Angels' Shoes, and Other Stories

by Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

WHITE MAGIC

Lobelia is the new residential suburb on the outskirts of a new town, which is itself on the outskirts of most things. The Big Woods come right down to the streets of Lobelia; bears have been seen on Frontenac Boulevard. Yes, Lobelia is pretty new. But not so new that you’d expect to smell kinnikinnick there.

Yet, one June evening, a savour of that tobacco plant passed along Frontenac Boulevard and down Centre Street and up Magnetwan Avenue. Here and there, an old-timer, relegated to carpet slippers and a back bedroom, sniffed it, and dreamed of prairie and poplar-bluff and the Blackfoot brave outside the H.B.C. Store. Leigh Harvey, busy lifting dandelions from his beautiful lawn, with a dental-looking instrument, dropped it and knelt motionless in the growing dew. He set his big hands on his hip, because they trembled suddenly. To himself, he whispered, “It couldn’t be him—come at last—after all these years.”

He drew a deep breath. The smell was yet in the air. He raised his keen eyes slowly from the dandelions and looked across the hedge that screened his new iron fence.

At the base of the gaudy fence a man was sitting, smoking a little, blackened corncob pipe. He was a mere kernel of a little brown, old man, within the husks of many formless garments. On the grass edge beside him was a pedlar’s basket.

Leigh Harvey, leading citizen of Lobelia, rose silently to his feet. He was shaking. His strong mouth twitched. His eyes were guarded, watchful, but triumphant.

He leaned across his new iron gate with the gold knobs on it, and said, “Hallo, there!”

His voice was rough with emotion held in check—for four years. The old pedlar looked up sideways, cautiously. He twitched the shiny cloth cover off the big basket.

“Boot-laces,” he began, mechanically, “pipes, ver’ cheap pipes, plugs, machine-oil, stickin’-plaster, spools, ver’ nice handkerchiefs.”

He shook a faded rag out of the basket. Harvey leaned over the gate, his new gold watch-chain tinkling against the iron—a stalwart figure in shirt-sleeves. “You come far?” he said, as carelessly as he could.

“Ver’ long way, boss.”

The old man pointed north with his pipe-stem. He dangled the faded handkerchief.

“You travel about much this way?”

“All over, boss.” The old man’s hands began to refold the red handkerchief.

“Stop!” said Harvey, suddenly. “I want to buy that.”

“Ver’ nice handkerchief.”

A silver coin changed hands. The old man shook the ashes from his pipe into his palm, and scattered them to the winds. He began to strap his basket.

“You haven’t,” said Harvey, slowly—“you haven’t got any more—houses and gardens in there?”

The quick glance of the black eyes was wary.

“This,” went on Harvey, indicating the house behind him, the finest in Lobelia—“this here came out of a basket like that.”

The old face creased slowly into a hundred doubtful wrinkles. With a gesture that said, “That may be a good joke, but it’s beyond me,” the pedlar went on covering his basket. Harvey was beset by a fear that the old man would yet slip out of his hold.

“Stop a bit!” he said, desperately. “I want to ask you, did you ever know a feller called Gammett?”

“I forget, boss. I know fellers all over.”

The old man was sending Harvey the swift, impenetrable glances of a wild thing frightened. He was strapping his basket quickly. Harvey, gripping the gate in excitement, spoke commandingly.

“Wait! I’ve got something to tell you. Wait!”

The old pedlar hesitated, then silently acquiesced. He squatted once more at the foot of the fence, relighted his pipe, and prepared to listen. Once more, with the faint blue spiral of kinnikinnick smoke, the lost years came down on Harvey like a wave.

“There was a man,” began Harvey, abruptly, “a man who was down and out, five years ago.”

The pedlar glanced up at him.

“Most fellers bin that,” he suggested.

“Most fellers been that,” agreed Harvey, slowly. “But not many have the bad luck this one did. And one can’t rightly say it was his fault. He’d fought it. My faith, how he’d fought his luck for years! But it just seemed that everything he touched went wrong. Year by year he went down, and down, and a little bit farther down. He tried farmin’, but he hadn’t enough capital to tide over the bad seasons. He tried prospectin’, and his health gave out. At last,” he said, quietly, “this feller got so far down that he was workin’ for a Chinaman—for a Chink that kep’ a little store way up in the hills.”

“When that job failed,” Harvey went on, after a silence, “Gammett got him.”

He glanced at the old pedlar’s back, every fold of the rags covering it instinct with listening.

“If you don’t know Gammett,” he went on again, “I’ll have to tell you. Gammett had a store, too—a big store. He made a fortune by helping people. Yes, he was very helpful, was Gammett. If a man was in bad luck, or ill, or’d been on the bust and spent all his money, Gammett was right there, ready for help. He’d supply goods, would Gammett—at his own prices. Many a feller that Gammett helped in the bad years has spent all he made in the good years payin’ off Gammett. Yes, every down-and-outer in the hills got on Gammett’s books sooner or later.

“This feller, this down-and-outer I was telling about, he was on Gammett’s books, and Gammett ground him hard. Gammett got him. And I hope”—Harvey’s big fist gripped and quivered on the gilded iron—“I hope Death and Judgment’s got Gammett!”

After a moment the heat went out of him. He glanced keenly at the pedlar’s back.

“If you’d been at Gammett’s store,” he said, “one autumn day five years ago; if you’d been sitting on a log in front of the store waitin’ to see Gammett on the quiet to sell him some poached mink pelts, then you’d have seen this feller I’m telling about. He was sitting on the log, too. Sitting there with his head in his fists, staring at two little parcels on the ground between his boots. There was a pound of tea in one. There was some rolled-oats in the other. He’d just given Gammett his silver watch for ’em, the last thing he had left, the very last. He hadn’t even hope or courage left. He was down and out.”

The pedlar on the other side of the fence took his pipe out of his mouth with a soft “cloop.” He turned his old head and stared at Harvey steadily, with impenetrable eyes. Harvey met the long look as steadily. By-and-by the old man turned away and resumed his listening.

In a low voice, Harvey said:

“There was another man sitting on that log. He was an old man even then. He looked kind of poor, but not so’s he was worryin’ any about it. He had a brown face, like yours; a long coat, like yours; and a big basket, like your basket.

“After a bit, them two on the log got talking. And the down-and-outer, he told that old man just what I’ve been telling you.

“He told him more. Why, I dunno. It just happens sometimes that when a feller’s beat out, he’ll talk. This feller talked. He said, ‘It ain’t for myself I mind so much; it’s for her.’

“ ‘You married?’ ses the old man. And the down-and-outer, he says, ‘Yes; eight years ago. We haven’t been apart since. But the life’s too rough for her.’ ”

Harvey glanced back at the house. He went on, after a moment:

“The down-and-outer, he said: ‘You see, she’s not just like other folks. Not just the same. We had two kids, and we lost them. It was too rough for them, too. I wasn’t able to do all I should,’ he said, ‘and they died. Since then she’s not just right. She thinks that if we had a garden they’d come back, the kiddies would. A white garden she wants, a garden full of white flowers, and a white cat. Then, she thinks, they’d come back to play. And the grief of it is,’ says the feller, ‘that she’d need so little to make her happy, and that I can’t get it for her.’ Then he cursed Gammett, and got up and struck off down the trail, home.”

Harvey’s strong voice failed, sank to a whisper. He stood, leaning on the gate, motionless. The old man on the grass outside was as motionless as he. At last, he said, softly, “D’you see anything queer about my garden, friend?”

The pedlar’s answer came slowly.

“All the flowers in it are w’ite flowers.”

“That’s right. All the flowers are white. But wait.

“This feller, he went off down the trail, home. It was late, and it looked like a bad night. He’d gone maybe a half-mile, when someone overhauled him; he saw it was the old pedlar he’d been talkin’ to. The old man, he stops the down-and-outer and puts a little packet in his hand.

“What’s this?’ said the feller. And the pedlar said, ‘To make a garden for the children,’ he said, just like that, and turned away and was gone before the feller could say ‘Thank you.’

“He’s been waitin’,” said Harvey, gently, “to say ‘Thank you,’ ever since.”

Evening was closing to a perfect night. White flowers fell from the locust-trees along the grass, and moths as white and silent haunted the garden of white flowers. A woman came from the house and stood on the white steps as if she were watching something in the garden shadows, and a white cat rubbed against her dress. Harvey’s voice, when it came, was hushed; yet it seemed to break a silence as perfect as a pearl:

“When the feller I’ve been tellin’ you about looked at the little packet, he saw there was writing on it. It said—Harvey spoke as if reading from memory—it said, ‘White Columbine. Hardy perennial. Sow in autumn in carefully prepared soil.’ D’you see anything queer about the flowers in my garden, friend?”

Again the answer came, slowly, from the other side of the fence:

“There are many of one kind.”

The old man stretched a hand through the bars and lightly touched one blossom of a thousand white columbines.

“That’s right. And when the feller had read the writing he gave a kind thought to the pedlar, and put the packet of seeds in his pocket, and forgot it.

“He’d enough to make him forget more things than a packet of flower-seeds an old pedlar had given him. If you knew those hills, you’d know that there was storms on ’em that leap on a man like wolves. He was caught in one, and all night he was lost on the mountains.

“Level rain that drove in his face like a wall: wind that bruised the livin’ flesh on his bones: sleet to glass the rocks, and a moon no more than a blot in the scud—he knew no more of the night. He kep’ going some way, thinkin’ of the woman that waited for him. If he hadn’t fixed his mind on her he’d have just given up and laid down and died, for the weather used him cruel, and he’d no heart to fight it, only because of her. Then he found he’d missed the trail, and he didn’t greatly care—only for her.

“He went on in the dark and the storm, tryin’ to strike back to the trail lower down. He couldn’t make it. Seemed as if he was in hills he’d never been in before, so strange and wild they were with the dark. At last the rain beat him down, and the wind dazed him, and he fell.

“He thought he fell into death. He did fall a long way, but not that far. He came to, very weak, sprawled on a slope of loose stones. If he moved, they moved too. He’d no wish to move for awhile. He was badly knocked about, and his clothes were half-tore off his back, but after a bit he thought of his wife, and got to his hands and knees, groaning. Then the moon came out clear, and he looked at what the slipping stones had uncovered.”

Harvey’s voice shook a little. Presently he steadied it, and went on briskly:

“Silver was not so cheap then as it is now. Even in the dim moonlight he knew what he was lookin’ at. He was lookin’ at a vein of almost pure silver them sliding stones had uncovered.

“He laid quite a long time, just lookin’ at it. Then the situation come home to him.

“He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where the silver was. He couldn’t get his bearings. He didn’t dare mark the place too plain, for fear someone else’d find it. After a while, he made shift to build some little heaps of stones. Then he went on as well as he could. You see, if he’d stayed by the place till daylight he’d have been dead in that weather. He had to risk it.

“He found his way back to his wife, somehow. He never remembered anything of what happened after he left that place.

“He was near dead, and they thought he was ravin’. Maybe he was. He was ill a long spell. They were helped. When he was sick folks was kind, and they took kindness where they’d been too proud to take it before. Even when he was ill he fought to keep a tight hold on his tongue. When he could crawl he went out to find his claim.

“He couldn’t find it.

“Sweatin’ and tremblin’, the ghost of a man, day after day he wandered in the hills, lookin’ for it. He quartered the ground like a hunting dog, but he couldn’t find the place. There was a hundred spots like his memory of it; a thousand slopes of loose stones. The rain and the wind had swept his little rock-piles away. He had nothin’ to go by. Wealth beyond all he’d thought of, all he struggled for, all he prayed for—for her—was there, somewhere in them hills under his feet, and he couldn’t find it.

“Men thought he was mad. He let them think so. Maybe, as the time went on, he was pretty near mad.

“For the winter went, and the spring, and still he was trampin’ the hills, seekin’ the claim he couldn’t find.”

Harvey glanced down at himself, thoughtfully.

“He began, then, to look as if he was mad. A gaunt thing in rags. I dunno how he and the woman lived at all in them days. He didn’t do any work. He was all the time lookin’ for his claim.”

Harvey glanced up at a star limned in a sky as clear as water. “I hope,” he said, under his breath, “all he said and thought and did in them days is forgiven him. If his soul was black in him can you wonder? If he was ready to curse God and die, can you blame him? After all, ’twasn’t for himself he wanted it so bad.

“There was a day at last, a day in summer. He kind of woke up from a nightmare that day. And he knew it was the end.

“He knew he was finished. He knew he couldn’t go on no more. It’s so, you know. A man gets his soul used up same as his body, when things is too much against him. He knew he just couldn’t go on. He went out in the hills that day, just the same. But he was through with it. The dirty tricks of Life had downed him. He was flat on his back, laid out on the mat, in the great Ring that’s seen the finish of better men than he.

“He kissed his wife. He didn’t take a pick or a shovel that day to dig rocks with. He took his old gun. And he told her—God forgive him!—that he was goin’ to shoot birds.

“He went away, miles about the hills. Everything looked new and strange to him—like things do when you’re looking your last on ’em. He didn’t regard where he was goin’. It was all one. At last he came to a valley under great rocks, where the spruce clung with roots like snakes. He’d no memory of it. He sat down and set the gun between his knees, and slipped off his boot.”

Harvey’s voice checked, faltered. For the first time he moved. He leaned across the fence, and laid a big hand—which shook a little—on the shoulder of the old man squatting in the dew.

“Only for that old pedlar-man that gave him the little packet of flower-seeds,” he said, solemnly—“only for him, that feller’s bones’d be layin’ among the rocks to this day, where the foxes had left ’em.

“For he had his toe on the trigger, friend, when he saw white flowers in bloom a few yards off. At the foot of a slope of loose stones—white columbines.

“There’s plenty of columbines wild in the hills, ain’t there? But these were the dovey kind, the garden ones. His eyes, that were so near shutting on the world for ever, saw ’em for a minute without understanding. And then . . .”

Harvey paused again. His hand quivered on the old man’s shoulder. “And then his memory gave him back some words: ‘White Columbine,’ he was reading off of the paper. ‘Hardy perennial. Sow in autumn in carefully prepared soil.’ He remembered putting it in his pocket; and then no more of it from then till now. He guessed how it had spilt out of his pocket when he fell in the storm. And the seed had filtered into the cracks, and the sun had warmed it, and the rain had fed it; while he was ranging the hills like a lost soul it was safe, and growing, and waiting for that moment, as if the Lord had laid His hand over it till the right time came. And now the time had come. That feller had come into the valley to die; and the little white flowers, like nests of doves, they bade him live. He scraped with his gun-butt in the stones—and there was the lode.”

Harvey was silent. Silent as he; the old man took his pipe from his mouth, and shook out the ashes. A drift of tiny red sparks sank and settled and died in the dew. The reek of the kinnikinnick died. The half-tropic breath of locust and tobacco came into its own.

“That,” said Harvey, “was the beginning of the White Columbine Mine. And ever since”—his hand gripped the lean shoulder, his voice rang loud—“and ever since then that feller’s been looking for the old man that gave him the flower-seeds, and, in so doing, gave him life and fortune and happiness.

“And he thinks he’s found him,” finished Harvey, huskily, leaning low over the fence—“he thinks he’s found him at last.”

After a time the pedlar glanced up at him. He said, very gently: “W’at that feller—that good feller—want with the ole man when he finds him?”

“To give him anything he wants,” said Harvey, quietly.

“What?”

“If he wants a house, it’s his,” said Harvey. “If he wants a farm, it’s his. Money, it’s his. Anything he wants.”

He was smiling, but his keen eyes were dim. The shoulder under his strong hand was so frail, the coat so ragged, the face turned to his so impenetrably old.

“And if that ole pedlar-man want nothing, my frien’?”

“He must want a thousand things!”

“Not one,” said the old man, softly.

“But—”

“Listen. It is my turn.”

“I’m listening.”

“That pedlar, he is ole. Will he grow young if you put him in a fine brick house?”

“No.”

“He is ver’ poor. But the poor man who wants nothing, he is as well off as the rich man?”

“Maybe.”

“You would lay him in a fine, soft bed. But if he did not sleep there for want of the branches and the wind moving in them?”

Harvey was silent.

“You would give him rich food and drinks. Good! But men may starve to death with full bellies, my frien’; and if he starved so for the dawn in summer and the shantymen’s fires in the winter, and the trails of all the hills?”

Again Harvey was silent. The old man rose slowly, and lifted his basket. Harvey started. He said, passionately, “But look at what he—at what you did for me!”

Very gently the old pedlar smiled in a creasing of dim wrinkles. “He only carry the basket,” he said, softly. “It is the good God that settles what shall come out of it. For you, the fine house and the garden full of white flowers for madam to walk in. For me . . . .”

He slung the strap over his shoulder, pulled out his paper of kinnikinnick, filled and lighted the little pipe. “Good man, you,” he said, between puffs; “but there’s one thing you cannot do. You cannot give to the one that wants nothing.”

“I shan’t give up. There’s a thousand of the best waiting for you whenever you want it, anyway. When you’re older or ill my turn’ll come.”

“Per’aps.” The old figure was withdrawing from him into the shadows—infinitely alien, infinitely remote.

“Will you take nothing now?” called Harvey, as if to someone a very long way off.

The old man hesitated. Then, from the columbines nodding through the fence, he picked a single blossom. “This,” he said, “to remember.” His voice, too, was withdrawing, fading away.

The savour of kinnikinnick passed along Magnetwan Avenue, and past the Public Library. Harvey was left, motionless, in the dusk among the white columbines. He held in his hands a red handkerchief. He lifted it, and breathed the rank smell that opened to him the gates of all his past. Shamefacedly, he brushed it with his lips.