedly, laughing through her
words:--

"'If you were here,
(Ah, _if_ you were here!)
You should lend me an ear--
One at the least
Of a pair the prettiest'--

which is, within a foot or two, the rhythm of 'Wood Notes.' Of course you
don't know it!"

"This is a gibe at me," Moya explained, "because I don't read Emerson. 'It
is the very measure of a marching chorus,' he goes on to say, 'where the
step is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'--and he is chanting it to himself
(to her it was in the original) as they go in single file through these
'haughty solitudes, the twilight of the gods!'"

"'Haughty solitudes'!" Christine derided.

Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. "Well,
here he quotes again," she haughtily resumed. "Anybody who is tired of
this can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!" She
looked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, "Go on, dear.
I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him for me."

"Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!" Moya's voice was a
trifle husky as she read on.

"Old as Jove,
Old as Love'"

"I thought Love was young!"--Christine in a whisper aside.

"'Who of me
Tells the pedigree?
Only the mountains old,
Only the waters cold,
Only the moon and stars,
My coevals are.'"

Moya sighed, and sank into prose again. "There is a gaudy yellow moss in
these woods that flecks the straight and mournful tree-trunks like a
wandering glint of sunlight; and there is a crepe-like black moss that
hangs funeral scarfs upon the boughs, as if there had been a death in the
forest, and the trees were in line for the burial procession. The grating
of our voices on this supreme silence reminds one of 'Why will you still
be talking, Monsieur Benedick?--nobody marks you.'

"There are silences, and again there are whole symphonies of sound. The
winds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up the
slope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as motes
sail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular, always
these stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy incline where
some great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported in the arms of
his comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down timber'--beautiful
straight-cut English these woodsmen talk.

"Last evening John and I sat by the stove in the men's tent, while the
others were in the cabin playing penny-ante with the cook (a sodden brute
who toadies to the Bowens, and sulks with John because he objected to our
hiring the fellow--an objection which I sustained, hence his logical spite
includes me). John was melting pine gum and elk tallow into a dressing for
our boots. I took a mean advantage of him, his hands being in the tallow
and the tent-flap down, and tried on him a little of--now, don't deride
me!--'Wood Notes.' It is seldom one can get the comment of a genuine
woodsman on Nature according to the poets.'"

Moya read on perfunctorily, feeling that she was not carrying her audience
with her, and longing for the time when she could take her letter away and
have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, in this sudden new
freak of distrustfulness, would be sure to misunderstand.

"'For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
Will be time enough to die.

Then will yet my Mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field;
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.'"

"That is beautiful," Mrs. Bogardus murmured hastily. "Even I can
understand that." Moya thanked her with a glance.

"And what did the infallible John say?" Christine inquired.

"John looked at me and smiled, as at a babbling infant"--

"Good for John!"

"Christine, be still!"

"John looked at me and smiled," Moya repeated steadily. Nothing could have
stopped her now. She only hoped for some further scattering mention of
that "certain member" who had set them all at odds and spoiled what should
have been an hour's pure happiness. "'You'll get the pillow all right,' he
said. 'It might not be a green one, nor I wouldn't bank much on the
flowers; but you'll be tired enough to sleep without rocking about the
time you trust to Nature's tuckin' you in and puttin' victuals in your
mouth. I never _see_ nature till I came out here. I'd seen pretty woods
and views, that a young lady could take down with her paints; but how are
you going to paint that?'--he waved his tallow-stick towards the night
outside. 'Ears can't reach the bottom of that stillness. That's creation
before God ever thought of man. Long as I've been in the woods, I never
get over the feeling that there's _something behind me_. If you go towards
the trees, they come to meet you; if you go backwards, they go back; but
you can't sit down and sit still without they'll come a-creeping up and
creeping up, and crowding in'--

"He stirred his 'dope' awhile, and then he struck another note. 'I've
wintered alone in these mountains,' he said, 'and I've seen snowslides
pounce out of a clear sky--a puff and a flash and a roar; an' trees four
foot across snappin' like kindlin' wood--not because it hit 'em; only the
breath of it struck them; and maybe a man lying dead somewheres under his
cabin timbers. That's no mother's love-tap. Pillows and flowers ain't in
it. But it's good poetry,' he added condescendingly.

"I have not quoted him right, not being much of a snap-shot at dialect;
and his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and
Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in his
eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses his
thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body informs
his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, his shoes
grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like a cast after
Rodin. They are repousseed by the hard bones and sinews underneath. I can
think of nothing but the clothing of Millet's peasants to compare with
this exterior of John's. He is himself a peasant of the woods. He has not
the predatory instincts. If he could have his way, not a shot would be
fired by any of us for the mere idle sport of killing. Shooting these
innocent, fearless creatures, who have not learned that we are here for
their destruction, is too like murder and treachery combined. Hunger
should be our only excuse. My forbearance, or weakness, is a sort of
unspoken bond between us. But I am a peasant, too, you know. I do not come
of the lordly, arms-bearing blood. I shoot at a live mark always under
protest; and when I fairly catch the look in the great eye of a dying elk
or black-tail, it knocks me out for that day's hunt."

"Paul is perfectly happy!" Christine broke in. "He has got one of his
beloved People to grovel to. They can sleep in the same tent and eat from
the same plate, if you like. Why, it's better than the East Side! He'll be
blood brother to Packer John before they leave the woods."

Moya blushed with anger.

"You have said enough on that subject, Christine." Mrs. Bogardus bent her
dark, keen gaze upon her daughter's face. "Come"--she rose. "Come with
me!"

Christine sat still. "Come!" her mother repeated sternly. "Moya,"--in a
different voice,--"your letter was lovely. Shall you read it to your
father?"

"Hardly," said Moya, flushing. "Father does not care for descriptions, and
the woods are an old story to him."

Mrs. Bogardus placed her hands on the girl's shoulders and gave her one of
her infrequent, ceremonious kisses, which, like her finest smile, she kept
for occasions too nice for words.

IX

THE POWER OF WEAKNESS

Christine followed her mother to their room, and the two faced each other
a moment in pale silence.

Mrs. Bogardus spoke first. "What does this mean?"--her breath came short,
perhaps from climbing the stairs. She was a large woman.

"What does what mean? I don't understand you, mother."

"Ah, child, don't repulse me! Twice you and Moya have nearly quarreled
about those men. Why were you so rude to her? Why did you behave so about
her letter?"

"Paul is so intolerant! And the airs he puts on! If he is my own brother I
must say he's an awful prig about other men."

"We are not discussing Paul. That is not the question now. Have you
anything to tell me, Christine?"

"To tell you?--about what, mother?" Christine spoke lower.

"You know what I mean. Which of them is it? Is it Banks?--don't say it is
Banks!"

"Mother, how can I say anything when you begin like that?"

"Have you any idea what sort of a man Banks Bowen really is? His father
supports him entirely--six years now, ever since he left the law school.
He does nothing, never will do anything. He has no will or purpose in
life, except about trifles like this hunting-trip. As far as I can see he
is without common sense."

Christine stood by the dressing-table pleating the cover-frilling with her
small fingers that were loaded with rings. She pinched the folds hard and
let them go. "Why did no one ever say these things before?"

"We don't say things about the sons of our friends, unless we are
compelled to. They were implied in every way possible. When have I asked
Banks Bowen to the house except when everybody was asked! I would never in
the world have come out in Mr. Borland's car if I had known the Bowens
were to be of the party."

"That made no difference," said Christine loftily.

"It was all settled before then, was it?"

"Have I said it was settled, mother? He asked me if I could ever care for
him; and I said that I did--a little. Why shouldn't I? He does what I like
a man to do. I don't enjoy people who have wills and purposes. It may be
very horrid of me, but I wouldn't be in Moya's place for worlds."

"You poor child! You poor, unhappy child!"

"Why am I unhappy? Has Paul added so much to our income since he left
college?"

"Paul does not make money; neither does he selfishly waste it. He has a
conscience in his use of what he has."

"I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it's
gone."

"You will learn what conscience has to do with a man's spending if ever
you try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will go
through the form of speaking to me?"

"Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!"

"Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you,
Christine, who asked them to come here?"

Christine was silent.

"Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, of
the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own
little schemes at a time like this!" Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must have
been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations of the
hunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken the alarm
before she had, and done what he could to postpone this family
catastrophe.

Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into it,
her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total surrender
under pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed eyebrows
and drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and irresponsibly
fragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came in distinct
pants.

"Perhaps you will not be troubled with my 'ways' for very many years,
mother. If you could feel my heart now! It jumps like something trying to
get out. It will get out some day. Have patience!"

"That is a poor way to retaliate upon your mother, Christine. Your health
is too serious a matter to trifle with. If you choose to make it a shield
against everything I say that doesn't please you, you can cut yourself off
from me entirely. I cannot beat down such a defense as that. Anger me you
never can, but you can make me helpless to help you."

"I dare say it's better that I should never marry at all," said Christine,
her eyes closed in resignation. "You never would like anybody I like."

"I shall say no more. You are a woman. I have protected you as far as I
was able on account of your weakness. I cannot protect you from the
weakness itself."

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