A Mountain Woman

A Mountain Woman

IF Leroy Brainard had not had such a
respect for literature, he would have
written a book.

As it was, he played at being an architect
-- and succeeded in being a charming fellow.
My sister Jessica never lost an opportunity
of laughing at his endeavors as an architect.

"You can build an enchanting villa, but
what would you do with a cathedral?"

"I shall never have a chance at a cathe-
dral," he would reply. "And, besides, it
always seems to me so material and so im-
pertinent to build a little structure of stone
and wood in which to worship God!"

You see what he was like? He was frivo-
lous, yet one could never tell when he would
become eloquently earnest.

Brainard went off suddenly Westward one
day. I suspected that Jessica was at the
bottom of it, but I asked no questions; and
I did not hear from him for months. Then I
got a letter from Colorado.

"I have married a mountain woman," he
wrote. "None of your puny breed of modern
femininity, but a remnant left over from the
heroic ages, -- a primitive woman, grand and
vast of spirit, capable of true and steadfast
wifehood. No sophistry about her; no
knowledge even that there is sophistry.
Heavens! man, do you remember the ron-
deaux and triolets I used to write to those
pretty creatures back East? It would take
a Saga man of the old Norseland to write
for my mountain woman. If I were an
artist, I would paint her with the north star
in her locks and her feet on purple cloud.
I suppose you are at the Pier. I know you
usually are at this season. At any rate, I
shall direct this letter thither, and will follow
close after it. I want my wife to see some-
thing of life. And I want her to meet your
sister."

"Dear me!" cried Jessica, when I read
the letter to her; "I don't know that I care
to meet anything quite so gigantic as that
mountain woman. I'm one of the puny breed
of modern femininity, you know. I don't
think my nerves can stand the encounter."

"Why, Jessica!" I protested. She blushed
a little.

"Don't think bad of me, Victor. But, you
see, I've a little scrap-book of those triolets
upstairs." Then she burst into a peal of
irresistible laughter. "I'm not laughing
because I am piqued," she said frankly.
"Though any one will admit that it is
rather irritating to have a man who left
you in a blasted condition recover with
such extraordinary promptness. As a phi-
lanthropist, one of course rejoices, but as a
woman, Victor, it must be admitted that one
has a right to feel annoyed. But, honestly,
I am not ungenerous, and I am going to do
him a favor. I shall write, and urge him
not to bring his wife here. A primitive
woman, with the north star in her hair,
would look well down there in the Casino
eating a pineapple ice, wouldn't she? It's
all very well to have a soul, you know; but
it won't keep you from looking like a guy
among women who have good dressmakers.
I shudder at the thought of what the poor
thing will suffer if he brings her here."

Jessica wrote, as she said she would; but,
for all that, a fortnight later she was walking
down the wharf with the "mountain woman,"
and I was sauntering beside Leroy. At
dinner Jessica gave me no chance to talk
with our friend's wife, and I only caught
the quiet contralto tones of her voice now
and then contrasting with Jessica's vivacious
soprano. A drizzling rain came up from
the east with nightfall. Little groups of
shivering men and women sat about in the
parlors at the card-tables, and one blond
woman sang love songs. The Brainards
were tired with their journey, and left us
early. When they were gone, Jessica burst
into eulogy.

"That is the first woman," she declared,
"I ever met who would make a fit heroine
for a book."

"Then you will not feel under obligations
to educate her, as you insinuated the other
day?"

"Educate her! I only hope she will
help me to unlearn some of the things I
know. I never saw such simplicity. It is
antique!"

"You're sure it's not mere vacuity?"
"Victor! How can you? But you haven't
talked with her. You must to-morrow.
Good-night." She gathered up her trail-
ing skirts and started down the corridor.
Suddenly she turned back. "For Heaven's
sake!" she whispered, in an awed tone,
"I never even noticed what she had on!"

The next morning early we made up a
riding party, and I rode with Mrs. Brainard.
She was as tall as I, and sat in her saddle
as if quite unconscious of her animal. The
road stretched hard and inviting under our
horses' feet. The wind smelled salt. The
sky was ragged with gray masses of cloud
scudding across the blue. I was beginning
to glow with exhilaration, when suddenly my
companion drew in her horse.

"If you do not mind, we will go back,"
she said.

Her tone was dejected. I thought she
was tired.

"Oh, no!" she protested, when I apolo-
gized for my thoughtlessness in bringing her
so far. "I'm not tired. I can ride all day.
Where I come from, we have to ride if
we want to go anywhere; but here there
seems to be no particular place to -- to
reach."

"Are you so utilitarian?" I asked, laugh-
ingly. "Must you always have some reason
for everything you do? I do so many things
just for the mere pleasure of doing them,
I'm afraid you will have a very poor opinion
of me."

"That is not what I mean," she said,
flushing, and turning her large gray eyes on
me. "You must not think I have a reason
for everything I do." She was very earnest,
and it was evident that she was unacquainted
with the art of making conversation. "But
what I mean," she went on, "is that there is
no place -- no end -- to reach." She looked
back over her shoulder toward the west,
where the trees marked the sky line, and an
expression of loss and dissatisfaction came
over her face. "You see," she said, apolo-
getically, "I'm used to different things -- to
the mountains. I have never been where I
could not see them before in my life."

"Ah, I see! I suppose it is odd to look
up and find them not there."

"It's like being lost, this not having any-
thing around you. At least, I mean," she
continued slowly, as if her thought could
not easily put itself in words, -- "I mean
it seems as if a part of the world had been
taken down. It makes you feel lonesome,
as if you were living after the world had
begun to die."

"You'll get used to it in a few days. It
seems very beautiful to me here. And then
you will have so much life to divert you."

"Life? But there is always that every-
where."

"I mean men and women."

"Oh! Still, I am not used to them. I
think I might be not -- not very happy with
them. They might think me queer. I
think I would like to show your sister the
mountains."

"She has seen them often."

"Oh, she told me. But I don't mean
those pretty green hills such as we saw com-
ing here. They are not like my mountains.
I like mountains that go beyond the clouds,
with terrible shadows in the hollows, and
belts of snow lying in the gorges where the
sun cannot reach, and the snow is blue in
the sunshine, or shining till you think it is
silver, and the mist so wonderful all about
it, changing each moment and drifting up
and down, that you cannot tell what name
to give the colors. These mountains of
yours here in the East are so quiet; mine
are shouting all the time, with the pines and
the rivers. The echoes are so loud in the
valley that sometimes, when the wind is
rising, we can hardly hear a man talk unless
he raises his voice. There are four cataracts
near where I live, and they all have different
voices, just as people do; and one of them
is happy -- a little white cataract -- and it falls
where the sun shines earliest, and till night
it is shining. But the others only get the
sun now and then, and they are more noisy
and cruel. One of them is always in the
shadow, and the water looks black. That
is partly because the rocks all underneath
it are black. It falls down twenty great
ledges in a gorge with black sides, and a
white mist dances all over it at every leap.
I tell father the mist is the ghost of the
waters. No man ever goes there; it is too
cold. The chill strikes through one, and
makes your heart feel as if you were dying.
But all down the side of the mountain,
toward the south and the west, the sun shines
on the granite and draws long points of
light out of it. Father tells me soldiers
marching look that way when the sun strikes
on their bayonets. Those are the kind of
mountains I mean, Mr. Grant."

She was looking at me with her face trans-
figured, as if it, like the mountains she told
me of, had been lying in shadow, and wait-
ing for the dazzling dawn.

"I had a terrible dream once," she went
on; "the most terrible dream ever I had.
I dreamt that the mountains had all been
taken down, and that I stood on a plain to
which there was no end. The sky was burn-
ing up, and the grass scorched brown from
the heat, and it was twisting as if it were in
pain. And animals, but no other person
save myself, only wild things, were crouch-
ing and looking up at that sky. They could
not run because there was no place to which
to go."

"You were having a vision of the last
man," I said. "I wonder myself sometimes
whether this old globe of ours is going to
collapse suddenly and take us with her, or
whether we will disappear through slow
disastrous ages of fighting and crushing,
with hunger and blight to help us to the
end. And then, at the last, perhaps, some
luckless fellow, stronger than the rest, will
stand amid the ribs of the rotting earth and
go mad."

The woman's eyes were fixed on me,
large and luminous. "Yes," she said; "he
would go mad from the lonesomeness of it.
He would be afraid to be left alone like that
with God. No one would want to be taken
into God's secrets."

"And our last man," I went on, "would
have to stand there on that swaying wreck
till even the sound of the crumbling earth
ceased. And he would try to find a voice
and would fail, because silence would have
come again. And then the light would go
out --"

The shudder that crept over her made
me stop, ashamed of myself.

"You talk like father," she said, with a
long-drawn breath. Then she looked up
suddenly at the sun shining through a rift
in those reckless gray clouds, and put out
one hand as if to get it full of the headlong
rollicking breeze. "But the earth is not
dying," she cried. "It is well and strong,
and it likes to go round and round among
all the other worlds. It likes the sun and
moon; they are all good friends; and it
likes the people who live on it. Maybe it
is they instead of the fire within who keep
it warm; or maybe it is warm just from
always going, as we are when we run. We
are young, you and I, Mr. Grant, and Leroy,
and your beautiful sister, and the world is
young too!" Then she laughed a strong
splendid laugh, which had never had the
joy taken out of it with drawing-room re-
strictions; and I laughed too, and felt that
we had become very good companions
indeed, and found myself warming to the
joy of companionship as I had not since I
was a boy at school.

That afternoon the four of us sat at a
table in the Casino together. The Casino,
as every one knows, is a place to amuse
yourself. If you have a duty, a mission, or
an aspiration, you do not take it there with
you, it would be so obviously out of place;
if poverty is ahead of you, you forget it; if
you have brains, you hasten to conceal them;
they would be a serious encumbrance.

There was a bubbling of conversation, a
rustle and flutter such as there always is
where there are many women. All the
place was gay with flowers and with gowns
as bright as the flowers. I remembered the
apprehensions of my sister, and studied
Leroy's wife to see how she fitted into this
highly colored picture. She was the only
woman in the room who seemed to wear
draperies. The jaunty slash and cut of
fashionable attire were missing in the long
brown folds of cloth that enveloped her
figure. I felt certain that even from Jessica's
standpoint she could not be called a guy.
Picturesque she might be, past the point of
convention, but she was not ridiculous.

"Judith takes all this very seriously," said
Leroy, laughingly. "I suppose she would
take even Paris seriously."

His wife smiled over at him. "Leroy
says I am melancholy," she said, softly;
"but I am always telling him that I am
happy. He thinks I am melancholy be-
cause I do not laugh. I got out of the way
of it by being so much alone. You only
laugh to let some one else know you are
pleased. When you are alone there is no
use in laughing. It would be like explain-
ing something to yourself."

"You are a philosopher, Judith. Mr.
Max Müller would like to know you."

"Is he a friend of yours, dear?"

Leroy blushed, and I saw Jessica curl
her lip as she noticed the blush. She laid
her hand on Mrs. Brainard's arm.

"Have you always been very much
alone?" she inquired.

"I was born on the ranch, you know;
and father was not fond of leaving it. In-
deed, now he says he will never again go
out of sight of it. But you can go a long
journey without doing that; for it lies on a
plateau in the valley, and it can be seen
from three different mountain passes.
Mother died there, and for that reason and
others -- father has had a strange life -- he
never wanted to go away. He brought a
lady from Pennsylvania to teach me. She
had wonderful learning, but she didn't
make very much use of it. I thought if I
had learning I would not waste it reading
books. I would use it to -- to live with.
Father had a library, but I never cared for
it. He was forever at books too. Of
course," she hastened to add, noticing the
look of mortification deepen on her hus-
band's face, "I like books very well if there
is nothing better at hand. But I always
said to Mrs. Windsor -- it was she who
taught me -- why read what other folk have
been thinking when you can go out and
think yourself? Of course one prefers one's
own thoughts, just as one prefers one's own
ranch, or one's own father."

"Then you are sure to like New York
when you go there to live," cried Jessica;
"for there you will find something to make
life entertaining all the time. No one need
fall back on books there."

"I'm not sure. I'm afraid there must be
such dreadful crowds of people. Of course
I should try to feel that they were all like
me, with just the same sort of fears, and
that it was ridiculous for us to be afraid of
each other, when at heart we all meant to
be kind."

Jessica fairly wrung her hands. "Hea-
vens!" she cried. "I said you would like
New York. I am afraid, my dear, that it
will break your heart!"

"Oh," said Mrs. Brainard, with what was
meant to be a gentle jest, "no one can
break my heart except Leroy. I should
not care enough about any one else, you
know."

The compliment was an exquisite one.
I felt the blood creep to my own brain in
a sort of vicarious rapture, and I avoided
looking at Leroy lest he should dislike to
have me see the happiness he must feel.
The simplicity of the woman seemed to
invigorate me as the cool air of her moun-
tains might if it blew to me on some bright
dawn, when I had come, fevered and sick
of soul, from the city.

When we were alone, Jessica said to me:
"That man has too much vanity, and he
thinks it is sensitiveness. He is going to
imagine that his wife makes him suffer.
There's no one so brutally selfish as your
sensitive man. He wants every one to live
according to his ideas, or he immediately
begins suffering. That friend of yours
hasn't the courage of his convictions. He
is going to be ashamed of the very qualities
that made him love his wife."

There was a hop that night at the hotel,
quite an unusual affair as to elegance, given
in honor of a woman from New York, who
wrote a novel a month.

Mrs. Brainard looked so happy that night
when she came in the parlor, after the
music had begun, that I felt a moisture
gather in my eyes just because of the beauty
of her joy, and the forced vivacity of the
women about me seemed suddenly coarse
and insincere. Some wonderful red stones,
brilliant as rubies, glittered in among the
diaphanous black driftings of her dress.
She asked me if the stones were not very
pretty, and said she gathered them in one
of her mountain river-beds.

"But the gown?" I said. "Surely, you
do not gather gowns like that in river-beds,
or pick them off mountain-pines?"

"But you can get them in Denver. Father
always sent to Denver for my finery. He
was very particular about how I looked.
You see, I was all he had --" She broke
off, her voice faltering.

"Come over by the window," I said, to
change her thought. "I have something to
repeat to you. It is a song of Sydney
Lanier's. I think he was the greatest poet
that ever lived in America, though not
many agree with me. But he is my dear
friend anyway, though he is dead, and I
never saw him; and I want you to hear
some of his words."

I led her across to an open window. The
dancers were whirling by us. The waltz
was one of those melancholy ones which
speak the spirit of the dance more elo-
quently than any merry melody can. The
sound of the sea booming beyond in the
darkness came to us, and long paths of
light, now red, now green, stretched toward
the distant light-house. These were the
lines I repeated: --

"What heartache -- ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill
The drear sand levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name;
Always the same -- the same."

But I got no further. I felt myself moved
with a sort of passion which did not seem to
come from within, but to be communicated
to me from her. A certain unfamiliar hap-
piness pricked through with pain thrilled
me, and I heard her whispering, --

"Do not go on, do not go on! I cannot
stand it to-night!"

"Hush," I whispered back; "come out
for a moment!" We stole into the dusk
without, and stood there trembling. I
swayed with her emotion. There was a
long silence. Then she said: "Father may
be walking alone now by the black cataract.
That is where he goes when he is sad. I
can see how lonely he looks among those
little twisted pines that grow from the rock.
And he will be remembering all the evenings
we walked there together, and all the things
we said." I did not answer. Her eyes
were still on the sea.

"What was the name of the man who
wrote that verse you just said to me?"

I told her.

"And he is dead? Did they bury him
in the mountains? No? I wish I could
have put him where he could have heard
those four voices calling down the canyon."

"Come back in the house," I said; "you
must come, indeed," I said, as she shrank
from re-entering.

Jessica was dancing like a fairy with Le-
roy. They both saw us and smiled as we
came in, and a moment later they joined us.
I made my excuses and left my friends to
Jessica's care. She was a sort of social
tyrant wherever she was, and I knew one
word from her would insure the popularity
of our friends -- not that they needed the
intervention of any one. Leroy had been
a sort of drawing-room pet since before he
stopped wearing knickerbockers.

"He is at his best in a drawing-room,"
said Jessica, "because there he deals with
theory and not with action. And he has
such beautiful theories that the women, who
are all idealists, adore him."

The next morning I awoke with a con-
viction that I had been idling too long. I
went back to the city and brushed the dust
from my desk. Then each morning, I, as
Jessica put it, "formed public opinion"
to the extent of one column a day in the
columns of a certain enterprising morning
journal.

Brainard said I had treated him shabbily
to leave upon the heels of his coming. But
a man who works for his bread and butter
must put a limit to his holiday. It is dif-
ferent when you only work to add to your
general picturesqueness. That is what I
wrote Leroy, and it was the unkindest thing
I ever said to him; and why I did it I do
not know to this day. I was glad, though,
when he failed to answer the letter. It gave
me a more reasonable excuse for feeling
out of patience with him.

The days that followed were very dull.
It was hard to get back into the way of
working. I was glad when Jessica came
home to set up our little establishment and
to join in the autumn gayeties. Brainard
brought his wife to the city soon after, and
went to housekeeping in an odd sort of a
way.

"I couldn't see anything in the place save
curios," Jessica reported, after her first call
on them. "I suppose there is a cooking-
stove somewhere, and maybe even a pantry
with pots in it. But all I saw was Alaska
totems and Navajo blankets. They have
as many skins around on the floor and
couches as would have satisfied an ancient
Briton. And everybody was calling there.
You know Mr. Brainard runs to curios in
selecting his friends as well as his furniture.
The parlors were full this afternoon of ab-
normal people, that is to say, with folks one
reads about. I was the only one there who
hadn't done something. I guess it's be-
cause I am too healthy."

"How did Mrs. Brainard like such a
motley crew?"

"She was wonderful -- perfectly wonder-
ful! Those insulting creatures were all
studying her, and she knew it. But her
dignity was perfect, and she looked as proud
as a Sioux chief. She listened to every one,
and they all thought her so bright."

"Brainard must have been tremendously
proud of her."

"Oh, he was -- of her and his Chilcat
portières."

Jessica was there often, but -- well, I was
busy. At length, however, I was forced to
go. Jessica refused to make any further
excuses for me. The rooms were filled with
small celebrities.

"We are the only nonentities," whispered
Jessica, as she looked around; "it will make
us quite distinguished."

We went to speak to our hostess. She
stood beside her husband, looking taller
than ever; and her face was white. Her
long red gown of clinging silk was so pe-
culiar as to give one the impression that she
was dressed in character. It was easy to
tell that it was one of Leroy's fancies. I
hardly heard what she said, but I know she
reproached me gently for not having been
to see them. I had no further word with
her till some one led her to the piano, and
she paused to say, --

"That poet you spoke of to me -- the one
you said was a friend of yours -- he is my
friend now too, and I have learned to sing
some of his songs. I am going to sing one
now." She seemed to have no timidity at
all, but stood quietly, with a half smile,
while a young man with a Russian name
played a strange minor prelude. Then she
sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at
times, and again lit up with gleams of pas-
sion. The music itself was fitful, now full
of joy, now tender, and now sad:

"Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands,
Ah! longer, longer we."

"She has a genius for feeling, hasn't
she?" Leroy whispered to me.

"A genius for feeling!" I repeated,
angrily. "Man, she has a heart and a soul
and a brain, if that is what you mean! I
shouldn't think you would be able to look
at her from the standpoint of a critic."

Leroy shrugged his shoulders and went
off. For a moment I almost hated him for
not feeling more resentful. I felt as if he
owed it to his wife to take offence at my
foolish speech.

It was evident that the "mountain woman"
had become the fashion. I read reports in
the papers about her unique receptions. I
saw her name printed conspicuously among
the list of those who attended all sorts of
dinners and musicales and evenings among
the set that affected intellectual pursuits.
She joined a number of women's clubs of
an exclusive kind.

"She is doing whatever her husband tells
her to," said Jessica. "Why, the other day
I heard her ruining her voice on 'Siegfried'!"

But from day to day I noticed a difference
in her. She developed a terrible activity.
She took personal charge of the affairs of
her house; she united with Leroy in keep-
ing the house filled with guests; she got
on the board of a hospital for little children,
and spent a part of every day among the
cots where the sufferers lay. Now and then
when we spent a quiet evening alone with
her and Leroy, she sewed continually on
little white night-gowns for these poor babies.
She used her carriage to take the most ex-
traordinary persons riding.

"In the cause of health," Leroy used to
say, "I ought to have the carriage fumi-
gated after every ride Judith takes, for she
is always accompanied by some one who looks
as if he or she should go into quarantine."

One night, when he was chaffing her in
this way, she flung her sewing suddenly
from her and sprang to her feet, as if she
were going to give way to a burst of girlish
temper. Instead of that, a stream of tears
poured from her eyes, and she held out her
trembling hands toward Jessica.

"He does not know," she sobbed. "He
cannot understand."

One memorable day Leroy hastened over
to us while we were still at breakfast to say
that Judith was ill, -- strangely ill. All night
long she had been muttering to herself as if
in a delirium. Yet she answered lucidly all
questions that were put to her.

"She begs for Miss Grant. She says
over and over that she 'knows,' whatever
that may mean."

When Jessica came home she told me she
did not know. She only felt that a tumult
of impatience was stirring in her friend.

"There is something majestic about her, --
something epic. I feel as if she were mak-
ing me live a part in some great drama, the
end of which I cannot tell. She is suffering,
but I cannot tell why she suffers."

Weeks went on without an abatement in
this strange illness. She did not keep her
bed. Indeed, she neglected few of her usual
occupations. But her hands were burning,
and her eyes grew bright with that wild
sort of lustre one sees in the eyes of those
who give themselves up to strange drugs or
manias. She grew whimsical, and formed
capricious friendships, only to drop them.

And then one day she closed her house
to all acquaintances, and sat alone continu-
ally in her room, with her hands clasped
in her lap, and her eyes swimming with the
emotions that never found their way to her
tongue.

Brainard came to the office to talk with
me about her one day. "I am a very miser-
able man, Grant," he said. "I am afraid I
have lost my wife's regard. Oh, don't tell me
it is partly my fault. I know it well enough.
And I know you haven't had a very good
opinion of me lately. But I am remorseful
enough now, God knows. And I would give
my life to see her as she was when I found
her first among the mountains. Why, she
used to climb them like a strong man, and
she was forever shouting and singing. And
she had peopled every spot with strange
modern mythological creatures. Her father
is an old dreamer, and she got the trick from
him. They had a little telescope on a great
knoll in the centre of the valley, just where
it commanded a long path of stars, and they
used to spend nights out there when the
frost literally fell in flakes. When I think
how hardy and gay she was, how full of
courage and life, and look at her now, so
feverish and broken, I feel as if I should go
mad. You know I never meant to do her
any harm. Tell me that much, Grant."

"I think you were very egotistical for a
while, Brainard, and that is a fact. And
you didn't appreciate how much her nature
demanded. But I do not think you are re-
sponsible for your wife's present condition.
If there is any comfort in that statement,
you are welcome to it."

"But you don't mean --" he got no
further.

"I mean that your wife may have her
reservations, just as we all have, and I am
paying her high praise when I say it. You
are not so narrow, Leroy, as to suppose for
a moment that the only sort of passion a
woman is capable of is that which she enter-
tains for a man. How do I know what
is going on in your wife's soul? But it is
nothing which even an idealist of women,
such as I am, old fellow, need regret."

How glad I was afterward that I spoke
those words. They exercised a little re-
straint, perhaps, on Leroy when the day
of his terrible trial came. They made him
wrestle with the demon of suspicion that
strove to possess him. I was sitting in my
office, lagging dispiritedly over my work
one day, when the door burst open and
Brainard stood beside me. Brainard, I say,
and yet in no sense the man I had known,
-- not a hint in this pale creature, whose
breath struggled through chattering teeth,
and whose hands worked in uncontrollable
spasms, of the nonchalant elegant I had
known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those
angry and determined eyes of the gayly
selfish spirit of my holiday friend.

"She's gone!" he gasped. "Since yes-
terday. And I'm here to ask you what
you think now? And what you know."

A panorama of all shameful possibilities
for one black moment floated before me.
I remember this gave place to a wave, cold
as death, that swept from head to foot;
then Brainard's hands fell heavily on my
shoulders.

"Thank God at least for this much," he
said, hoarsely; "I didn't know at first but
I had lost both friend and wife. But I see
you know nothing. And indeed in my
heart I knew all the time that you did not.
Yet I had to come to you with my anger.
And I remembered how you defended her.
What explanation can you offer now?"

I got him to sit down after a while and
tell me what little there was to tell. He
had been away for a day's shooting, and
when he returned he found only the per-
plexed servants at home. A note was left
for him. He showed it to me.

"There are times," it ran, "when we must
do as we must, not as we would. I am go-
ing to do something I have been driven to
do since I left my home. I do not leave
any message of love for you, because you
would not care for it from a woman so weak
as I. But it is so easy for you to be happy
that I hope in a little while you will forget
the wife who yielded to an influence past
resisting. It may be madness, but I am
not great enough to give it up. I tried to
make the sacrifice, but I could not. I tried
to be as gay as you, and to live your sort of
life; but I could not do it. Do not make
the effort to forgive me. You will be hap-
pier if you simply hold me in the contempt
I deserve."

I read the letter over and over. I do not
know that I believe that the spirit of inani-
mate things can permeate to the intelligence
of man. I am sure I always laughed at
such ideas. Yet holding that note with its
shameful seeming words, I felt a conscious-
ness that it was written in purity and love.
And then before my eyes there came a scene
so vivid that for a moment the office with its
familiar furniture was obliterated. What I
saw was a long firm road, green with mid-
summer luxuriance. The leisurely thudding
of my horse's feet sounded in my ears. Be-
side me was a tall, black-robed figure. I
saw her look back with that expression of
deprivation at the sky line. "It's like liv-
ing after the world has begun to die," said
the pensive minor voice. "It seems as if
part of the world had been taken down."

"Brainard," I yelled, "come here! I
have it. Here's your explanation. I can
show you a new meaning for every line of
this letter. Man, she has gone to the moun-
tains. She has gone to worship her own
gods!"

Two weeks later I got a letter from Brain-
ard, dated from Colorado.

"Old man," it said, "you're right. She
is here. I found my mountain woman here
where the four voices of her cataracts had
been calling to her. I saw her the moment
our mules rounded the road that commands
the valley. We had been riding all night
and were drenched with cold dew, hungry
to desperation, and my spirits were of lead.
Suddenly we got out from behind the gran-
ite wall, and there she was, standing, where I
had seen her so often, beside the little water-
fall that she calls the happy one. She was
looking straight up at the billowing mist
that dipped down the mountain, mammoth
saffron rolls of it, plunging so madly from
the impetus of the wind that one marvelled
how it could be noiseless. Ah, you do not
know Judith! That strange, unsophisti-
cated, sometimes awkward woman you saw
bore no more resemblance to my mountain
woman than I to Hercules. How strong and
beautiful she looked standing there wrapped
in an ecstasy! It was my primitive woman
back in her primeval world. How the blood
leaped in me! All my old romance, so dif-
ferent from the common love-histories of
most men, was there again within my reach!
All the mystery, the poignant happiness
were mine again. Do not hold me in con-
tempt because I show you my heart. You
saw my misery. Why should I grudge you
a glimpse of my happiness? She saw me
when I touched her hand, not before, so
wrapped was she. But she did not seem
surprised. Only in her splendid eyes there
came a large content. She pointed to the
dancing little white fall. 'I thought some-
thing wonderful was going to happen,' she
whispered, 'for it has been laughing so.'

"I shall not return to New York. I am
going to stay here with my mountain wo-
man, and I think perhaps I shall find out
what life means here sooner than I would
back there with you. I shall learn to see
large things large and small things small.
Judith says to tell you and Miss Grant that
the four voices are calling for you every
day in the valley.

"Yours in fullest friendship,

"LEROY BRAINARD."

-THE END-
Elia W. Peattie's short story: A Mountain Woman

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