Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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Paul was the first to leave the table that night. He drank his
coffee in three savage gulps, pushed back his crumpled napkin, and
rose. "If you'll excuse me--" he began.
"You're cert'n'y excusable!" said Mrs. Tolley, elegantly--adding,
when the door had closed behind him: "And leave me tell you right
now that somebody was real fond of children to raise YOU!"
"An' I'm not planning to spend the heyday of my girlhood ironing
napkins for you, Pauly Pet!" said Min, reaching for his discarded
napkin and folding it severely into a wooden ring.
Paul did not hear these remarks, but he heard the laughter that
greeted them, and he scowled as he selected a rocker on the front
porch. He put his feet up on the rail, felt in one pocket for
tobacco, in another for papers, and in a third for his match-case,
and set himself to the congenial task of composing a letter in which
he should resign from the employ of the Light and Power Company. It
was a question of a broken contract, so it must be diplomatically
worded. Paul had spent the five evenings since his arrival at
Kirkwood in puzzling over the phrasing of that letter.
Below the porch, the hillside, covered with scrub-oak and chaparral
and madrono trees, and the stumps where redwoods had been, dropped
sharply to the little river, which came tumbling down from the
wooded mountains to plunge roaring into one end of the big power-
house, and which foamed out at the other side to continue its mad
rush down the valley. The power-house, looming up an immense crude
outline in the twilight, rested on the banks of the stream and stood
in a rough clearing. A great gash in the woods above it showed
whence lumber for buildings and fires came; another ugly gash marked
the course of the "pole line" over the mountain. Near the big
building stood lesser ones, two or three rough little unpainted
cottages perched on the hill above it. There was a "cook-house," and
a "bunk-house," and storage sheds, and Mrs. Tolley's locked
provision shed, and the rough shack the builders lived in while
construction was going on, and where the Hopps lived now, rent free.
Nasturtiums languished here and there, where some of the women had
made an effort to fight the unresponsive red clay. Otherwise, even
after two years, the power-house and its environs looked unfinished,
crude, ugly. On all sides the mountains rose dark and steep, the
pointed tops of the redwoods mounting evenly, tier on tier. Except
for the lumber slide and the pole line, there was no break anywhere,
not even a glimpse of the road that wound somehow out of the canyon-
-up, up, up, twelve long miles, to the top of the ridge.
And even at the top, Paul reflected bitterly, there was only an
unpainted farm-house, where the stage stopped three times a week
with mail. From there it was a fifty-mile drive to town--a
California country town, asleep in the curve of two sluggish little
rivers. And from "town" to San Francisco it was almost a day's trip,
and from San Francisco to the Grand Central Station at Forty-second
Street it was nearly five days more.
Paul shoved his hands in his pockets and began again: "Light and
Power Co.--GENTLEMEN."
Night came swiftly to Kirkwood. For a few wonderful moments the last
of the sunlight lingered, hot and gold, on the upper branches of the
highest trees along the ridge; then suddenly the valley was plunged
in soft twilight, and violet shadows began to tangle themselves
about the great shafts of the redwoods. The heat of the day dropped
from the air like a falling veil. A fine mist spun itself above the
river; bats began to wheel on the edge of the clearing.
With the coming of darkness every window in the place was suddenly
alight. The Company House blazed with it; the great power-house
doorway sent a broad stream of yellow into the deepening shadows of
the night; the "cook-house," where Willy Chow Tong cooked for a
score of "hands" and oilers, showed a thousand golden cracks in its
rough walls. The little cottages on the hill were hidden by the
glare from their dangling porch lights. Light was so plentiful, at
this factory of light, that even the Hopps' barnlike home blazed
with a dozen "thirty-twos."
"Nothing like having a little light on the subject, Mr. Fo'ster,"
said Mrs. Tolley, coming out to the porch. The Vorses had small
children that they could not leave very long alone; so, when Min and
her mother had reduced the kitchen to orderly, warm, soap-scented
darkness every night, and wound the clock, and hung up their aprons,
they went up to the Vorses' to play "five hundred."
"Seems's if I never could get enough light, myself," the matron
continued agreeably, descending the porch steps. "Before I come here
I never had nothing in my kitchen but an oil lamp and a reflector.
Jest as sure as I'd be dishing up dinner, hot nights, that lamp
would begin to flicker and suck--well, shucks! I'd look up at it and
I'd say, 'Well, why don't you go out? Go ahead!'" Mrs. Tolley
laughed joyously. "Well, one night--George--" she was continuing
with relish, when Min pulled at her sleeve and, with a sort of
affectionate impatience, said, "Oh, f've'vens' sakes ma!"
"Yes, I'm coming," said Mrs. Tolley, recalled. "Wish't you played
'five hundred,' Mr. Fo'ster," she added politely.
"I don't play either that or old maid," said Paul, distinctly. This
remark was taken in good part by the Tolleys.
"Old maid's a real comical game," Min conceded mildly.
"Well, you won't be s'lunsum next week when the Chisholms get back,"
said Mrs. Tolley, unaffectedly, gathering up the skirt of her
starched gown to avoid contact with the sudden heavy dews. "He's an
awful nice feller, and she--she's twenty-six, but she's as jolly as
a girl. I declare, I just love Patricia Chisholm."
"Twenty-six, is she?" said Paul, disgustedly, to himself, when the
Tolleys had gone. "Only one woman--of any class, that is--in this
forsaken hole, and she twenty-six!" And he had been thinking of this
Patricia with a good deal of interest, he admitted resentfully. Paul
was twenty-four, and liked slender little girls well under twenty.
"Lord, what a place!" he said, for the hundredth time.
He sat brooding in the darkness, discouraged and homesick. So he had
sat for all his nights at Kirkwood.
The men at the cook-house were playing cards, silently, intently.
The cook, serene and cool, was smoking in the doorway of his cabin.
Above the dull roar of the river Paul could hear Min Tolley's cackle
of laughter from the cottages a hundred yards away, and Mrs. Hopps
crooning over her baby.
Presently the night shift went down to the powerhouse, the men
taking great boyish leaps on the steep trail. Some of the lighted
windows were blotted out--the Hopps', the cook-house light. The
singing pole line above Paul's head ceased abruptly, and with a
little rising whine the opposite pole line took up the buzzing
currant. That meant that the copper line had been cut in, and the
aluminum one would be "cold" for the night.
Minutes went by, eventless. Half an hour, an hour--still Paul sat
staring into the velvet dark and wrestling with bitter
discouragement and homesickness.
"Lord, what a PLACE!" he said once or twice under his breath.
Finally, feeling cramped and chilly, he went stiffly indoors,
through the hot, bright halls, that smelled of varnish and matting,
to his room.
The next day was exactly like the five preceding days--hot,
restless, aimless; and the next night Paul sat on the porch again,
and listened to the rush of the river, and Min Tolley's laugh at the
"five hundred" table, and the Hopps' baby's lullaby. And again he
composed his resignation, and calculated that it would take three
days for it to reach San Francisco, and another three for him to
receive their acceptance of it--another week at least of Kirkwood!
On the seventh day the Chisholms rode down the trail that followed
the pole line, and arrived in a hospitable uproar. Alan Chisholm,
some five years older than Paul, was a fine-looking, serious, dark
youth, a fellow of not many words, being given rather to silent
appreciation of his sister's chatter than to speech of his own. Miss
Chisholm was very tall, very easy in manner, and powdered just now
to her eyelashes with fine yellow dust. Paul thought her too tall
and too large for beauty, but he liked her voice, and the fashion
she had of crinkling up her eyes when she smiled. He sat on the
porch while the Chisholms went upstairs to brush and change, and
thought that the wholesome noise of their splashing and calling,
opening drawers, and banging doors was a pleasant change from the
usual quiet of the house.
Miss Chisholm was the first to reappear. She was followed by Min and
Mrs. Tolley, and was asking questions at a rate that kept both
answering at once. Had her kodak films come? Was Minnie going to
have some little sense and be married in a dress she could get some
use out of? How were the guinea-pigs, the ducks, the vegetables, the
caged fox, the "boys" generally, Roosy's ear, Consuelo Vorse's lame
foot? Did Mrs. Tolley know that she had made a deep impression on
the old fellow who drove the stage? "Oh, look at her blush, Min!
Well, really!"
She came, delightfully refreshed by toilet waters and crisp linen,
to take a deep rocker opposite Paul, and leaned luxuriously back,
showing very trim feet shod in white.
"Admit that you've fallen in love with Kirkwood, Mr. Forster," said
she.
"I can't admit anything of the sort," said Paul, firmly, but smiling
because she was so very good to look at. He had to admit that he had
never seen handsomer dark eyes, nor a more tender, more expressive
and characterful mouth than the one that smiled so readily and
showed so even a line of big teeth.
"Oh, you will!" she assured him easily. "There's no place like
Kirkwood, is there, Alan?" she said to her brother, as he came out.
He smiled.
"We don't think there is, Forster. My sister's been crazy about the
place since we got here--that's eighteen months ago; and I'm crazy
about it myself now!"
"Wait until you've slept out on the porch for a while," said Miss
Chisholm, "and wait until you've got used to a plunge in the pool
before breakfast every morning. Alan, you must take him down to the
pool to-morrow, and I'll listen for his shrieks. Where are you going
now--the power-house? No, thank you, I won't go. I'm going out to
find something special to cook you for your suppers."
The something special was extremely delicious; Paul had a vague
impression that there was fried chicken in it, and mushrooms, and
cream, and sherry. Miss Chisholm served it from a handsome little
copper blazer, and also brewed them her own particular tea, in a
Canton tea-pot. Paul found it much pleasanter at this end of the
table. To his surprise, no one resented this marked favoritism--Mrs.
Tolley observing contentedly that her days of messing for men were
over, and Mrs. Vorse remarking that she'd "orghter reely git out her
chafing-dish and do some cooking" herself.
Paul found that Miss Chisholm possessed a leisurely gift of fun; she
was droll, whether she quite meant to be or not. Everybody laughed.
Mrs. Tolley became tearful with mirth.
"Now, this is the nicest part of the day," said Patricia, when they
three had carried their coffee out to the porch and were seated.
"Did you ever watch the twilight come, sitting here, Mr. Forster?"
"It seems to me I have never done anything else," said Paul. She
gave him a keen glance over her lifted teaspoon; then she drank her
coffee, set the cup down, and said:
"Well! How is that combination of vaudeville and railway station and
zotrope that is known as New York?"
"Oh, the little old berg is all there," said Paul, lightly. But his
heart gave a sick throb. He hoped she would go on talking about it.
But it was some time before any one spoke, and then it was Alan
Chisholm, who took his pipe out of his mouth to say:
"Patricia hates New York."
"I can't imagine any one doing that," Paul said emphatically.
"Well, there was a time when I thought I couldn't live anywhere
else," said Alan, good-naturedly; "but there's a lot of the pioneer
in any fellow, if he gives it a chance."
"Oh, I had a nice enough time in New York," said Patricia, lazily,
"but it just WEARS YOU OUT to live there; and what do you get out of
it? Now, HERE--well, one's equal to the situation here!"
"And then some," Paul said; and the brother and sister laughed at
his tone.
"But, honestly," said Miss Chisholm, "you take a little place like
Kirkwood, and you don't need a Socialist party. We all eat the same;
we all dress about the same; and certainly, if any one works hard
here, it's Alan, and not the mere hands. Why, last Christmas there
wasn't a person here who didn't have a present--even Willy Chow
Tong! Every one had all the turkey he could eat; every one a fire,
and a warm bed, and a lighted house. Mrs. Tolley gets only fifty
dollars a month, and Monk White gets fifty--doesn't he, Alan? But
money doesn't make much difference here. You know how the boys adore
Monk for his voice; and as for Mrs. Tolley, she's queen of the
place! Now, how much of that's true of New York!"
"Oh, well, put it that way--" Paul said, in the tone of an offended
child.
"Apropos of Mrs. Tolley's being queen of the place," said Alan to
his sister, "it seems she's rubbing it into poor little Mollie
Peavy. Len brought Mollie and the baby down from the ranch a week
ago, and nobody's been near 'em."
"Who said so?" flashed Miss Chisholm, reddening.
"Why, I saw Len to-night, sort of lurking round the power-house, and
he told me he had 'em in that little cottage, across the creek,
where the lumbermen used to live. Said Mollie was in agony because
nobody came near her."
"Oh, that makes me furious!" said Patricia, passionately. "I'll see
about it to-morrow. Nobody went near her? The poor little thing!"
"Who are they?" said Paul.
"Why, she's a little blonde, sickly-looking thing of sixteen,"
explained Miss Chisholm, "and Len's a lumberman. They have a little
blue-nosed, sickly baby; it was born about six weeks ago, at her
father's ranch, above here. She was--she had no mother, the poor
child--"
"And in fact, my sister escorted the benefit of clergy to them about
two months ago," said Alan, "and the ladies of the Company House
are very haughty about it."
"They won't be long," predicted Miss Chisholm, confidently. "The
idea! I can forgive Mrs. Hopps, because she's only a kid herself;
but Mrs. Tolley ought to have been big enough! However!"
"This place honestly can't spare you for ten minutes, Pat," her
brother said.
"Well, honestly," she was beginning seriously, when she saw he was
laughing at her, and broke off, with a shamefaced, laughing look for
Paul. Then she announced that she was going down to the power-house,
and, packing her thin white skirts about her, she started off, and
they followed.
Paul was not accustomed to seeing a lady in the power-house, and
thought that her enthusiasm was rather nice to watch. She flitted
about the great barnlike structure like a contented child, insisted
upon displaying the trim stock-room to Paul, demanded a
demonstration of the switchboard, spread her pretty hands over the
whirling water that showed under the glass of the water-wheels, and
hung, fascinated, over the governors.
"I never get used to it," said Patricia, above the steady roaring of
the river. "Do you realize that you are in one of the greatest force
factories of the world? Look at it!" She swept with a gesture the
monster machinery that shone and glittered all about them. "Do you
realize that people miles and miles away are reading by lights and
taking street-cars that are moved by this? Don't talk to me about
the subway and the Pennsylvania Terminal!"
"Oh, come, now!" said Paul.
"Well!" she flared. "Do you suppose that anything bigger was ever
done in this world than getting these things--these generators and
water-wheels and the corrugated iron for the roof, and the door-
knobs and tiles and standards and switchboard, and everything else,
up to the top of the ridge from Emville and down this side of the
ridge? I see that never occurred to you! Why, you don't KNOW what it
was. Struggle, struggle, struggle, day after day--ropes breaking,
and tackle breaking, and roads giving way, and rain coming! Suppose
one of these had slipped off the trail--well, it would have stayed
where it fell. But wait--wait!" she said, interrupting herself with
her delightful smile. "You'll love it as we do one of these days!"
"Not," said Paul to himself, as they started back to the house.
After that he saw Miss Chisholm every day, and many times a day; and
she was always busy and always cheerful. She wanted her brother and
Paul to ride with her up to the dam for a swim; she wanted to go to
the woods for ferns for Min's wedding; she was going to make candy
and they could come in. She packed delicious suppers, to be eaten in
cool places by the creek, and to be followed by their smoking and
her careless snatches of songs; she played poker quite as well as
they; she played old opera scores and sang to them; she had jig-saw
puzzles for slow evenings. She could not begin a game of what Mrs.
Tolley called "halmy," with that good lady, without somehow
attracting the boys to the table, where they hung, championing and
criticising. Paul was more amused than surprised to find Mrs. Peavy
having tea with the other ladies on the porch less than a week
later. The little mother looked scared and shamed; but Mrs. Tolley
had the baby, and was bidding him "love his Auntie Gussie," while
she kissed his rounding little cheek. One night, some four weeks
after his arrival, Patricia decided that Paul's room must be made
habitable; and she and Alan and Paul spent an entire busy evening
there, discussing photographs and books, and deciding where to cross
the oars, and where to hang the Navajo blanket, and where to put the
college colors. Miss Chisholm, who had the quality of grace and
could double herself up comfortably on the floor like a child,
became thoughtful over the class annual.
"The Dicky, and the Hasty Pudding!" she commented. "Weren't you the
Smarty?"
Paul, who was standing with a well-worn pillow in his hand, turned
and said hungrily:
"Oh, you know Harvard?"
"Why, I'm Radcliffe!" she said simply.
Paul was stupefied.
"Why, but you never SAID so! I thought yours was some Western
college like your brother's!"
"Oh, no; I went to Radcliffe for four years," said she, casually.
Then, tapping a picture thoughtfully, she went on: "There's a boy
whose face looks familiar."
"Well, but--well, but--didn't you love it?" stammered Paul.
"I liked it awfully well," said Patricia. "Alan, you've got that one
a little crooked," she added calmly. Paul decided disgustedly that
he gave her up. His own heart was aching so for old times and old
voices that it was far more pain than pleasure to handle all these
reminders: the photographs, the yacht pennant, the golf-clubs, the
rumpled and torn dominoes, the tumbler with "Cafe Henri" blown in
the glass, the shabby camera, the old Hawaiian banjo. Oh, what fun
it had all been, and what good fellows they were!
"It was lovely, of course," said Patricia, in a businesslike tone;
"but this is real life! Cheer up, Paul," she went on (they had
reached Christian names some weeks before). "I am going to have two
darling girls here for two weeks at Thanksgiving, just from Japan.
And think of the concert next month, with Harry Garvey and Laurette
Hopps in a play, and Mrs. Tolley singing 'What Are the Wild Waves
Saying?' Then, if Alan sends you to Sacramento, you can go to the
theatre every night you're there, and pretend"--her eyes danced
mischievously--"that you're going to step out on Broadway when the
curtain goes down, and can look up the street at electric signs of
cocoa and ginger beer and silk petticoats--"
"Oh, don't!" said Paul; and, as if she were a little ashamed of
herself, she began to busy herself with the book-case, and was
particularly sweet for the rest of the evening. But she wouldn't
talk Radcliffe, and Paul wondered if her college days hadn't been
happy; she seemed rather uneasy when he repeatedly brought up the
subject.
But a day or two later, when he and she were taking a long ride and
resting their horses by a little stream high up in the hills, she
began to talk of the East; and they let an hour, and then another,
go by, while they compared notes. Paul did most of the talking, and
Miss Chisholm listened, with downcast eyes, flinging little stones
from the crumbling bank into the pool the while.
A lazy leaf or two drifted upon the surface of the water, and where
gold sunlight fell through the thick leafage overhead and touched
the water, brown water-bugs flitted and jerked. Once a great dragon-
fly came through on some mysterious journey, and paused for a
palpitating bright second on a sunny rock. The woods all about were
silent in the tense hush of the summer afternoon; even the horses
were motionless, except for an occasional idle lipping of the
underbrush. Now and then a breath of pine, incredibly sweet, crept
from the forest.
Paul watched his companion as he talked. She was, as always, quite
unself-conscious. She sat most becomingly framed by the lofty rise
of oak and redwood and maple trees about her. Her sombrero had
slipped back on her braids, and the honest, untouched beauty of her
thoughtful face struck Paul forcibly. He wondered if she had ever
been in love--what her manner would be to the man she loved.
"What did you come for, Paul?" She was ending some long sentence
with the question.
"Come here?" Paul said. "Oh, Lord, there seemed to be reasons
enough, though I can't remember now why I ever thought I'd stay."
"You came straight from college?"
"No," he said, a little uneasily; "no. I finished three years ago.
You see, my mother married an awfully rich old guy named Steele, the
last year I was at college; and he gave me a desk in his office. He
has two sons, but they're not my kind. Nice fellows, you know, but
they work twenty hours a day, and don't belong to any clubs,--
they'll both die rich, I guess,--and whenever I was late, or forgot
something, or beat it early to catch a boat, they'd go to the old
man. And he'd ask mother to speak to me."
"I see," said Patricia.
"After a while he got me a job with a friend of his in a
Philadelphia iron-works," said the boy; "but that was a ROTTEN job.
So I came back to New York; and I'd written a sketch for an amateur
theatrical thing, and a manager there wanted me to work it up--said
he'd produce it. I tinkered away at that for a while, but there was
no money in it, and Steele sent me out to see how I'd like working
in one of the Humboldt lumber camps. I thought that sounded good.
But I got my leg broken the first week, and had to wire him from the
hospital for money. So, when I got well again, he sent me a night
wire about this job, and I went to see Kahn the next day, and came
up here."
"I see," she said again. "And you don't think you'll stay?"
"Honestly, I can't, Patricia. Honest--you don't know what it is! I
could stand Borneo, or Alaska, or any place where the climate and
customs and natives stirred things up once in a while. But this is
like being dead! Why, it just makes me sick to see the word 'New
York' on the covers of magazines--I'm going crazy here."
She nodded seriously.
"Yes, I know. But you've got to do SOMETHING. And since your course
was electrical engineering--! And the next job mayn't be half so
easy, you know--!"
"Well, it'll be a little nearer Broadway, believe me. No, I'm sorry.
I never knew two dandier people than you and your brother, and I
like the work, but--!"
He drew a long breath on the last word, and Miss Chisholm sighed,
too.
"I'm sorry," she said, staring at the big seal ring on her finger.
"I tell you frankly that I think you're making a mistake. I don't
argue for Alan's sake or mine, though we both like you thoroughly,
and your being here would make a big difference this winter. But I
think you've made a good start with the company, and it's a good
company, and I think, from what you've said to-day, and other hints
you're given me, that you'd make your mother very happy by writing
her that you think you've struck your groove. However!"
She got up, brushed the leaves from her skirt, and went to her
horse. They rode home through the columned aisles of the forest
almost silently. The rough, straight trunks of the redwoods rose all
about them, catching gold and red on their thick, fibrous bark from
the setting sun. The horses' feet made no sound on the corduroy
roadway.
For several days nothing more was said of Paul's going or staying.
Miss Chisholm went her usual busy round. Paul wrote his letter of
resignation and carried it to the dinner-table one night, hoping to
read it later to her, and win her approval of its finely rounded
sentences.
But a heavy mail came down the trail that evening, brought by the
obliging doctor from Emville, who had been summoned to dress the
wounds of one of the line-men who had got too close to the murderous
"sixty thousand" and had been badly burned by "the juice." And after
the letters were read, and the good doctor had made his patient
comfortable, he proved an excellent fourth hand at the game of
bridge for which they were always hungering.
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