Part 26 (1/2)
Tears drop on the paper, and shame poor fool Jesse. The Book says that He shall wipe away all tears. If my bear had only lived, I should not have been so lonely. I wonder if--G.o.d help me, I can't write more. The book is finished.
PART III
CHAPTER I
SPITE HOUSE
_Kate Reviews the Book_
The book is not finished. This book of Jesse's life and mine is not finished while she who set us asunder is allowed to live. ”Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, ”I will repay.” We wait.
What impulse moved my man after four years to enter that tragic house?
He read our book, so piteously stained, this heap of paper scrawled with rusty ink. He added parts of a chapter, which I have finished. It is all blotted with tears, this record of his life--childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, humor, pa.s.sion--veritable growth of an immortal spirit--annals of that love which lifteth us above the earth--and then!
What did the woman gain who stole our happiness? A fairy gold, changing to ashes at the glint of day, for which she lost her soul.
Caught in the leaves there is a long pine needle. So it was among the bull pines of Cathedral Grove that Jesse sought to bury this record.
Then knowing that his life was not all his to bury, he sent me this dear treasure, so breaking the long, long silence.
How precious are even the littlest memories of love! Here is the muddy footprint of our kitten, and Jesse's ”witness my hand.” Here is a sc.r.a.p of paper, inked and rinsed to reveal some secret writing of those poor outlaws. Pages of wrath from our visitors' book--and the long pine needle.
”Belay thar!” as Jesse said. ”We're hunting happiness while sorrow's chasing us. Takes a keen muzzle and runaway legs to catch up happiness, while sorrow's teeth is reachin' for yo' tail.”
So I must try to catch up happiness. I have notes here of dear Father Jared, made at the time when he was bringing me with Baby David home. I remember we sat in our deck chairs on the sunny side of the s.h.i.+p, watching a cloud race out in mid-Atlantic. We talked of home.
”You see, my dear”--I copy from my notes--”we have in our blessed isles an atmosphere lending glamour to all things, whether a woman's skin or a slum town. Why, British portraiture and landscape are respected, even by our own art critics, and they are far from lenient.” I replied that I wanted air, air for King David.
”Now when we come to air, that's very serious. North of the Tweed the air produces Scotchness, across St. George's Channel it makes Irishness.
Then in the princ.i.p.ality of Wales it makes most people Welsh, to say nothing of the Yarks.h.i.+re vintage, or Zummerzet, or the 'umble 'omes of the East Anglians.”
”But that's not what I mean. Some places are so relaxing.”
”Or bracing, or just damp, eh? Do you know, my dear, that at Frognall End mushrooms are fourpence a pound.”
”That has nothing to do with it.”
”Are you sure?” The delicious fairy-look came to his eyes. ”Of course they prefer the Russian kind of mushrooms with red tops--warmer to sit on. That's why they love Russia, and Russian hearts stay young. And besides, they like to live where people are really and truly superst.i.tious.
”That's what's so wrong with England. Ah, these board schools! I want to dig up all the board schools and plant red mushrooms. Then, of course, the fairies will each have an endowed mushroom, the children will be properly taught how to stay young, and we shall live happily ever afterward.
”Do you know I called on the prime minister, and, politics apart, he's not at all a bad fellow. We quite agreed, especially about drowning the Board of Education, but then the nonconformist conscience would get shocked, while as to the treasury--bigots, my dear, are getting more bigotty every day.”
I was getting mixed.
”So you see, Kate, with mushrooms at fourpence a pound, it stands to reason that they're very plentiful at Frognall End, with fairies in strict proportion: one mushroom--one fairy, that is in English weather.