“Thank you, Scripps,” she said. “Thank you for this bird.” Her voice broke. “And now I must be going.”
Quietly, silently, gathering her shawl around her, clutching the cage with the sleeping bird and the copy of The Mercury to her breast, with only a backward glance, a last glance at him who had been her Scripps, she opened the door of the beanery, and went out into the night. Scripps did not even see her go. He was intent on what Mandy was saying. Mandy was talking again.
“That bird she just took out,” Mandy was saying.
“Oh, did she take a bird out?” Scripps asked. “Go on with the story.”
“You used to wonder about what sort of bird that was,” Mandy went on.
“That’s right,” Scripps agreed.
“Well that reminds me of a story about Gosse and the Marquis of Buque,” Mandy went on.
“Tell it, Mandy. Tell it,” Scripps urged.
“It seems a great friend of mine, Ford, you’ve heard me speak of him before, was in the marquis’s castle during the war. His regiment was billeted there and the marquis, one of the richest if not the richest man in England, was serving in Ford’s regiment as a private. Ford was sitting in the library one evening. The library was a most extraordinary place. The walls were made of bricks of gold set into tiles or something. I forget exactly how it was.”
“Go on,” Scripps urged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Anyhow, in the middle of the wall of the library was a stuffed flamingo in a glass case.”
“They understand interior decorating, these English,” Scripps said.
“Your wife was English, wasn’t she?” asked Mandy.
“From the Lake Country,” Scripps answered. “Go on with the story.”
“Well, anyway,” Mandy went on, “Ford was sitting there in the library one evening after mess when the butler came in and said: ‘The Marquis of Buque’s compliments and might he show the library to a group of friends with whom he has been dining?’ They used to let him dine out and sometimes they let him sleep in the castle. Ford said, ‘Quite,’ and in came the marquis in his private’s uniform followed by Sir Edmund Gosse and Professor Whatsisname, I forget it for the moment, from Oxford. Gosse stopped in front of the stuffed flamingo in the glass case and said, ‘What have we here, Buque?’
“ ‘It’s a flamingo, Sir Edmund,’ the marquis answered.
“ ‘That’s not my idea of a flamingo,’ Gosse remarked.
“ ‘No, Gosse. That’s God’s idea of a flamingo,’ Professor Whatsisname said. I wish I could remember his name.”
“Don’t bother,” Scripps said. His eyes were bright. He leaned forward. Something was pounding inside of him. Something he could not control. “I love you, Mandy,” he said. “I love you. You are my woman.” The thing was pounding away inside of him. It would not stop.
“That’s all right,” Mandy answered. “I’ve known you were my man for a long time. Would you like to hear another story? Speaking of woman.”
“Go on,” Scripps said. “You must never stop, Mandy. You are my woman now.”
“Sure,” Mandy agreed. “This story is about when Knut Hamsun was a streetcar conductor in Chicago.”
“Go on,” Scripps said. “You are my woman now, Mandy.”
He repeated the phrase to himself. My woman. My woman. You are my woman. She is my woman. It is my woman. My woman. But, somehow, he was not satisfied. Somewhere, somehow, there must be something else. Something else. My woman. The words were a little hollow now. Into his mind, though he tried to thrust it out, there came again the monstrous picture of the squaw as she strode silently into the room. That squaw. She did not wear clothes, because she did not like them. Hardy, braving the winter nights. What might not the spring bring? Mandy was talking. Mandy talking on in the beanery. Mandy telling her stories.
It grows late in the beanery. Mandy talks on. She is his woman now. He is her man. But is he her man? In Scripps’s brain that vision of the squaw. The squaw that strode unannounced into the beanery. The squaw who had been thrown out into the snow. Mandy talking on. Telling literary reminiscences. Authentic incidents. They had the ring of truth. But were they enough? Scripps wondered. She was his woman. But for how long? Scripps wondered. Mandy talking on in the beanery. Scripps listening. But his mind straying away. Straying away. Straying away. Where was it straying? Out into the night. Out into the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Night in Petoskey. Long past midnight. Inside the beanery a light burning. The town asleep under the Northern moon. To the North the tracks of the G. R. & I. Railroad running far into the North. Cold tracks, stretching North toward Mackinaw City and St. Ignace. Cold tracks to be walking on at this time of night.
North of the frozen little Northern town a couple walking side by side on the tracks. It is Yogi Johnson walking with the squaw. As they walk Yogi Johnson silently strips off his garments. One by one he strips off his garments, and casts them beside the track. In the end he is clad only in a worn pair of pump-maker shoes. Yogi Johnson, naked in the moonlight, walking North beside the squaw. The squaw striding along beside him. She carries the papoose on her back in his bark cradle. Yogi attempts to take the papoose from her. He would carry the papoose. The husky dog whines and licks at Yogi Johnson’s ankles. No, the squaw would carry the papoose herself. On they stride. Into the North. Into the Northern night.
Behind them come two figures. Sharply etched in the moonlight. It is the two Indians. The two woods Indians. They stoop and gather up the garments Yogi Johnson has cast away. Occasionally, they grunt to one another. Striding softly along in the moonlight. Their keen eyes not missing a single cast-off garment. When the last garment has been cast off they look and see far ahead of them the two figures in the moonlight. The two Indians straighten up. They examine the garments.
“White chief snappy dresser,” the tall Indian remarks, holding up an initialled shirt.
“White chief going get pretty cold,” small Indian remarks. He hands a vest to the tall Indian. The tall Indian rolls all the clothing, all the cast-off garments, into a bundle, and they start back along the tracks to the town.
“Better keep clothes for white chief or sellem Salvation Army?” asks the short Indian.
“Better sellem Salvation Army,” the tall Indian grunts. “White chief maybe never come back.”
“White chief come back all right,” grunted the little Indian.
“Better sellem Salvation Army, anyway,” grunts the tall Indian. “White chief need new clothes, anyhow, when spring comes.”
As they walked down the tracks toward town, the air seemed to soften. The Indians walk uneasily now. Through the tamaracks and cedars beside the railway tracks a warm wind is blowing. The snow-drifts are melting now beside the tracks. Something stirs inside the two Indians. Some urge. Some strange pagan disturbance. The warm wind is blowing. The tall Indian stops, moistens his finger and holds it up in the air. The little Indian watches. “Chinook?” he asks.
“Heap chinook,” the tall Indian says. They hurry on toward town. The moon is blurred now by clouds carried by the warm chinook wind that is blowing.
“Want to get in town before rush,” the tall Indian grunts.
“Red brothers want be well up in line,” the little Indian grunts anxiously.
“Nobody work in factory now,” the tall Indian grunted.
“Better hurry.”
The warm wind blows. Inside the Indians strange longings were stirring. They knew what they wanted. Spring at last was coming to the frozen little Northern town. The two Indians hurried along the track.
The End
Author’s Final Note to the Reader
Well, reader, how did you like it? It took me ten days to write it. Has it been worth it? There is just one place I would like to clear up. You remember back in the story where the elderly waitress, Diana, tells about how she lost her mother in Paris, and woke up to find herself with a French general in the next room? I thought perhaps you might be interested to know the real explanation of that. What actually happened was that her mother was taken violently ill with the bubonic plague in the night, and the doctor who was called diagnosed the case and warned the authorities. It was the day the great exposition was to be opened, and think what a case of bubonic plague would have done for the exposition as publicity. So the French authorities simply had the woman disappear. She died toward morning. The general who was summoned and who then got into bed in the same room where the mother had been, always seemed to us like a pretty brave man. He was one of the big stockholders in the exposition, though, I believe.
Anyway, reader, as a piece of secret history it always seemed to me like an awfully good story, and I know you would rather have me explain it here than drag an explanation into the novel, where really, after all, it has no place. It is interesting to observe, though, how the French police hushed the whole matter up, and how quickly they got ahold of the coiffeur and the cab-driver. Of course, what it shows is that when you’re travelling abroad alone, or even with your mother, you simply cannot be too careful. I hope it is
