Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘I was watching it,’ Harland said lazily. ‘Wondering how far it would dare go. It went along my arm and across to yours.’

  ‘Father and I used to lie like this and watch the little things in the grass world,’ she assented. ‘When we were waiting for birds, sometimes we lay for hours side by side; but it never seemed long to me.’

  ‘You and he had fine times together.’ She nodded, and he asked: ‘Collecting specimens, birds and things?’

  ‘Not only that.’ Her murmuring tones could not have been heard a dozen feet away. ‘From the time I was able to walk, we were both happiest when we were together, and out of doors. Sometimes in the winter we took skis and carried packs and slept in the snow; and sometimes we went fishing, for salmon, in Newfoundland, and in New Brunswick, and around the Gaspé.’ Harland found it hard to believe that their paths, so often parallel, had never crossed. ‘Once we went to Georgia, went into the Okefenokee swamp, and found an ivory-billed woodpecker; and we talked there with a man who had seen passenger pigeons within five years — or thought he had. Father was never convinced of that. And — especially since he gave up teaching — we went to many places.’

  ‘You haven’t fished here, since we came.’

  ‘No. When he and I were here we caught trout to eat; but catching salmon has taken the sport out of fishing for trout, for me.’

  ‘I’ve done some salmon fishing on the Codroy, and the Resti-gouche, and at Anticosti. Danny and I. We met Glen Robie and Lin at Anticosti.’

  She turned her head, resting her cheek on her folded arms, looking at him steadily. ‘I told you once that you were like my father,’ she reminded him. ‘I mean you are like him when he was younger, when I was still a child. He too was fair, and lean, and gentle.’ Harland felt his color heighten, and she asked: ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘I thought at first you were older. You look years younger since we reached here. I think you were tired when we came. You were tired on the train.’

  He did not answer this, but after a moment, feeling close to her, wishing to draw closer, he said: ‘Robie told me about your father. He told me — why you have come here now.’

  She turned her head, looking once more up the canyon. ‘We mustn’t move,’ she explained. ‘Their eyes are keen.’ He thought her words were a rebuff, as though she meant to ignore what he had said; but then she told him frankly: ‘Mother isn’t used to riding, but I hope she can sit a horse tomorrow. Then we’ll take his ashes up to the high basin he loved.’

  He did not speak. The sun lay on them strongly, but the air that drifted down the canyon was dry, so the heat was no discomfort. Silence drew them closer, and as if she felt this and sought the release of conversation, presently she asked: ‘Is your father alive?’

  ‘No, my father and mother are both dead. There’s just Danny and me.’ Without looking toward her he felt her head turn, felt her watching him again. ‘We’ve always been close, Danny and I,’ he said. ‘Although he’s much younger than I, only thirteen now. Since he had infantile, I’ve spent all my time with him, till this trip.’ He added: ‘I even put my work aside.’

  She asked curiously: ‘Your work and Danny — are they all your life?’

  He smiled, understanding what she did not say. ‘I suppose you mean — why have I not married?’

  ‘Why have you not married?’ she assented.

  ‘Well, I’ve been busy, working hard.’ Then he added: ‘I noticed your ring.’

  She looked at her hand where the diamond caught the sun. ‘His name is Quinton.’ Her voice was empty of all expression. ‘He’s a lawyer, lives in Maine.’

  ‘Russell Quinton?’ Harland was surprised.

  ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

  ‘I met him once,’ he told her. Quinton was almost fat, almost bald, almost middle-aged; and Harland wondered what common ground these two could have found. ‘We were both fishing the Upsalquitch. He came downstream, stopped to eat lunch, then went on.’ Quinton had been in ill-humor that day, and Harland had not liked the man, had not liked what Leick afterward told him about Quinton.

  ‘He was a friend of my father’s,’ she said, ‘and father liked him, and Mr. Quinton wished we might be engaged. But I will never marry him.’

  Harland felt his heart quicken, as a horse quickens at the faint warning touch of the spur. Conscious of her eyes upon him, be paid for a moment no attention to the movement far up the canyon. Something, probably some of Robie’s cattle, had drifted out of the shadows of the trees into the sunned open there, but he hardly saw them. Her quiet words had carried an astonishing impact. She wore Quinton’s ring — but she would never marry him! A turbulence possessed Harland, but then he realized that those cattle up the canyon were very dark, almost black; and as his eyes and his mind focussed upon them, he said in a low whisper: ‘I see turkeys!’

  She did not move, still watching him. ‘How far away?’ she asked.

  ‘Quarter of a mile at least. They’re so big I thought they were cattle.’

  From the corner of his eye he saw her head turn, very slowly, till she too could look that way. ‘Big gobblers,’ she said then. ‘Six of them.’ One of the tremendous birds made a running leap, its wings half opening; and she murmured: ‘Catching grasshoppers. They’ll work down this way. Be very still. Completely still.’

  Harland obeyed her, and they lay motionless, watching the slowly approaching birds. Now and then she whispered some word almost soundlessly; and he answered, hardly moving his lips, feeling his pulse pound, at once completely conscious of her beside him and yet trembling with the keen tension of this waiting. The turkeys seemed gigantic. Lying prone, looking up the canyon toward them as they approached, Harland’s vision was to some degree distorted, so that the birds appeared to be larger than they were, and very near; but when at last he slid his gun a little forward, she whispered warningly:

  ‘No, wait! Let them come as close as they will.’ And she added: ‘I’ll tell you when to shoot.’ And a little later she said: ‘Watch the one that’s second from the right, now. Take him when you shoot. He’s magnificent! Can you see his beard? Keep your eye on him.’

  Harland muttered an assent. His hand was tight on his gun and he felt it slipping with sweat and released his grip to wipe his palm dry on his trouser leg. The turkeys, moving straight toward where they lay, came within fifty or sixty yards; but then Harland thought the birds saw them. Certainly he and Ellen were by that time in plain sight, and certainly the actions of the turkeys were subtly modified. They changed course, and instead of coming on they drifted nearer the border of the woods and, keeping the same distance away, described a third of a circle around the two watchers. Harland wished to shoot, but he waited till Ellen whispered:

  ‘Careful! Now!’

  He swung the gun’s muzzle slowly toward the birds, and at that cautious movement they stood for an instant in motionless attention. In that instant Harland fired.

  The turkey he had chosen fell; the others fled like speeding shadows. As he leaped erect, the stricken turkey also scrambled to its feet; and Harland, running toward it, fired again, knocked it down again. Before he reached it, it was up once more, and once more Harland shot it down. It was still struggling when he caught its neck, smothered the great beating wings, gave it a quick quietus.

  And he thought then suddenly that his chest was about to explode! The violent exertion through these few seconds at this high altitude had called on his heart and lungs for an extraordinary effort. When Ellen, coming more slowly, reached him, he was lying flat on his back, breathless and helpless, his hand clasping the softly feathered neck of the dead bird.

  She knelt beside him, quickly understanding. ‘Just rest !’ she said. ‘I should have warned you. You’re not acclimated to the thin air. We’re up nine or ten thousand feet here, you know.’ Then she cried, looking at the turkey: ‘Oh, what a pity! One of your bullets cut his beard. He’d have made a splendid specimen!’

  Harla
nd, grimly amused at his own distress, thought he himself was in a fair way to become a splendid specimen! He tried to sit up, but she bade him lie still. ‘Wait,’ she insisted. ‘You’ll be all right presently.’

  He did not protest. He was content to stay passive till his laboring heart slowed to a normal beat again; content even then to sit with her while they admired the big gobbler on the ground between them. Its wingspread was wider than his gun’s length would span, and she guessed the bird would weigh twenty-five pounds. ‘It’s bigger than the best my father killed,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry the beard’s spoiled. I might have saved the skin and mounted it in the group he made last winter, out of turkeys he killed here.’

  ‘Do you still do that sort of thing?’

  ‘I haven’t, but I could. I’ve kept his workrooms as they were, in Boston and at Bar Harbor, with everything ready, just as he left them.’

  ‘Do you mean to — go on with his work?’

  Her eyes met his. ‘I don’t know what I mean to do,’ she said quietly. Then with a quick movement she rose. ‘Stay here. I’ll bring the horses.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘You shouldn’t move around much for a while.’ Her solicitude at once flattered and compelled him, and he felt a momentary rebellion at her assured domination; but she was already moving, away. When she returned, herself mounted and with his horse on lead, under her direction he loosed the yellow slicker bound behind his saddle and wrapped the turkey in it and secured it on the horse’s back. Then they turned homeward, jubilant together, talking much and laughing easily. There was a like intoxication in them both, and every thought was amusing, every word provoked a shout of mirth. On the crest of the last ridge they paused to watch the level sun dip below the heights northwestward, and when it was gone, like bathers venturing into the sea at night, they descended into the cool dusk which filled the canyon; and Ellen began to sing a doleful song:

  ‘Are we almost there? Are we almost there?

  Cried the dying maid, as they drew near her home.

  Are them the slip-per-y el-lums that r’ar

  Their proud green forms ’neath Heaven’s blue dome?’

  He laughed in amused appreciation. ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Charlie Yates taught it to me when father and I were here two years ago.’

  ‘It’s a classic!’ He began to sing it with her, and when he erred she corrected him.

  ‘Not “slippery elms”!’ she protested. ‘“Slip-per-y el-lums ”! Soulful and woeful! Try it again.’

  So they began afresh, and their singing voices went before them as they neared the lodge, and their shouts of triumph summoned the others out to see their prize.

  – VI –

  Harland before he slept that night planned eagerly to spend next day with Ellen; but at breakfast Lin reminded him that they were to go looking for wild horses and he could think of no ready pretext to escape. Tess decided to join them, and shortly after breakfast, lunch in their saddlebags, the others on the veranda to watch their departure, they set out.

  From the first it was clear that Lin felt himself to be — and was — in charge of the expedition. Harland found it hard to remember that Lin was no older than Danny; the boy seemed so completely at home in these surroundings, so sure of himself, so mature in all his ways. Tess, in dungarees and checked shirt and big hat, wearing leather chaps to guard her knees against the buck brush through which sometimes they rode, seemed as much a boy as Lin; and they vied with each other like puppies, spurring their horses into sudden headlong races not only on the level but up or down the steep trails, shouting and laughing, the victor deriding the vanquished while after each sprint they waited for Harland to come up with them.

  They were charming, but he wished it were Ellen with whom he rode through these sun-filled canyons and these park-like openings carpeted with flowers. He might have forgotten their quest, but Lin did not. Whenever they were about to emerge from some forest cover he paused to scan the scene ahead; and thrice he showed Harland tracks of the quarry upon which they sought to spy. At noon, as efficiently as any guide, he boiled the kettle beside a tumbling little stream, and Harland smiled at the youngster’s gravity, and thought how Danny would have enjoyed this day, and they ate their lunch and then rode on.

  It was mid-afternoon before fortune gave them at last the glimpse they sought. Emerging from an aspen thicket into one of the lovely parks which lay everywhere, Harland saw Lin pause to look ahead, and the boy called a low, quick word, and Harland and Tess brought their horses up beside his, and then they all spurred into the open.

  Two hundred yards away, gleaming like bronze statues in the sun, nine horses stood with crests flung high, watching them. As Harland’s eye found them. they turned in thundering flight. The stallion herded his mares away, and Lin shouted and gave chase, and Tess and Harland, at full gallop, followed; but in a dozen bounds the wild creatures reached the rimrock and plunged over it and were gone. Only the stallion paused for one last defiant backward glance before he followed his harem over the brink. When the riders came to the spot, it seemed impossible that anything larger than a fox could have descended the broken declivity; but the horses were gone, already out of sight in the wooded deeps.

  ‘Did they go down there?’ Harland cried, doubting his own eyes; and Lin laughed.

  ‘Sure. They’re a mile away by now. They’re like mountain goats, and just about as wild.’ He was tremendously proud of this success, and Harland to please him asked many wondering questions, till presently they moved on, now homeward bound.

  Half an hour after they saw the horses, they emerged upon a tree-clad rim from which they looked out across a high grassy basin perhaps a mile wide. Lin checked his horse in the fringe of trees; and Harland, pausing beside him, saw three mounted figures sitting quietly in the center of the basin. He recognized at once Robie’s big, light-colored hat, and the two people with him were clearly feminine; but far away across the basin another rider went at a swinging gallop, describing a circle around these three; and even at a distance Harland was sure this was Ellen.

  Tess said in quick dismay: ‘Oh, I didn’t know they were coming up here today. Get back, Lin.’ Lin reined his horse among the trees again. ‘They won’t want us butting in,’ Tess explained, and Harland too retreated; and for long minutes they stayed there watching, while Ellen rode at a headlong run the circuit of the basin.

  When she passed below where they hid, Harland saw that she held something in the curve of her left arm, pressed against her breast as a mother holds a child; and her right arm swung in the motion of a sower, regularly as a pendulum; and he understood what it was she thus broadcast upon the rocky sward, and he thought of a priestess at her rites, and he thought of old pagan festivals, and he thought there was a pounding and barbaric rhythm in the thudding of her horse’s hooves, and he thought of the ride of the Valkyries. For there was a singing in the way she rode, erect and sure, her head high and proud; and he heard that singing in his blood while he watched her bring her father’s ashes to the spot the dead man she loved had chosen, to this high meadow pressed against the sky.

  The three watchers stayed hidden, and they saw her turn at last, still at full gallop, and plunge into the forest at the border of the basin, diagonally across from them. So she disappeared; and Harland heard a choked sound beside him and turned and saw that Tess had tears in her eyes; but she smiled at him.

  ‘That was — sort of wonderful, wasn’t it,’ she said frankly. ‘Professor Berent was a fine old man.’

  Harland nodded, and Lin said in a low voice: ‘That’s the trail to camp, the way she went.’ Even the boy had felt the solemn beauty of this scene. He turned his horse back among the trees. ‘Come on,’ he called softly. ‘We’ll go home another way so they won’t know we were here.’

  They went headlong, plunging down rocky draws, racing at full gallop through the forests; and the horses, instantly responsive to the neck pressure of the reins or even to the
inclination of the rider’s body, wove through the trees in a graceful measure like a dance. They reached camp before the others. Walking to the lodge from the corral where they left their horses, Tess said warningly: ‘We mustn’t let them know we were watching, Lin.’

  ‘What do you think?’ he demanded, scornfully indignant at the suggestion.

  She touched his arm in affectionate reassurance. ‘I know you won’t,’ she assented. ‘But I’m glad we saw them, all the same.’ Lin nodded soberly, and she said to Harland: ‘It was — sweet, wasn’t it, Mr. Harland.’

  ‘I’m glad we were there, yes,’ he agreed.

  While Harland was in his shower, Robie and Mrs. Berent and Ruth returned, and Harland heard Mrs. Berent bitter in complaint at the torment the ride had imposed upon her; but he did not hear Ellen’s voice, and when they all gathered at the dinner table she had not come home. Mrs. Robie was concerned.

  ‘Are you sure she’s all right, Glen?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘She probably wanted to be alone a while. I’ve known her to ride all night, on a moonlit night; and she knows these trails as well as I do.’

  Mrs. Berent tossed her head. ‘She probably imagines her father is up there with her right now,’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t know where she gets her notions. Certainly not from me!’