________________________________________________
_ It was eight o'clock when she let herself into her
apartment. She had given the maid a whole holiday. When
Fanny had turned on the light in her little hallway she
stood there a moment, against the door, her hand spread flat
against the panel. It was almost as though she patted it,
lovingly, gratefully. Then she went on into the living
room, and stood looking at its rosy lamplight. Then, still
as though seeing it all for the first time, into her own
quiet, cleanly bedroom, with its cream enamel, and the
chaise longue that she had had cushioned in rose because it
contrasted so becomingly with her black hair. And there, on
her dressing table, propped up against the brushes and
bottles, was the yellow oblong of a telegram. From Theodore
of course. She opened it with a rush of happiness. It was
like a loving hand held out to her in need. It was a day
letter.
"We sail Monday on the St. Paul. Mizzi is with
me. I broke my word to you. But you lied to me about
the letters. I found them the week before the concert.
I shall bring her back with me or stay to fight for
Germany. Forgive me, dear sister."
Just fifty words. His thrifty German training.
"No!" cried Fanny, aloud. "No! No!" And the cry quavered
and died away, and another took its place. and it, too,
gave way to another, so that she was moaning as she stood
there with the telegram in her shaking hand. She read it
again, her lips moving, as old people sometimes
read. Then she began to whimper, with her closed fist over
her mouth, her whole body shaking. All her fine courage
gone now; all her rigid self-discipline; all her iron
determination. She was not a tearful woman. And she had
wept much on the train. So the thing that wrenched and
shook her now was all the more horrible because of its
soundlessness. She walked up and down the room, pushing her
hair back from her forehead with the flat of her hand. From
time to time she smoothed out the crumpled yellow slip of
paper and read it again. Her mind, if you could have seen
into it, would have presented a confused and motley picture.
Something like this: But his concert engagements? . . .
That was what had happened to Bauer. . . . How silly he had
looked when her fist met his jaw. . . . It had turned cold;
why didn't they have steam on? The middle of
October. . . . Teddy, how could you do it! How could you
do it! . . . Was he still lying in a heap on the floor?
But of course the sneaking little Jap had found him. . . .
Somebody to talk to. That was what she wanted. Some one to
talk to. . . .
Some one to talk to. She stood there, in the middle of her
lamp-lighted living room, and she held out her hands in
silent appeal. Some one to talk to. In her mind she went
over the list of those whose lives had touched hers in the
last few crowded years. Fenger, Fascinating Facts, Ella
Monahan, Nathan Haynes; all the gay, careless men and women
she had met from time to time through Fenger and Fascinating
Facts. Not one of them could she turn to now.
Clarence Heyl. She breathed a sigh of relief. Clarence
Heyl. He had helped her once, to-day. And now, for the
second time, something that he had said long before came
from its hiding place in her subconscious mind. She had
said:
"Some days I feel I've got to walk out of the office,
and down the street, without a hat, and on and on,
walking and walking, and running and running till I come to
the horizon."
And Heyl had answered, in his quiet, reassuring way: "Some
day that feeling will get too strong for you. When that
time comes get on a train marked Denver. From there take
another to Estes Park. That's the Rocky Mountains, where
the horizon lives and has its being. Ask for Heyl's place.
They'll hand you from one to the other. I may be there, but
more likely I shan't. The key's in the mail box, tied to a
string. You'll find a fire laid with fat pine knots. My
books are there. The bedding's in the cedar chest. And the
mountains will make you clean and whole again; and the
pines . . ."
Fanny went to the telephone. Trains for Denver. She found
the road she wanted, and asked for information. She was on
her own ground here. All her life she had had to find her
own trains, check her own trunks, plan her journeys.
Sometimes she had envied the cotton-wool women who had had
all these things done for them, always.
One-half of her mind was working clearly and coolly. The
other half was numb. There were things to be done. They
would take a day. More than a day, but she would neglect
most of them. She must notify the office. There were
tickets to be got. Reservations. Money at the bank.
Packing. When the maid came in at eleven Fanny had
suitcases and bags out, and her bedroom was strewn with
shoes, skirts, coats.
Late Monday afternoon Fenger telephoned. She did not
answer. There came a note from him, then a telegram. She
did not read them. Tuesday found her on a train bound for
Colorado. She remembered little of the first half of her
journey. She had brought with her books and magazines, and
she must have read hem, but her mind had evidently retained
nothing of what she had read. She must have spent
hours looking out of the window, for she remembered, long
afterward, the endlessness and the monotony of the Kansas
prairies. They soothed her. She was glad there were no
bits of autumnal woodland, no tantalizing vistas, nothing to
break the flat and boundless immensity of it. Here was
something big, and bountiful, and real, and primal. Good
Kansas dirt. Miles of it. Miles of it. She felt she would
like to get out and tramp on it, hard.
"Pretty cold up there in Estes Park," the conductor had
said. "Been snowing up in the mountains."
She had arranged to stop in Denver only long enough to
change trains. A puffy little branch line was to take her
from Denver to Loveland, and there, she had been told, one
of the big mountain-road steam automobiles would take her up
the mountains to her destination. For one as mentally alert
as she normally was, the exact location of that destination
was very hazy in her mind. Heyl's place. That was all.
Ordinarily she would have found the thought ridiculous. But
she concentrated on it now; clung to it.
At the first glimpse of the foot-hills Fanny's listless gaze
became interested. If you have ever traveled on the jerky,
cleanly, meandering little road that runs between Denver
and the Park you know that it winds, and
curves, so that the mountains seem to leap about, friskily,
first confronting you on one side of the car window, then
disappearing and seeming to taunt you from the windows of
the opposite side. Fanny laughed aloud. The mountain
steam-car was waiting at Loveland. There were few
passengers at this time of year. The driver was a great
tanned giant, pongee colored from his hair to his puttees
and boots. Fanny was to learn, later, that in Estes Park
the male tourist was likely to be puny, pallid, and
unattractive when compared to the tall, slim, straight,
khaki-clad youth, browned by the sun, and the wind, and
the dust, who drives his steamer up and down the perilous
mountain roads with more dexterity than the charioteering
gods ever displayed on Olympus.
Fanny got the seat beside this glorious person. The steamer
was a huge vehicle, boasting five rows of seats, and looking
very much like a small edition of the sightseeing cars one
finds in tourist-infested cities.
"Heyl's place," said Fanny. Suppose it failed to work!
Said the blond god, "Stopping at the Inn overnight, I
s'pose."
"Why--I don't know," faltered Fanny. "Can't I go right on
to--to--Heyl's place?"
"Can." Mountain steamer men are not loquacious. "Sure.
Better not. You won't get to the Inn till dark. Better
stay there over night, and go on up to Heyl's place in the
morning."
Then he leaned forward, clawed about expertly among what
appeared to Fanny's eyes to be a maze of handles, brakes,
valves; and the great car glided smoothly off, without a
bump, without a jar. Fanny took a long breath.
There is no describing a mountain. One uses words, and they
are futile. And the Colorado Rockies, in October, when the
aspens are turning! Well, aspens turn gold in October.
People who have seen an aspen grove in October believe in
fairies. And such people need no clumsy descriptive
passages to aid their fancies. You others who have not seen
it? There shall be no poor weaving together of words.
There shall be no description of orange and mauve and flame-
colored sunsets, no juggling with mists and clouds, and
sunrises and purple mountains. Mountain dwellers and
mountain lovers are a laconic tribe. They know the futility
of words.
But the effect of the mountains on Fanny Brandeis.
That is within our province. In the first place, they
made her hungry. That was the crisp, heady air. The
mountain road, to one who has never traveled it, is a thing
of delicious thrills and near-terror. A narrow, perilous
ribbon of road, cut in the side of the rock itself; a road
all horseshoe curves and hairpin twists. Fanny found
herself gasping. But that passed after a time. Big
Thompson canyon leaves no room for petty terror. And the
pongee person was so competent, so quietly sure, so
angularly graceful among his brakes and levers. Fanny stole
a side glance at him now and then. He looked straight
ahead. When you drive a mountain steamer you do look
straight ahead. A glance to the right or left is so likely
to mean death, or at best a sousing in the Thompson that
foams and rushes below.
Fanny ventured a question. "Do you know Mr. Heyl?"
"Heyl? Took him down day before yesterday."
"Down?"
"To the village. He's gone back east."
Fanny was not quite sure whether the pang she felt was
relief or consternation.
At Estes village the blond god handed her over to a twin
charioteer who would drive her up the mountain road to the
Inn that nestled in a valley nine thousand feet up the
mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot. Fenger, Ted,
Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed to
dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that
unfolded before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up
they went, and up, and up, and the air was cold, but without
a sting in it. It was dark when the lights of the Inn
twinkled out at them. The door was thrown open as they
swung up the curve to the porch. A great log fire glowed in
the fireplace. The dining room held only a dozen people, or
thereabouts--a dozen weary, healthy people, in
corduroys and sweaters and boots, whose cleanly talk was all
about climbing and fishing, and horseback rides and trails.
And it was fried chicken night at the Inn. Fanny thought
she was too utterly tired to eat, until she began to eat,
and then she thought she was too hungry ever to stop. After
dinner she sat, for a moment, before the log fire in the
low-ceilinged room, with its log walls, its rustic benches,
and its soft-toned green and brown cushions. She forgot to
be unhappy. She forgot to be anything but deliciously
drowsy. And presently she climbed the winding stair whose
newel post was a fire-marked tree trunk, richly colored, and
curiously twisted. And so to her lamp-lighted room, very
small, very clean, very quiet. She opened her window and
looked out at the towering mass that was Long's Peak, and at
the stars, and she heard the busy little brook that scurries
through the Inn yard on its way from the mountain to the
valley. She undressed quickly, and crept into bed, meaning
to be very, very miserable indeed. And the next thing she
knew it was morning. A blue and gold October morning. And
the mountains!--but there is no describing a mountain. One
uses words, and they are futile. Fanny viewed them again,
from her window, between pauses in dressing. And she meant,
privately, to be miserable again. But she could only think,
somehow, of bacon and eggs, and coffee, and muffins. _
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