Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories

by Florence Finch Kelly

  OUT OF SYMPATHY

  "Sympathy with his kind and well-doing for itswelfare, direct or indirect, are the essential conditions ofthe existence and development of the more complexsocial organism; and no mortal can transcend theseconditions with any success."--HENRY MAUDSLEY.

  Our party was going from the Yosemite Valley to Lake Tenaiya--thatbeautiful bit of shining, liquid sapphire ringed by its mighty settingof granite peaks and domes--by the long and roundabout way of Cloud'sRest. It would be an all-day trip, but we knew that at the end wouldbe the cabin of Henry Moulton, a lone mountaineer, to receive us, withsuch comfort as it could give, and Henry Moulton himself to cook forus a supper of fresh fish and game. The thoughts of the whole partybegan to turn longingly in that direction as the afternoon of the latesummer day waned, and in straggling, silent file we hurried ourhorses, with such speed as was possible, over the blind trail. TheArtist, who was next in front of me, turned in his saddle and said:

  "We ought to get a warm welcome at Moulton's cabin. For this is thefirst party that has been up here for two months, and it's not likelythat he has seen another human being in all that time."

  "Does he live all alone, then?"

  "Absolutely alone. He has a cabin on the banks of Lake Tenaiya--itis only about three or four miles farther, now--and whenever partiesof tourists come up from the Valley to stay a day or two, he cooksfor them and lets them sleep in his shanty if they wish. He isa very strange man, and I hope you will be able to draw him intoconversation, for I 'm sure you would find him an interestingcharacter. His life story is the queerest thing I 've run across onthe Pacific Coast, and if you won't give away to him that you knowanything about it, I 'll tell it to you."

  At once I scented big game, for the Artist had spent many summers inthat region and knew all that was strange or weird or startling in itshistory. Already he had told me many tales, and if this was to bethe strangest of them all I wanted to hear it. So I urged my horseon and by dint of circling around trees and jumping over logs andoccasionally falling into single file, we managed to keep withintalking distance of each other while he told me this tale of the loneman at Lake Tenaiya:

  "I knew Moulton years ago--thirty, yes, thirty-five of them--inCambridge, where we were boys together. He went to Harvard and wasgraduated from both the academic and the law departments, and waslooked upon as a promising young man. If any prophet had foretold tome, in those days, that Henry Moulton would become a hermit in theSierras and do cooking for tourists, I would have told him he was thefather of lies, and had better retreat to his natural home. Moultonmarried a handsome young woman of an influential family--his ownpeople were poor--and all his friends were confident that a brilliantfuture awaited him.

  "A few years after his marriage he came West, intending to settle inSan Francisco and practise law. His wife stayed behind until heshould get a start. The gold fever was n't dead yet in those days,and Moulton had a bad attack of it. When I came to the Coast he wasworking in some played-out placer mines, and feeling perfectly surethat he was going to strike a fortune almost any day. When a man hasonce dug gold out of the ground with his own hands, he seems to beunfitted for doing anything else. It's as bad as the gambler's mania.Well, the fever got into Moulton's blood, and he gave himself up toit, drifting about, prospecting, and sometimes striking a good thing,but often quite the contrary.

  "Finally his wife came on, and she persuaded him to give up the goldhunt and his roving life and settle down in San Francisco to thepractice of his profession. He got on remarkably well, had all thebusiness he could attend to, and was making a heap more money thanthere was the slightest probability of his ever digging out of theground. But the fever of his vagrant, irresponsible life was still inhis veins, and with all that promise of a successful career before himhe was restless and unhappy. He could not forget the camp fire in themountains and the whispering of the pine trees and the life of thewoods. I don't know if you understand--" and the Artist hesitated,turning upon me an uncertain, questioning glance.

  "I know what you mean," I answered. "Go on and say what you had inmind. It's a fascinating question."

  "That it is," he replied, "and I never can decide whether it issomething fine and high in a man's nature which makes him want toyield to that sort of a yearning, or whether it is mere latentsavagery, coming out all the stronger for having been long repressed.

  "But what's the use of speculating? The bald truth is that if a manhas a strong feeling for Nature and once knows the charm of wanderingalone in wild places, he 'll have a string tied to him forever after,that will give him some mighty hard jerks.

  "Moulton felt all that fascination very keenly, and the mountains andthe forests seemed to be always calling him and commanding him toreturn to them. The follies and the faults of men and the baseness ofhuman nature, of which, of course, the practice of his profession gavehim special knowledge, irritated him, and every new case made him moreimpatient with civilization and more contemptuous of his fellow men.

  "I was in the courtroom once when he won a big case which had beenbitterly contested. A crowd of lawyers was there, and they were allenthusiastic about the way he had conducted it and the brilliantvictory he had won. They pressed around to congratulate him, but hegot away from them as soon as he could and went into the street withme. We walked a block or more before he spoke, and then he burst outbitterly:

  "'I 've won some thousands of dollars and a lot of prestige in thiscase, but what is it all worth? I 'd give it all to lie just onenight, perfectly free, under the pine trees in the mountains, beside aworthless prospect hole, watching a bear shambling through the brush,and listening to the coyotes yelping in the distance. Even a coyoteis better than most men, and a bear is noble company beside them!'

  "Moulton's wife was as dissatisfied as he, but in a different way.She was of Puritan stock--and the sturdy moral sense of those oldfellows, their rock-ribbed principles, and their determination to makeother people think as they thought, came out strong in her character.

  "Of course, that kind of a woman was bound to be shocked by the morefree and easy life of the Pacific Coast. Her constant mental statewas one of stern disapproval. And the gypsy outcropping in herhusband's nature filled her with anxiety. It was quite impossible forher to understand it or to sympathize with it in the least.

  "Their marriage had been an ardent love match, and notwithstandingthe way their natures had been drifting apart they still loved eachother devotedly. At home, where she had been in harmony with hersurroundings, she had been a very charming woman. And so she wasstill--only--well, I must admit that she did seem out of place here.She was so uncompromising, you know.

  "I did n't wonder, though, that she was amazed and confounded by thechange in her husband's character. It would have shocked any of hisold friends and it must have been an awful blow to his wife, who wasstill as ambitious for him as he had once been for himself.

  "She had one general name for this unexpected development in him andcalled it all his 'bearism.' At first she applied it in fun, when hetold her how much he had enjoyed watching and hunting the wild animalsin the mountains, but she soon decided that it was a pretty good namefor his new characteristics. And so his 'bearism' came to be more andmore of a division between them. Not that they ever quarrelled--I amsure they did not. They just agonized over the hopeless state ofaffairs, and each one seemed to be always pained and grieved becauseit was impossible to come round to the other one's way of thinking.

  "Finally, Dorothy--his wife--went home on a visit. I think she did itin a last desperate hope that she might induce him to follow her andstay in the East. For a little while after she left, Moulton bracedup and put more heart into his work. He seemed to feel, at last, somepride in his really splendid capacities, and to have some revival ofhis old ambitions.

  "I thought he had overcome the gypsy longing, and had buckled down towork for good. And so I was much surprised one day, when I found himin an unusually gloomy m
ood, to see him take down both of his diplomasand fling them into the fire.

  "'Gewgaws!' he exclaimed, contemptuously. 'Trinkets! No sensible manought to care a snap of his finger either for them or for what theyrepresent.'

  "We had a long talk after that, and he told me fully what shape histhoughts had been taking. It was that same story, which so manypeople have been telling of late years, of sneering pessimism as tothe human race and its possibilities, and of contempt for the laborsand rewards of life. We argued the matter for hours, and each one ofus convinced himself that the other was entirely wrong.

  "Moulton was then finishing up an important case, and as soon as itwas concluded, he and some friends went away to have a few days ofhunting in the mountains. He did not return with the others, who saidthat he had not quite finished his hunt, but that he expected to beback within a week. I went East just then and stayed a year, and whenI reached San Francisco again I found he had not yet returned. And hehas not been back to this day.

  "I heard of him occasionally, sometimes in one part of the State,sometimes in another, prospecting, hunting, trapping, roaming about,but always in the mountains, and always keeping pretty well away fromsigns of civilization.

  "Six years ago, when I first came to the Yosemite, I found Moultonhere, acting as a guide. The loveliness and the majesty of the placehad entranced him, just as they have entranced many another, and hestayed here, working as a guide, for several years. But he let meknow at once that he did n't want me to speak about his past life,either to him or to others, and so no one here ever knew that we wereanything more than the merest roadside acquaintances.

  "Four or five years ago he tired of even the civilization of theValley, and built a cabin up here at Lake Tenaiya, so that he wouldnot see so many people. He is willing to cook for the occasionalparties that go up to the lake, and very glad, I guess, when theyleave him alone again with the trees and the mountains. When the snowdrives him out in the fall he goes down to the Valley and lives ascaretaker during the winter in one of the hotels--which is quite aslonely as his summer life--until it is possible to come up to hiscabin again in the spring."

  "And his wife?" I asked. "What has become of her?"

  "After she found that she could not induce him to return tocivilization she got a divorce; and the last I knew of her she wasdevoting herself to the advancement--Whoa, there! What's the matterwith you?"

  Both his horse and mine gave a sudden snort and a bound, and startedto run. We checked them at the second leap and peered through theunderbrush to see what had frightened them. A dark object wasrustling the leaves on the ground beside a clump of bushes.

  "It's a bear!" the Artist whispered excitedly, drawing his revolver."I know this is reckless, but--you are n't afraid, are you?--thetemptation is too much for my prudence. If he comes for us we 'llgive our horses the rein and they 'll outrun him."

  I leaned forward, trying to get a better view, and just as I heard theclick of the trigger I caught a glimpse of a white human foot.

  "Stop!" I cried. "It's a man!"

  It was too late to stop the discharge, but a quick turn of his wristsent the bullet whistling harmlessly through the trees. The creaturescrambled hurriedly away through the dead leaves, and our horses,trembling and snorting, tried again to run.

  "It is a bear!" he cried as we saw its shaggy bulk awkwardly climbingthe slope between two clumps of bushes. "No, by Jove, it's got handsand feet! Now, what in the--"

  Then the thing half turned toward us, and we saw that it had a man'shead and face, covered with hair and beard.

  "Good God! It's Henry Moulton!" cried the Artist. "Moulton!Moulton! Come back here! What's the matter with you!"

  At the sound of his name the man sprang to his feet, facing us. Thebearskin which wrapped his body slipped down and left him entirelynude. In an instant he dropped upon all fours again, drew the skinover him and shambled away.

  We turned our staring eyes upon each other, and there was no need tospeak the appalling thought that was in both our minds. With oneaccord we plied our whips and drove our unwilling and terrified horsesin the direction he had taken. We came near enough to see that he wasdigging among the dry leaves for acorns, and that his beard and mouthwere defiled with earth, and full of fragments of leaves and acornshells. But as soon as he saw us he darted off into the thickunderbrush, whither we could not follow him.

  We hurried on to his shack, where the rest of the party had alreadyarrived, and the men all started back at once with ropes and lariatsfor Moulton's capture and garments for his covering.

  The cabin was a rough affair, made of logs and chinked with firboughs, and having an earthen floor. A bunk made of rough timbersand mattressed with twigs of fur was covered with some blankets andclothing, tossed into heaps. Under the blankets at the head of thebunk I found a little pile of books--a Shakespeare, a volume ofEmerson's essays, Thoreau's "Walden," and a well-worn "Iliad," in theGreek text.

  "How queer," said one of the women, as she looked curiously at thevolumes, "that an ignorant creature such as this crazy mountaineermust be should have such books as these in his cabin! They must havebeen left here by some tourist, and he has put them away and keptthem. It shows how much respect even the ignorant have for learning."

  Some torn scraps of paper were scattered over the floor, and I pickedthem all up and tried to piece them together.

  When the men returned with the lunatic he was quiet and obedient,except when they tried to substitute proper clothing for his bearskin.Against this he fought with all his strength, striking, scratching,and kicking with hands and feet, snapping and biting viciously, andall the time either roaring with fury, or, when they succeeded inpulling the hide a little away from him, groaning, shrieking, andwrithing as if he were being flayed.

  So they desisted and left him wrapped in the skin and tied to a treenear the cabin door. There he constantly walked back and forth on allfours, the length of his rope, restlessly and in silence, as cagedanimals do. If any one approached too near he sprang at the intruderwith a savage growl and a snap of his jaws. But otherwise he paidno attention to any of those who had expected to be his guests. Herefused to eat, unless they offered him acorns or dry oak leaves.These he devoured voraciously.

  There was some scrawled writing on the scraps of paper I had piecedtogether and the Artist and I made out some disjointed sentences. Weagreed that the lunatic must have written them himself, in the firstbeclouding of his mind, and we thought the words might have someeffect upon him. So we went out to where the poor, crazed creaturewas tied, and, looking him squarely in the eyes, the Artist spoke veryslowly:

  "Dorothy. Dorothy. She said I am a bear. Where is Dorothy?"

  He stopped and stared and a puzzled, human look came into his eyes.He rose slowly to his feet and stood upright, leaning against thetree. For the moment he forgot his bearskin covering and it halffell off. He stared at us, mumbling strange sounds, which presentlybecame incoherent words of human speech. But he spoke thickly anduncertainly, like one long unused to the sound of his voice:

  "Where is--Dorothy? I want--she said--Dorothy--Dorothy--she said--I--a bear--I--I--am--a bear."

  Then he dropped to all fours again and drew his bearskin closelyabout him and that was the last flicker of human intelligence that heshowed.

  The next morning the men made a small platform of some loose boards towhich they tied the lunatic. He fought desperately against his bonds,and it required the combined strength of all the men of the party tofasten him securely to the platform. Then the guide improvised aharness of ropes and hitched to this primitive sled the horse which hehimself rode. Watching the poor creature closely, our little partywent slowly back to the Valley, whence he was sent to an asylum. TheArtist wrote to Mrs. Moulton an account of his condition, and told heralso its probable cause.

  Some months afterward I went to the asylum, purposely to learn whathad become of him. The physician said his mental condition wassteadi
ly improving, that there was a pretty sure prospect of hisrecovery, and that he would probably be sane all the rest of hislife, if--and the doctor put a significant emphasis upon that littleword--"if he lives as a sane man should, among men, and busies himselfas other men do."

  Then the man of healing took from a shelf a book and read to me thewords which I have put at the beginning of this account.

  He told me also that Mrs. Moulton was there, that she had been therealmost from the first, and that she spent all the time with theunfortunate man that the physicians would allow.

  "Her presence," the doctor added, "has had a singularly helpful effectupon him."