A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 39

His letters contained no complaint. He dwelt mainly upon his trips into the forest (occasional vacations from repulsive labor), but I was able to infer from a word here and there, his detestation of the coa.r.s.e jests and senseless arguments of his "Siwash" companions. His philosophy prevented repining; but he could not entirely conceal his moods of loneliness, of defeat.

My heart ached as I thought of him, wearing his life away in the solitude of the forest, or in waiting on a crowd of unthinking lumber jacks, but I could do little to aid him. I had sent him books and loaned him money whenever he would accept it (which was seldom), and I had offered each year to bring him back to the Middle West and put him on a farm; but to all these suggestions he continued to repeat, "I can't bring myself to it. I can't return, a defeated explorer."

Like my uncle David, he preferred to walk the path he had chosen, no matter to what depth it might descend.

Not long after this meeting with Ben and while I was still absorbed in youthful memories, dreaming of my prairie comrades, a letter came to me from Blanche Babc.o.c.k, telling me that her brother Burton, my boyhood chum, my companion on The Long Trail to the Yukon, had crossed the Wide Dark River, and with this news, a sense of heavy loss darkened my day.

It was as if a part, and no small part, of my life had slipped away from me, irrecoverably, into a soundless abyss.

For more than forty years this singular soul had been a subject of my care (at times he had been closer to me than my own brother), and now he had vanished from the tangible realities of his mountain home into the unmapped region whose blind trails we had so often manfully discussed.

By all the laws which his family recognized, his life was a failure. To Ben Roberts he was a derelict--and yet to me a kind of elemental dignity lay in the att.i.tude he had maintained when surrounded by coa.r.s.e and ignorant workmen. He remained unmoved, uncontaminated. His mind inhabited a calm inner region beyond the reach of any coa.r.s.e word or mocking phrase. Growing ever more mystical as he grew older he had gone his lonely way bent and gray and silent, a student of the forest and the stream. So far as I know he never uttered a bitter or despairing word, and when the final great boundary river confronted him he entered it with the same courage with which he ferried the Yukon or crossed the ice fields of Iskoot.

It happened that on the day this news came to me one of my Chicago friends sent their beautiful motor car to fetch Zulime and me to the opera, and as the children saw us in our evening dress, they cried out, "Oh papa, mama is a queen and you look like a king!" Thus it happened that I rode away in a luxury which I had not earned at the very moment when my faithful trail-mate, after toiling all his life, was pa.s.sing to his grave wifeless, childless and unknown.

"I wish I could have shared just a little of my good fortune with him,"

I said to Zulime, who really was as stately as a queen. But the best of all my possessions I would not, could not, share with any one--I mean the adoration of my little daughters to whom I possessed the majesty of an emperor.

"Here his trail ends. Here by the landing I wait the same oar--the slow, silent one.

We each go alone--no man with another, Each into the gloom of the swift, black flood.

Burt, it is hard, but here we must sever.

The gray boatman waits, and you--you go first.

All is dark over there where the dim boat is rocking, But that is no matter--no trailer need fear, For clearly we're told, the powers which lead us, Will govern the game till the end of the day.

Good-by!--Here the trail ends!"

Christmas came this year with special significance. Two pairs of eager eyes now peered at all bundles which came into the house. The faith and love and eager hope of my daughters made amends for the world's lack of interest in my writings. They and their mother were my wealth, their love compensated me for the slender dribble of my royalties.

"Our Christmas shall be as happy as that of any millionaire," was the thought which actuated me in the purchase and decoration of our tree.

Wealth was highly desirable, but absurd as it may seem I had no desire to change places with any merchant or banker. The foolish notion that something historical in my work made it worth while, supported me in my toil. It was a hazy kind of comfort, I will concede, but I wrapped myself in it, and stole away out into the street to buy and sneak a Christmas tree up the back stairs. It was a n.o.ble tree, warranted to reach the ceiling of our library.

Father came down from Wisconsin and Franklin came up from Oklahoma to help me decorate it, and when, on Christmas morning, they both rose with me, and went down to light the candles, they were almost as gleeful as I. Mary Isabel was awake and piping from the top of the stairs, "Is it time, papa? Can we come now, papa?" and at last when the tower of glory was alight I called back, "Yes, now you may all come."

Slowly she descended step by step, clinging to her mother, who was carrying Constance. Very slowly the procession approached, for the little voluptuary in front was loath as well as eager--avid to enjoy yet hesitating to devour. Suddenly she saw, and into her face flamed an expression of wonder, of awe, of adoration, a look such as a cherub angel might wear while confronting The Great White Throne, a kind of rapture, humble yet exultant.

Silently she crept toward the center of the room, turning her eyes from this and to that unearthly splendor, yet always bringing them back to rest upon the faces of the dollies, sitting so still and so radiant beneath the glittering boughs. At last with a little gasping cry of joy she seized the largest and most splendid of these wondrous beings and clasped it to her breast, while Constance sat silent with her awe.

Their Christmas was complete. Another shining mark had been set in the upward slope of their happy march! Nothing, not even Death himself, can rob me of that precious memory.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Old Homestead Suffers Disaster

The summer of 1912, so stormy in a political sense was singularly serene and happy for us. The old house had been received back into favor. It was beloved by us all but especially was it dear to my children. To Mary Isabel it possessed a value which it could not have to any of us, for it was her birth-place and she knew every stick and stone of it. To her it had all the glamor of a childhood home in summer time.

On Sunday, October 6, we began to plan our return to the city, and as we sat about our fire that night the big room never looked so warm, so homelike, so permanent. The deep fireplace was ablaze with light, and the walls packed with books and hung with pictures spoke of a realized ideal. On the tall settee (which I had built myself), lay a richly-colored balletta Navajo blanket, one that I had bought of a Flathead Indian in St. Ignatius. Others from Zuni and Ganado covered the floor. Over the piano "Apple Blossom Time," a wedding present from John Ennecking glowed like a jewel in the light of the quaint electric candles which had been set in the sockets of hammered bra.s.s sconces. In short, the place had the mellow charm of a completed home, and I said to Zulime "There isn't much more to do to it. It is rude and queer, a mixture of Paris, Boston, and the Wild West; but it belongs to us." It was in truth a union of what we both represented, including our poverty, for it was all cheap and humble.

My father, white-haired, eighty-two years of age was living with us again, basking in the light of our fire and smiling at his grandchildren, who with lithe limbs and sweet young voices were singing and circling before him. I was glad to have him back in mother's room, and to him and to those who were to be his care-takers for the winter I gravely repeated, "I want everything kept just as it is. I want to feel that we can come back to it at any time and find every object in place, including the fire."

To which father replied, "I don't want to change it. It suits me."

The children, darting out of the music-room (which was the "dressing-room" of their stage), swung their j.a.panese lanterns, enacting once again their pretty little play, and then our guests rose two by two and went away. Zulime led the march to bed, the lights were turned out and the clear, crisp, odorous October night closed over our scene.

As I was about to leave the low-ceiled library, I took another look at it saying to myself, "It seems absurd to abandon this roomy, human habitation for a cramped little dwelling on a city lot." But with a sense of what the city offered by way of compensation, I climbed the old-fashioned, crooked, narrow stairway to my bed in the chamber over the music-room, content to say good-by for the winter....

It was dusky dawn when I awoke, with a sense of alarm, unable to tell what had awakened me. For several seconds I lay in confusion and vague suspense. Then a cry, a strange cry--a woman's scream--arose, followed by a rush of feet. Other cries, and the shrieks of children succeeded close, one upon the other.

My first thought was, "Constance has fallen." I sprang from my bed and was standing in the middle of the room when I heard Zulime cross the floor beneath me, and a moment later she called up the stairway, "Hamlin, _Fan has set the house on fire_!"

My heart was gripped as if by an icy hand for I knew how inflammable the whole building was, and without stopping to put on coat or slippers, I ran swiftly down the stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I heard, too, the ominous crackling of flames in the kitchen.

Pushing open the swinging door I confronted a wall of smoke. One-half of the floor was already consumed, and along the linoleum a sharply-defined line of fire told that it rose from burning oil--and yet I could not quite believe it, even then. It was like a scene in a motion picture play.

My first thought was to check, to hold back the flames, till help came.

The garden hose was lying out under a tree (I had put it there the day before) and with desperate haste I hurried to attach it to the water pipes. I saw father in the yard, but he uttered no word. We were each thinking the same thought--"_The old homestead is doomed. Our life here is ended._"

The hose was heavy and sanely perverse, and it seemed an age before I had the water turned on. Catching up the nozzle I approached the kitchen door. The thin stream had no effect, and the heat was so intense I could not face it. Throwing down the hose I reentered the house.

The children, hysterical with fright, were just leaving by the east door and Zulime was upstairs. Opening the front door I stepped out upon the porch to call for help. The beauty of the morning, its stillness, its serenity, its odorous opulence, struck upon my senses with a kind of ironic benignancy, as if to say, "Why agonize over so small a thing?"

I shouted "Fire!" and my voice went ringing far up the street. I cried out again, a third time, a fourth, but no one answered, no one appeared, and behind me the crackling roar of the flames increased. In despair I turned back into the sitting-room.

It had been arranged between Zulime and myself that in case of fire (once the children were safe), she was to secure the silverware and her jewelry whilst I flew to collect my ma.n.u.scripts.

With this thought in my mind, and believing that I had but a few minutes in which to work, I ran up the stairs to my study and began gathering such of my ma.n.u.scripts as had no duplicates. As I thought of the hundreds of letters from my literary friends, of the many family records, of the innumerable notes, pictures, keepsakes, souvenirs and mementoes which had been a.s.sembling there for a quarter of a century, I became confused, indecisive. It was so hard to choose. At last I caught up a sheaf of unpublished stories which filled one drawer, and beating off the screen of the north window threw the ma.n.u.scripts out upon the gra.s.s.

A neighbor's wife, quick to understand the meaning of my anxiety about these sheets, ran to her home across the way and bringing a valise, began to stuff them into it. Having cleared my desk of its most valuable papers I hurried to my dressing-room to secure shoes and trousers; but by this time the hall was full of the most nauseating smoke. The fire having swept entirely through the library, was burning the front porch.

My escape by way of the stairway was cut off. Blinded and gasping I gave up the search for clothes and turned back into my study.

I was not in the least scared; on the contrary, I was filled with a kind of fatalistic rage. In imagination I saw the old house, with all that it meant to me, in ruins. I saw the great elms and maples scorched, dead, the tall black locust burned to a ship's mast. As I peered from the window, a neighbor called earnestly, "You'd better get off there; the whole house is going."

From the window I could see the villagers rapidly a.s.sembling, and not knowing how far advanced the flames might be I yielded to the advice of my friend, and swinging myself from the window dropped to the ground.

My next care was for the children. I could hear them crying frantically for "papa!" and I hurried to where they stood cowering in the door of the barn. "O, papa, put it out. I don't want it to burn. _Put it out!_"

moaned Mary Isabel with pa.s.sionate intensity.

Her faith in her father had an infinite pathos at the moment. She loved the house. It was a part of her very brain and blood. To have it burn was a kind of outrage. Little Connie, five years old, with chattering teeth, joined her pleading cry, "_Can't_ you put it out, papa?" she asked piteously.

"No," I answered sadly. "Papa can not put it out. n.o.body can. You must say good-by to our dear old home."

Wrapping a quilt about her I started across the road toward my neighbor's porch. The yard was full of my fellow-citizens, and young men were heroically dragging out smoking furniture from the lower floor, while over in the Sander's yard piles of books, bedding and furniture were acc.u.mulating. It was all curiously familiar and typical.

In the full belief that the homestead would soon be a heap of charcoal, we took the children back into our friend's dining-room. "Pull down the curtain," entreated Zulime, "we don't want to see the old place go."