The lady of the crossing

Front matter

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Foreword

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

A LTHOUGH the scene of this book is the West of America and, on cursorily flipping the pages, one’s eye does not encounter the words Florence , Venice , Simla , Quartier Latin, Shepheard’ s Hotel , or Cafe de la Paix , it is not a novel of revolver-shots. A story can be written of Western America in which revolvers are in abeyance. There is much to be said for Gilbert’s

“Hearts just as pure and fair May beat in Belgrave Square As in the lowly air Of Seven Dials!”

It is a whimsical plea for the open mind. Formulae for books may make the writing of a certain kind of book easier, may make reviewing of a certain kind easier, and the life of the harassed assistant librarian easier; but they won’t do for me and, I trust, for you. One should go everywhere with an open mind, meet everybody with an open mind.

The point is that one never knows. One day we may even read of a novel that “no thinking man can ignore this work,” or that “here we have a reading of Life,” and on taking the volume up find that, after all, despite such phrases, it is not a special Lancet article gone astray.

Foregone conclusions regarding Books, Men and Women are surely sometimes wrong. So far from realising that Western America does not always connote Dime Novel, there are those who appear to think it has a monopoly of Dime Novel to the extinction of the possibilities in that vein of all other lands. So strong is this belief, in the minds of those who would stereotype all, that the novelist who may gaily and seriously attempt a Dime Novel with the scene laid in, let us say, Malaysia runs high risk of knowing the pang it is commonly said Great Men know, the pang of being misunderstood; and of experiencing the consternation of seeing his beloved Shocker put on a shelf otherwise labelled.

I write my foreword with only one plea — that this story may be read without assumption regarding what a book of Western America must be about. We live in grim and unbalanced times. Later one may write lots of thoughts that just now one ponders over. This book has no “purpose’’ in the cant, or accepted, sense of the word; and maybe so much preface may seem out of place for a story that is neither inherently salacious nor avowedly philosophical.

May it please you at least for an hour or two in these days.

Frederick Niven.

Part One: Agitato Chapter Page

I. The Cherub with the Arrows . 13

II. Alexander Franklin, of the “Grand

Western” 21

III. Enter Jack Marsden .... 38

IV. Regarding Timpkin's Goat ... 61

V. The Day After . .... 72

VI. Burning his Boats ... . 81

Part Three: Grazioso Chapter Page

I. The Fruit Ranch .... 250

II. Mildred Throws Down the Glove . 265

III. The Great Ascent .... 288

IV. The End of the Journey . . . 296

V. Why They Did It .... 303

VI. “Au Revoir” 310

PARTI: AGITATO

Chapter I The Cherub With The Arrows

I T was Sam Haig’s intention to start afresh, an intention common enough to frail, yet hopeful, human beings. Into his past, upon which he had shut the door, we need not inquire here, but may take him under observation as he drew near to his Mecca, the Western Mecca, the last Mecca of the moment. The conductor announced it, strolling down the aisle of the swinging Pullman car, swinging because of the many curves the train takes on that last lap from Columbia Junction, by Galena and Placer and Opal Falls, into Kootenay.

“Next stop Kootenay! Kootenay next stop!” intoned the conductor in accents of finality; for at Kootenay the spur-line ends, running right down into the lake, so that the freight-trains can stand alongside the big barges whatever the state of the lake’s fullness or shrinkage.

On this train, far from the main line, there was no porter to flick over the travellers with a switch, trying, as some one has described these attentions, to discover if a tip was also to be flicked off. The men rose, shook down their wrinkled pants, and stretched; the ladies smoothed crumpled pleats, rubbed their faces with little handfuls of cambric and lace or, more defiantly, dabbed on powder, peering at their reflections in the mirrors set in those plush or velvet bags (“vanity satchels” is the sale catalogue name) that hold puffs, powder, and spare hairpins. Some of the passengers sat still, to be chugged on later another quarter of a mile or so, beyond the town depot, to the side of the big stern-wheeler at the lake shore, their tired minds, glutted with scenery and train rumble, occupied with visions of what awaited them there — white painted and mirrored dining-saloon; waiters in white duck, on the breast of each a brass tag that bore the number of his table; white table-cloths, on which were menu cards set in holders that if not silver at least shone like silver; and there would be soups and salads and iced coffees.

But Sam Haig was detraining at Kootenay. stern-wheeler’s dining-room he needed not to visualise. He needed not to visualise anything; his task was to go forth and discover what was here. What he found, stepping from the car to the depot platform, was a fresh air of which he took a deep breath to relieve him of the stale headiness that

THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS 15 the train forced upon him — a headiness compounded of aroma of oranges and apples, acrid tang of locomotive smoke, whiff of boot polish, Parma violet scents (several kinds), patchouli (one or two), blatant peppermint drop scent (of an elderly commercial traveller) , and the odour of dusty, padded seats for base of all. They made a sum total of an atmosphere somewhat like that which engulfs the alert debutante on her entrance to a theatre; but this one offered a different thrill, the thrill of travel. For into the midst of it had come, subtly and bewitchingly, scents of hot cranberry patches, of sunburnt hillsides, of pine and fir.

On the depot platform Sam drew a deep breath, shook down his pants a second time, pulled his waistcoat down at the back, and felt for his baggagecheck. His baggage he could see coming out of the car — one suit-case in a cascade of suit-cases, cabin-trunks, hold-alls, “grips,” that had been started a-going inside the car by an invisible sprite, licensed, it would appear, thus to test the strength of locks, buckles and straps. All this impedimenta of the travellers was only saved from destruction on the platform by a hilarious youth who wrestled with a waggling truck.

A resigned group of detrained pilgrims watched the avalanche of luggage. None contested (whether the straps snapped or held, whether the locks burst asunder or remained intact) the baggage-man’s evident assumption of right thus to pass through ordeal the baggage in his care. Then, when his brief and gloriously crowded moment was over, they followed him and his assistant and the trundled load to claim their victorious or vanquished belongings in the baggage-room.

Hotel touts hung upon the heels of the travellers, each of whom, as he claimed his kit, was claimed by two or three of these touts until he exercised the right of a free man and made swift choice of one, for the sake of peace. It was the Grand Western that angled Sam and his suit-case. Grand Western f Gold Nugget , Hotel Kootenay — it was all the same to Sam. Had he arrived with a great deal of luggage the driver of the rig might have opened its rear door and told him to step inside; but one suit-case suggests a young man looking for a start. It was an occasion for sociability.

“Pop up beside me if you like,” said the driver; So, with his feet on the suit-case, high-perched beside the genial driver and tout, Sam was driven up the hill from the depot, fringes of the overhead awning dancing before him.

It was at the time of small flies, and the horses’ ears were ensheathed in cloth coverings, tasselled at the top — reminiscent of the ears of the wild-cat. Over their withers, too, were light cloths, also with pendant tassels, to worry away the worrying flies, and there were bells hung to the collars to make a silvery melody. Sam took stock of the “city” — remarked the first hotels that they passed, with their

THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS clients at the doors, big, hefty men of the kind that set one wondering where they obtain the money to allow of them loafing in town “three sheets in the wind.” He remarked the log-shacks in town-lots overgrown by grasses and wild flowers, tangles of blue and pale blue, and now and then a soaring purple or yellow. Then came granite fronts, and next to them shacks again. Five-storey store-blocks made more diminutive and quaint the crude wooden neighbour with stove-pipe perkily projecting from the roof. The centre of the road was all deep dust. Hotel rigs made a procession up hill, and on the level of the main street continued with subdued sound — the loudest note being that of the harness bells. They came to the city’s core, with the blackboards of the employment agents leaning against the walls, much chalk-writing on them, which gladdened the heart of Sam Haig.

Fruit-stores, barbers’ emporia, soda fountains, book-and-drug stores, hardware stores — and the Same again — and the same again — told him that here was “some town.” It had a holiday air. Not a hotel but was topped by a flag-pole. Men swaggered on the side-walks, smoking cigars or eating cherries. Young women in cheerful raiment (some Chewing gum, some not chewing gum) walked as if it was all a play and they the leading ladies, looking at none, desiring only to be looked at, carrying vanity bags before them on tip of extended forefinger, apparently pointing the way for themselves; or maybe the action was to indicate to the uncouth men in which direction they were walking, so that the path might be clear before them.

Other women, who looked as though they found life less tense, but who were also fond of bright hues, moved to and fro, women less like appendages of their own chatelaines, middle-aged women who had jolly laughs.

Away and away overhead the sky arched, suggestive of shimmering silk from Pekin, and on either hand — always visible at the corners of the streets, often visible without even aid of a corner — the hills stretched back and up, the tone of brown bearskins. Here was another piece of the globe of which one might say: “God gave to men all earth to love.”

So thought Sam Haig. And thus thinking, instead of viewing all cursorily, he suddenly drew a deep breath, was aware that his heart could expand with abruptness upon occasion. For at the crossing of Dawson and Hoskins (or Dawson Street and Hoskins Avenue, as the purists would say) a dart of Some kind — cherub’s or imp’s — went into him as if he was posing there for the figure in a valentine.

“Get up, Sal — get over, Bess,” said the driver, and swung the team down Hoskins Avenue, nearly pitching Sam off, for his gaze was on a girl. As it was he kinked his neck, and only partly the kink and partly a sense of propriety prevented him (the wheeling into Hoskins Avenue thus wheeling the lady

THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS right out of his vision) from turning round the other way next, and craning for a second view — “rubbernecking” as they call such behaviour there.

He had been caught by a pose, a movement, a curve of neck, flash of eyes, turn of wrist; he had been, all in a fraction of a second, enraptured by a hand that gathered a flounce as the wearer of the adorable confection stepped from the side-walk to cross Hoskins Avenue, walking upon Dawson Street. But the rig rocked on down hill and drew up at the Grand Western . Sam perceived that what might be called his choice of hotel was a cheerful one — though it is a slack way of speech, and a calm onlooker at the body-snatching game that takes place at the depot when the trains come in might be inclined to speak here of his destiny rather than of his choice, to consider rather that he had been culled than that he had chosen.

The Kootenay upon the opposite corner was in the way of being magnificent, with tiled entrance-way and palms in tubs in the rotunda, as one could see in passing; and the outside was painted red all over, and under each balcony were decorations in goldleaf. But the Grand Western was bright white, new white, inviolate as the dining-saloon on the lake steamers that some of his fellow-passengers had pictured for their spirit’s ease, and would now be enjoying — white from side-walk to attic, nay, to flag-pole, even to the flag, a white flag of the kind called pennant, that fluttered and folded and, against a sky that made it good to be alive, announced in black letters GNDWN; or GRANDWT; or GADESTN — all manner of unintelligible combinations for one who did not know it was the Grand Western flag fluttering and flapping and billowing.

Sam watched it aimlessly as they came down that last lap of Hoskins Avenue, his mind still really employed with the vision of the young woman at the crossing of Dawson and Hoskins, with a pose captured, and fixed on his retina, as one might recall a memory of a wave, between curving and breaking, or the admirable swerve and careen of a swallow, seen and gone, glimpsed and lost.

Chapter II Alexander Franklin, Of The “grand Western”

T HE proprietor of the Grand Western was a cadaverous man, his ashen face relieved by hectic spot of red on either cheek. He did not, as the custom of some hotel proprietors is, keep a six-foot person in evening dress in the vestibule, behind a sickle of counter, a grim monster hired to scowl at the doorway and intimidate intending guests. Instead, he strolled about on the hither or public side of the desk or counter, hat on, so that a stranger could not be certain he was the proprietor, and could discover his ownership, make certain of him, only by walking into the vestibule and looking puzzled.

He announced himself to Sam, when that young man entered the main hall, suit-case in hand, by taking a cigar from his mouth and shouting: “George — this gentleman!” At that summons “George” rose from his reclension in a low-set easy chair behind the counter, consulted a book on the counter, swung it round and held forth a pen. Sam made attempt to write his name on the line indicated by the clerk’s finger.

“Oh !” said George, and scratched his head. “Ink !” He snatched the pen back, glanced round, found 21 the ink, dipped the pen and again proffered it to Sam, who indited his name. George swung the book back again, considered the calligraphy, critically it seemed, but probably only absently, and next took down, from off a nail on the wall, a piece of steel a foot long and two inches broad, with a small key affixed at one end, and a number cut out, stencil fashion, at the other. He growled forth the number, dived from sight, threw open a low door under the counter, and came to the surface again on the outer side with “Come this way.” He grabbed up Sam’s suit-case and, gaily whistling, led the way upstairs, put key in lock, opened, took key out and, handing it (foot-rule affixed) to the stranger, grunted the number again and departed.

Sam’s number was forty-eight, and closing the door he was confronted by the card of regulations and admonitions regarding conduct and procedure, all about the number of rings for hot water, for cold water, down to the comment: “Rope in case of fire under bed. Hook to ring on floor beside window if necessity arises.” Breakfast, dinner, and supper hours were also set forth in no uncertain terms. From 6.30 fill 9 “guests” could have breakfast, the house evidently catering for early and late risers; from 12 till 2, prompt (the italics are not mine), they could have dinner; supper from 6.30 till 8 prompt .

It seemed, by the card, to be a house of promptitude, but though Sam rang thrice for hot water no reply came. He consulted the direction card again. Once was for iced water, twice for cold water, thrice for hot. Perhaps, thought he, some one downstairs was trying to decide whether he rang once thrice, or thrice once. Actually no one downstairs was thinking of him at all. He was simply left alone to read the rules and regulations and to try to live up to them. As a matter of fact people objected to being rung for at all in this booming town. He was out West — where the guests are expected to observe the rules that relate to their conduct, but to remember that they are out West if the hotel-staff ignores printed promises made to them. He wondered if he might break the rules that were for him to fulfil as lightly as the house broke the promises it made regarding itself on its table of information. Another card over the wash-handstand announced: “There is an ablution room at end of corridor,” and in the ewer, set in the basin, there was no water ; so taking the flimsy towel from the rail, a towel one might have read through, he prepared to depart in search of that ablution room.

One of the laws of the card (so he noticed, delaying his departure, listening acutely for footsteps that might herald the coming of the hot water) decreed no smoking in bed. He would be interested to know if some one had the duty of sniffer along these corridors in the dark hours. He considered, noticing that over his door, in the fanlight space, was no glass, that the duty of such a possible serf of the house should be fairly easy. There came no hopeful sound of footsteps, so he opened his door and went out fully expecting to have difficulty in finding the wash-room, but the label was large enough for the most shortsighted, and with cold water and soap of the washing-day order he refreshed himself. He ignored the comb that hung affixed to the wall, under the mirror, by a steel chain and, returning to his bedroom, opened the suit-case in quest of his own. It is wonderful how soon an adaptable person can feel at home. A few minutes later, groomed, he came forth again and (obeying the rules upon his card) locked the door, holding the foot of steel in one hand, the attached key in the other, considering to himself that George’s onehanded smartness in unlocking was matter of practice.

The corridor was long, the staircase of several flights, and on the way down, feeling a fool carrying that foot of steel, he thrust as much as he could into his hip pocket, the key folding down at one end like the small blade of a knife. On reaching the ground floor the odour of soups and frying meat led him to the dining-room across the vestibule, and the clerk, standing behind his counter, did not ask if he had locked his door, and if so where was the key. After all perhaps all the rules could be ignored ! Or was it that the foot of steel was supposed to be sufficient to prevent the absent-minded from passing the comptoir without handing it over? All that George said was: “Are you going to eat?”

“Yes,” replied Sam.

“What’s your number?”

“Forty-eight,” said Sam.

“Forty-eight — supper — go right ahead,” chanted George.

And Sam forgot all about the key until, sitting back at the end of the meal, the steel progged him in the waist. He was in absent-minded mood. If he was really going to begin afresh in this hustling new town he would have to blink his eyes, wipe the dreaminess from them, focus them coldly, alert for the main chance. As it was, he did not entirely please the waitress at his table. He saw her but seemed unimpressed. Her coiffing and powdering, her red lips, her rigidity from just under shoulders to knees (a wondrous rigidity that forced her to go tip-tapping in little mincing high-heeled steps upon her beat across the polished floor between pantry and table) — all these charms, that made some clients bashful and others bold, did not banish his air of abstraction.

As he sat there over supper he glanced from time to time through the window, less in a condition of hoping to see again the lady of the crossing than of thinking: “Perhaps she might make another transit here.” In his imagination she made the transit. He still perceived the sweep of neck, flash of eyes, turn of wrist, and the hand that gathered the flounces of her adorable wrappings.

Supper over, the Salvation Army band platoon put her at least temporarily out of his mind. It came up the street with great to-do under the last of the witching sunset and the first of the genial lamps, the colonel — in great form — now dancing before it leading, anon turning his back in the direction of progress and skipping backwards, waving his arms in the manner of a riotous concert-conductor. As in pontifical processions there spreads a sense of resentment or of acquiescence toward the assumption of majesty, so now spread the sense of laissez-faire toward the gaiety. There were those who carried cornets in the procession, and there were mandolines, and guitars, and a violin, as well as many tambourines.

The platoon paused at the corner of Dawson Street and Hoskins Avenue, and after the colonel had shouted a prayer to the fading and dreamy blue of the sky over that mountain city, the man with the guitar (a very rollicking blade) strummed, and broke into an adaptation of a song: “Just tell her that you saw me . . . ” — a popular lilt of the moment. A man who looked like a hanger-on, a demented bit of human flotsam, stood forth and harangued on and on, a note as of terror in his voice. Up and up it went, the colonel eyeing him — then suddenly drowning him out with another song. The demented one, stunned, moved backward, snuffed out by the volley of popular catch adapted. After that was over a pretty fair-haired Swede girl played the violin and, her solo finished, stepped amid the audience with a collecting tambourine, while one of the subalterns, with great verve, twanged his banjo and broke forth in some new rendering of “Who’s that a-calling?” Farther up the street the closed opera-house looked down with mute expression. It had been built to be photographed for the boom pamphlets, but so far no touring company had entered it.

From the vestibule of the Grand Western Sam looked out and marvelled. He had seen Salvation Army bands before, but he had never seen the crack corps of the boom towns, designed to cope with the attractions of visiting vaudeville crowds, of lively saloons, of faro-banks and poker-tables' — thinly disguised on the front as skittle-alleys. At the rear of these skittle-alleys, by the way, you could, if you wished, lose your month’s wages in five minutes. On either side of the entrance stood a man skilled in the study of physiognomy; and if anyone with a detective’s eye entered he clapped his hands, and the place was at once a skittle-alley and nothing more. But Sam, in his innocence, strolling round after supper, thought the skittle-alleys were only what they professed to be.

The Salvation Army platoon was as full of verve as ever when he returned to the corner of Hoskins Avenue after his first survey of his new town. A vigorous turn had just ended, and the colonel bawled forth an invitation to all those standin’ around to come right up to the hall. The big drum went boom, boom; the platoon marched away, briskly, in a quick-step, the laissez-faire crowd melted ; the show was over. The platoon — at a kind of acceleration of the quick-step — veered away uphill to its hall, the demented plain-clothes person who had given testimony borne along in its midst like a cork on a wave. And now, the band gone, Sam discovered that all the town was pouring forth music. There came to his ears a multitude of sound — of automatic piano-players, of gramophones and, thinly, amid these other sounds, tinkling of pianos, and ever and again, up and down the street, single notes as of fairy bells. If one listened one could hear a click before and a clang after each of these single notes, for money changed hands ceaselessly in the booming city, and every store had its automatic check-yourassistant till, against which every assistant (fired with the get-rich-quick spirit) pitted his brains, to evolve a “system.” You can see the assistants, when the boss is not near, looking sideways at the strange device, mouths twisting, eyes considering.

The din and laughter and rub-a-dub of heels went on like an orchestration. The cool, nay the cold, of evening came down; scents of the surrounding mountains poured through the streets with the light night breeze. Though the “city” was still wide awake, Sam, after his journey, was ready to sleep;

so he turned into the hotel. George, behind the counter, rose to find his key.

“Forty-eight you are, ain’t you?” he asked. “Forty-eight. Why it ain’t here !”

“No, I have it,” answered Sam, producing the foot of steel with the dangling key from his pocket. George stared.

“Well,” he commented, “that foot of steel ain’t long enough to worry you, then. If the boss knew he’d have two-foot pieces cut. There’s no breaking some men from putting a key in their pocket. I believe you’re that absent-minded you’d carry a thirty- foot rail around town.”

Responding to that sally with a sleepy smile Sam mounted to his room. It struck him as stuffy, despite the fact that the window was raised and held open by an oblong frame of wood enclosing mosquito netting. Perhaps the netting should have been at the top to allow of freer ventilation. His room being at the rear of the house, looking out through the window he could forget the murmuring city. The Grand Western stood on the edge of a steep hill, and he considered that a guest, caught by fire, and resorting to the rope under his bed, could lower himself from a front window with nonchalance, but that here it would be a difficult matter. At the rear of the house, so steeply did the slope fall away, it would be like lowering oneself over a cliff.

The cleared flats below were marked out in lots. Sam could dimly see the lines of streets or avenues, so but as yet no houses were built there. Beyond the flats the long arm of lake lay tapering westward — a lake, at that hour, of the last thin tint of blue : backed by a tremendous haunch of dark mountain, the silhouetted undulations of which were lost in the night. High up in that silhouette a light twinkled, telling of some prospector’s camp, and looking at it Sam wondered what was before him, what he was to find in his search — if this new city was to be his Eldorado.

When he turned back again from considering that big night outside, the room was in dusk, with only faint shimmer of reflected last light; and the brightest spot in his room was the brass knob of the electric light switch. He pressed it down, flooding box number forty-eight with the hard, eye-stabbing glare. As he unpacked his suit-case, setting out his pyjamas and shaving tackle for the morning, flying beetles and giant moths dashed against the window, crackled and rebounded on the mosquito netting. Box forty-eight seemed too stuffy to tempt him yet; he found that he was more woolly-headed than sleepy after his journey, so, the unpacking over, he put out the light, locked his door, and carrying the foot of steel with pendant key, passed downstairs and sought a balcony at the house’s front. Women’s voices came from an open door, big moths flew to and fro in the harsh-lit corridors, dancing against the ceiling, dashing against the electric globes, swerving in and out of the lit rooms.

“Good-night! I’ll ring you up in the morning,” he heard, and the speaker appeared before him, making exit from one of the many rooms.

Evidently the lady of the crossing had affected him, for he thought this was she, took a deep breath, was as one meeting his Fate — and the girl who rustled past him wasn’t a bit like her! But he was sure, until she was absolutely level, tripping past, that this was She. He gulped his heart back under the proper rib and continued along the corridor to the open door at the end. There, at his approach, some one looked inwards to discover who came — the proprietor enjoying a quiet smoke.

“Good-evening,” said he. “Pleasant to have a bit of coolness after the hot day.”