What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  “Minnie will arrive at Seattle by the Vancouver steamship on the fifteenth of June,” she informed him, glancing up from the letter. “That’s in two weeks’ time. Shall you be able to meet her?”

  He thought for a moment or two and then nodded. “I have to see the Manson’s Engineering Company about some equipment for one of the log-booming grounds along the Sound. I’ll combine business with the pleasure of collecting Minnie that day.”

  “Thank you.” She heaved a contented sigh. “It’s three years since I said goodbye to her at Quadra Island. She is sixteen now. I’m sure she’ll be a great help in looking after Harry. I never knew a more lively and active child than he!”

  Alan grinned. He was proud of his son, but the first to admit that Harry was a handful to control, being as strong-willed as he was good-natured and affectionate. “Who’s taking charge of him this evening?”

  “I’m taking him as usual to Mrs. Saanio. He’s always happy there.”

  It had become Lisa’s custom to act as cashier and sell the tickets when Alan gave one of his motion-picture shows at the local hotel, The Rainier, which was a large wooden building painted a bright terra cotta with white outside galleries. Its long saloon was widely patronised by lumbermen, and its spacious hall, which was used for parties, weddings, and political meetings, provided ample room for screen entertainment. The movie shows had proved so popular that everyone at the sawmill site and those inhabitants of the settlement where the hotel was located, expected a performance each evening as a matter of course whenever Alan happened to be at home. The hotel hall had become as near to being a regular cinema as it could be. Whenever movie distributors’ agents were in the Seattle district, they travelled out to the sawmill to call on him with their lists of reels and advisory information.

  It was easy to see that with time a whole new town would rise up out of the settlement, which was referred to by the local people as Dekova’s Place, the name of the old clearing where someone had once eked out a living. Before long that name would be abbreviated and maybe changed in spelling until one day it would be difficult to find anybody able to remember how it had originated. People of assorted trades and professions were gradually moving into the area, many of them new immigrants of nationalities as varied as those of the families already long established in houses at the sawmill site. Several years previously the lumber company had built a schoolhouse for the children of their employees. Now it was absorbing newcomers from the settlement and the need for another one was growing.

  Lisa sometimes wondered if Alan would not do better by remaining with the lumber company, who wanted to extend his contract indefinitely, while building up a cinema proper at Dekova’s Place until it became a full-time project. He had certainly made no firm decisions about his future in Seattle, in spite of having a number of useful irons in the fire. Recently he had mentioned that certain motion-picture companies were leaving New York to relocate in California, which made that area of interest to him. He was certainly restless and unsettled.

  For herself, she was willing to go anywhere with him, glad that she was able to give him support and encouragement and affection. He had spoken of his love for her not long after they had come to this house. It had been a sweet and memorable night, for they had lain together in such immeasurable tenderness that both believed conception must have occurred. During that deeply shared happiness he had spoken the most beautiful words in any language.

  “I love you, Lisa.”

  “I know,” she had whispered, blissfully enervated by their love-making, and enfolded her arms about his neck. Sometimes she wondered whether heart-love for him would have come to her if their hopes had been fulfilled. There was no way of knowing. At least she was content in their relationship. Whether he was equally at ease she could not tell. She thought it strange that a man and woman could share the utmost physical intimacies and still not be able to see into each other’s minds.

  She took Harry, who was dressed for bed in sleeping-suit and dressing-gown, to Mrs. Saanio in good time. The Saanios were originally from Finland and their seventeen year old son, Risto, who was presently employed at the hotel, had been born soon after they had arrived in their new land. Three years later Mrs. Saanio had given birth to the first of ten daughters, who had arrived annually in succession. The older girls clustered about their mother as she picked Harry up and kissed him maternally as she always did. Her English was not good, and she invariably, spoke Finnish to him, which he appeared to comprehend without the least difficulty, being used to her. But the girls were his favourite companions and he was allowed to choose which one should read him a story.

  Lisa left the house. She always had an easy mind about leaving Harry with the Saanios, although she was careful not to take advantage of their neighbourliness. It was her policy to collect him again as soon as she had seen the last latecomer into the performance. It meant that she rarely saw any of the films, but this evening was the exception that was always made whenever Alan had a new batch of his photographs to show as lantern slides. She was always eager to view his work and the subject matter this time was to be the local community, for he liked to have a theme and this would make a contrast to the slides of the natural beauty of the forests, logging scenes, and wild animals and birds.

  It was no great distance to the hotel and she liked to walk. The lumber company allowed Alan the use of an automobile, which remained parked by the house when he was away in the forests. He had taught her to drive and she did use the car from time to time, but a few hours previously he had transported his cinematograph apparatus in it and she had told him not to drive back to pick her up. Once Minnie was installed everything would be much easier with regard to leaving Harry in the evening hours. With the girl at home to look after him, Lisa anticipated being free to come and go with Alan on these occasions. Moreover, she planned to become his pianist, taking over from the present one, who had once been a teacher of the pianoforte, as the woman chose always to refer to it, and made no secret of despising motion pictures as an aberration of the true theatre. The result was that her playing never supported the reels to a full extent.

  People were already lining up for admittance by the side entrance of the hotel when Lisa entered the building by way of the kitchen and reached the lobby where she sold tickets. Risto Saanio came from the cinema hall, wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers, for he had just delivered the water-soaked blanket kept in readiness by the projector in case of fire during a performance. He was a tall youth, spare of frame and virile in appearance, with a jaunty air about him that matched his cheerful handsomeness. His features were thin and chiselled, his eyes light brown and full of humour, his curly hair much the same colour.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Fernley,” he greeted her, whipping a chair into place for her at the table that served as the pay-box. “There’s going to be a big crowd this evening, so the benches have been pushed closer together and there’s more standing room.”

  Lisa, who had looked through the door to wave to Alan and let him know she was there, answered Risto as she took the chair he still held ready for her. “Shall you get a chance to see anything of the show?”

  She knew him to be avidly interested in movies. He was knowledgeable about all the actors and actresses, able to list their motion pictures and the companies for whom they worked, not only those in the United States but the British and continental ones as well. He never lost a chance to talk to Alan about the cinema in general and always tried to be on hand at the end of the performance to help wind back the films and stack the reels. He was an amiable and talented young man with a good singing voice which almost brought the house down whenever he sang a song appropriate to a scene in a movie. As for dancing, he was a shining light when the local Finns gathered together for a wedding or a baptism and performed the dances from the old country. Only his father took no interest in his ability, being a stern, obdurate man who could not forgive his only son for not following his footsteps into the lumber b
usiness. The Saanio men had worked in the forests of Finland for generations past, and it grieved him that his strong and healthy son should break with an honoured tradition to be nothing more or less than a lackey. The fact that he himself patronised the saloon to an excess on Saturday nights was beside the point. Let other men serve him his liquor, but not his son. Mrs. Saanio dreaded the times when her husband was in his cups, for then the constant tension that existed between his son and him erupted into terrible rages on his part. So far he had never struck Risto, but sometimes it had only been at her intervention by putting herself between them. Lisa thought that it would be better if Risto moved out into a room of his own somewhere, but filial duty in that respect made him remain under the family roof.

  “I’ve seen the show already, Mrs. Fernley,” he announced in reply to Lisa’s question. “I was off duty this afternoon when Mr. Fernley ran the movies through to check them, and I timed the slide-showing for him with a stop-watch.” He sounded pleased with his achievement.

  “Was it a good show?” She placed her cashbox on the table beside the roll of pink tickets. There was a different colour for each performance to keep out those who tried to get double value for their money.

  “One of the best,” he decreed. “Would you like me to get you a cup of coffee before we open the doors?”

  She glanced at the clock. “No, thank you. There isn’t time. If there’s going to be a rush, I think we might as well let the customers start coming in.”

  He shot back the bolts and from that moment forth a constant stream of people poured through. Tickets and money exchanged hands at lightning speed. Risto kept some sort of order and made sure nobody sidled into the hall without paying. Soon all the seats were taken and there was standing room only, but still the patrons came. By the time she was able to close the cashbox and Risto had placed a “House Full” notice outside, Alan had shown a couple of one-reel comedies and had begun on the lantern slides. She slipped into a place at the back of the hall to stand beside the hotel proprietress, whose name was Mae Remotti.

  “Have I missed many of the slides?” Lisa inquired in a whisper. Mae had been one of her first friends at the site, an agreeable, buxom widow who ran the hotel on her own and kept order in her saloon, which was not an easy task. But she liked lumbermen and knew their ways. Her late husband had been one of them before he was crushed to death by that enemy of all men in the forests, the hated knobbed tree, which was always cut down by chain saw and abandoned. She treated the men individually as homesick boys, scallywags, tellers of good yarns, lovers, or old friends in need of a hand-out, according to circumstances. She charged fair prices for her drinks, not taking advantage of owning the only saloon for miles around. The wooden menus at the table offered nourishing, well-cooked food, from big bowls of chicken soup at four cents to gefilte fish at seven cents. Portions were always ample, with chunks of home-baked bread on the side. She had snatched a respite from the saloon to watch the lantern slides, hoping that a brawl at the bar would not compel her to leave before they were over. In a low voice she gave her answer to Lisa.

  “Only half a dozen. Mostly of the schoolteacher and her pupils. Real cute.”

  As the slides proceeded, Lisa was filled anew with admiration for Alan’s eye for composition and his ability to capture the variations of light and shade. The audience was quick to applaud in appreciation. Often a loud buzz of chatter arose and there were always bursts of laughter at the amusing slides. Mae, enjoying the show as much as everybody else, had her attention suddenly distracted by hearing Lisa’s sharp intake of breath.

  “Are you sick, Lisa?” she asked with some anxiety. Even in the half-light thrown down by the projected image she could see that Lisa was stiff with shock, her fingers pressed into the side of her face as she stared fixedly at the screen. Following her gaze, the proprietress saw only a pleasing scene of several children running to meet a horse-dealer leading a team of shires into the sawmill. Then the picture disappeared in a second of darkness to be replaced by the last slide of the evening, which showed the same man again in close-up, laughing as he lifted a third child up to join the two others already seated on a horse’s back. Mae recognised him. He was one of the Scandinavians, a Norwegian if she remembered correctly. He always had a meal and a drink in the saloon whenever he was in the vicinity. What was his name? Hagen. That was it. Peter Hagen.

  Beside her the young woman uttered a low moan akin to pain as the image vanished and thunderous applause broke out again; a moment later she had dashed from the room. Mae followed after in concern. She found Lisa outside the hotel, leaning against the wall with her face hidden from the light of the S-necked lamp above the door.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” Mae urged sympathetically. Many men and women, drunk and sober, had poured their troubles out to her over the years. Her compassion for her fellow man was boundless, and it was her hope that she had never failed anyone in real despair.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” came the choked answer. “I felt faint. That’s all.”

  “Come back inside. There’ll be nobody at the ladies’ tables in the saloon at this hour. They’ll all be watching the show. I’ll give you a dram to clear your head.”

  “No. That’s kind of you, but I’m all right now.” Lisa turned to face her. She was pale but composed. “Stupid of me, wasn’t it? I’ll go home now. Good night, Mae.”

  In spite of her protestations, Lisa was in a daze as she collected Harry from the Saanio home. He was sleeping soundly and did not wake as she put him into his own little bed. Her feet seemed to be dragging as she went downstairs to rattle the firebox of the stove in the kitchen and put on the kettle. She had never lost the English habit of making a cup of tea in a crisis, but when it was made she sat with her arms resting before her on the kitchen table and left it untasted. To think that Peter had been within yards of her on the site of this very sawmill and she had not known. He had breathed the same air and walked the same ground and she had been totally unaware.

  Common sense told her it was as well. It would have been a calamity to have met him again. Just seeing the lantern slides of him had been poignant enough. There was no telling how she might have reacted if they had come face to face. Or would it have been such a traumatic experience? His feelings for her had been wiped out long since by that quarrel on Toronto Island. His eyes would have held only disinterest, perhaps even a complete lack of recognition. That would have been good for her because it would have put completely in proportion what had been nothing more after all than a youthful bout of first love.

  On this sensible thought she threw away the tea that had turned cold and made herself a fresh pot. This she drank, recovering herself and deciding firmly to resist the temptation to ask Alan when he had taken the photographs of the children with the horses. As far as she could judge by their outdoor clothing it was probably only about a month ago. Since it was highly unlikely that another team of new horses would be needed at the site for a long time to come, she could put her mind at rest about any chance of Peter coming back in the near future. There was every chance that she and Alan would be established in Seattle before he returned, if ever, to the sawmill again.

  She was in bed when Alan came home. For the first time in their marriage she feigned sleep, not wanting to be drawn into talk that night. He moved about quietly in the bedroom in order not to disturb her. When he lay down beside her, putting an arm about her as he always did, she barely stopped herself from crying out in anguish that he was not the man whom she still loved.

  As the days went past, Lisa busied herself getting ready for Minnie’s arrival. Alan was away in the forests somewhere, giving her plenty of time to redecorate a room for Minnie while managing to keep Harry’s fingers out of the paint. She hung the new drapes she had sewn and finally made up the bed with the patchwork quilt with the Blazing Star pattern she had begun before her marriage and recently finished. She liked to be kept busy, but more and more the overwhelming domesticity that prevailed du
ring Alan’s absences was becoming increasingly tedious, if not irksome. Little Harry, whose dark eyes and hair made his resemblance to his father quite remarkable, was bright and intelligent and affectionate, a continuous source of joy to her; she thought of him entirely as her own child, devoting most of her time to him, but she had come to need the outlet of the cinema evenings and the performance arrangements entrusted to her. Admittedly, when Alan was away, there was always a certain amount of business correspondence connected with renting the reels, but it was not every day that there were letters for her to write. A call at the house by a film-distributing agent was always a welcome diversion, for she had become authoritative in dealing with them. Those who had not met her before promptly imagined they could push any dud movies on to her, simply because she was a woman, and it caused them considerable surprise when they discovered their mistake. They never tried their tricks a second time.

  Alan came home on the eve of Minnie’s arrival. “I must leave to catch the late evening train for Seattle right after dinner,” he told Lisa. “I have a great deal of business there to get through in the morning before I meet the steamship.”

  Lisa went out of the house with him when the hour came for him to depart. He wound the starting handle of his automobile and they kissed before he took his place behind the wheel and switched on the head-lamps.

  “I almost forgot,” he said on the point of driving away. “I’ll have to be off to the forests again the day after tomorrow, for six or seven weeks. That means cancelling the three evening shows I intended to put on at the end of the week. Will you see that the usual postponement notices are displayed? ‘Bye, Lisa.”

  He had not waited for her answer, knowing she was familiar with the process. They had had to have these notices printed some while ago. Cancellations always caused disappointment, but everybody understood that his work for the lumber company came before all else.