The Valley of the Moon Jack London

changed it sooner I wouldn't a-had you. You see, I didn't know

  you existed only until a couple of weeks ago."

  His hand crept along her bare forearm and up and partly under the

  elbow-sleeve.

  "Your skin's so cool," he said. "It ain't cold; it's cool. It

  feels good to the hand."

  "Pretty soon you'll be calling me your cold-storage baby," she

  laughed.

  "And your voice is cool," he went on. "It gives me the feeling

  just as your hand does when you rest it on my forehead. It's

  funny. I can't explain it. But your voice just goes all through

  me, cool and fine. It's like a wind of coolness--just right. It's

  like the first of the sea-breeze settin' in in the afternoon

  after a scorchin' hot morning. An' sometimes, when you talk low,

  it sounds round and sweet like the 'cello in the Macdonough

  Theater orchestra. And it never goes high up, or sharp, or

  squeaky, or scratchy, like some women's voices when they're mad,

  or fresh, or excited, till they remind me of a bum phonograph

  record. Why, your voice, it just goes through me till I'm all

  trembling--like with the everlastin' cool of it. It's it's

  straight delicious. I guess angels in heaven, if they is any,

  must have voices like that."

  After a few minutes, in which, so inexpressible was her happiness

  that she could only pass her hand through his hair and cling to

  him, he broke out again.

  "I'll tell you what you remind me of. Did you ever see a

  thoroughbred mare, all shinin' in the sun, with hair like satin

  an' skin so thin an' tender that the least touch of the whip

  leaves a mark--all fine nerves, an' delicate an' sensitive,

  that'll kill the toughest bronco when it comes to endurance an'

  that can strain a tendon in a flash or catch death-of-cold

  without a blanket for a night? I wanta tell you they ain't many

  beautifuler sights in this world. An' they're that fine-strung,

  an' sensitive, an' delicate. You gotta handle 'em right-side up,

  glass, with care. Well, that's what you remind me of. And I'm

  goin' to make it my job to see you get handled an' gentled in the

  same way. You're as different from other women as that kind of a

  mare is from scrub work-horse mares. You're a thoroughbred.

  You're clean-cut an' spirited, an' your lines . . .

  "Say, d'ye know you've got some figure? Well, you have. Talk

  about Annette Kellerman. You can give her cards and spades. She's

  Australian, an' you're American, only your figure ain't. You're

  different. You're nifty--I don't know how to explain it. Other

  women ain't built like you. You belong in some other country.

  You're Frenchy, that's what. You're built like a French woman an'

  more than that--the way you walk, move, stand up or sit down, or

  don't do anything."

  And he, who had never been out of California, or, for that

  matter, had never slept a night away from his birthtown of

  Oakland, was right in his judgment. She was a flower of

  Anglo-Saxon stock, a rarity in the exceptional smallness and

  fineness of hand and foot and bone and grace of flesh and

  carriage--some throw-back across the face of time to the foraying

  Norman-French that had intermingled with the sturdy Saxon breed.

  "And in the way you carry your clothes. They belong to you. They

  seem just as much part of you as the cool of your voice and skin.

  They're always all right an' couldn't be better. An' you know, a

  fellow kind of likes to be seen taggin' around with a woman like

  you, that wears her clothes like a dream, an' hear the other

  fellows say: 'Who's Bill's new skirt? She's a peach, ain't she?

  Wouldn't I like to win her, though.' And all that sort of talk."

  And Saxon, her cheek pressed to his, knew that she was paid in

  full for all her midnight sewings and the torturing hours of

  drowsy stitching when her head nodded with the weariness of the

  day's toil, while she recreated for herself filched ideas from

  the dainty garments that had steamed under her passing iron.

  "Say, Saxon, I got a new name for you. You're my Tonic Kid.

  That's what you are, the Tonic Kid."

  "And you'll never get tired of me?" she queried.

  "Tired? Why we was made for each other."

  "Isn't it wonderful, our meeting, Billy? We might never have met.

  It was just by accident that we did."

  "We was born lucky," he proclaimed. "That's a cinch."

  "Maybe it was more than luck," she ventured.

  "Sure. It just had to be. It was fate. Nothing could a-kept us

  apart."

  They sat on in a silence that was quick with unuttered love, till

  she felt him slowly draw her more closely and his lips come near

  to her ear as they whispered: "What do you say we go to bed?"

  Many evenings they spent like this, varied with an occasional

  dance, with trips to the Orpheum and to Bell's Theater, or to the

  moving picture shows, or to the Friday night band concerts in

  City Hall Park. Often, on Sunday, she prepared a lunch, and he

  drove her out into the hills behind Prince and King, whom Billy's

  employer was still glad to have him exercise.

  Each morning Saxon was called by the alarm clock. The first

  morning he had insisted upon getting up with her and building the

  fire in the kitchen stove. She gave in the first morning, but

  after that she laid the fire in the evening, so that all that was

  required was the touching of a match to it. And in bed she

  compelled him to remain for a last little doze ere she called him

  for breakfast. For the first several weeks she prepared his lunch

  for him. Then, for a week, he came down to dinner. After that he

  was compelled to take his lunch with him. It depended on how far

  distant the teaming was done.

  "You're not starting right with a man," Mary cautioned. "You wait

  on him hand and foot. You'll spoil him if you don't watch out.

  It's him that ought to be waitin' on you."

  "He's the bread-winner," Saxon replied. "He works harder than I,

  and I've got more time than I know what to do with--time to burn.

  Besides, I want to wait on him because I love to, and because . . .

  well, anyway, I want to."

  CHAPTER II

  Despite the fastidiousness of her housekeeping, Saxon, once she

  had systematized it, found time and to spare on her hands.

  Especially during the periods in which her husband carried his

  lunch and there was no midday meal to prepare, she had a number

  of hours each day to herself. Trained for years to the routine of

  factory and laundry work, she could not abide this unaccustomed

  idleness. She could not bear to sit and do nothing, while she

  could not pay calls on her girlhood friends, for they still

  worked in factory and laundry. Nor was she acquainted with the

  wives of the neighborhood, save for one strange old woman who

  lived in the house next door and with whom Saxon had exchanged

  snatches of conversation over the backyard division fence.

  One time-consuming diversion of which Saxon took advantage was

  free and unlimited baths. In the orphan asylum and in Sarah's

  house she ha
d been used to but one bath a week. As she grew to

  womanhood she had attempted more frequent baths. But the effort

  proved disastrous, arousing, first, Sarah's derision, and next,

  her wrath. Sarah had crystallized in the era of the weekly

  Saturday night bath, and any increase in this cleansing function

  was regarded by her as putting on airs and as an insinuation

  against her own cleanliness. Also, it was an extravagant misuse

  of fuel, and occasioned extra towels in the family wash. But now,

  in Billy's house, with her own stove, her own tub and towels and

  soap, and no one to say her nay, Saxon was guilty of a daily

  orgy. True, it was only a common washtub that she placed on the

  kitchen floor and filled by hand; but it was a luxury that had

  taken her twenty-four years to achieve. It was from the strange

  woman next door that Saxon received a hint, dropped in casual

  conversation, of what proved the culminating joy of bathing. A

  simple thing--a few drops of druggist's ammonia in the water; but

  Saxon had never heard of it before.

  She was destined to learn much from the strange woman. The

  acquaintance had begun one day when Saxon, in the back yard, was

  hanging out a couple of corset covers and several pieces of her

  finest undergarments. The woman leaning on the rail of her back

  porch, had caught her eye, and nodded, as it seemed to Saxon,

  half to her and half to the underlinen on the line.

  "You're newly married, aren't you?" the woman asked. "I'm Mrs.

  Higgins. I prefer my first name, which is Mercedes."

  "And I'm Mrs. Roberts," Saxon replied, thrilling to the newness

  of the designation on her tongue. "My first name is Saxon."

  "Strange name for a Yankee woman," the other commented.

  "Oh, but I'm not Yankee," Saxon exclaimed. "I'm Californian."

  "La la," laughed Mercedes Higgins. "I forgot I was in America. In

  other lands all Americans are called Yankees. It is true that you

  are newly married?"

  Saxon nodded with a happy sigh. Mercedes sighed, too.

  "Oh, you happy, soft, beautiful young thing. I could envy you to

  hatred--you with all the man-world ripe to be twisted about your

  pretty little fingers. And you don't realize your fortune. No one

  does until it's too late."

  Saxon was puzzled and disturbed, though she answered readily:

  "Oh, but I do know how lucky I am. I have the finest man in the

  world."

  Mercedes Higgins sighed again and changed the subject. She nodded

  her head at the garments.

  "I see you like pretty things. It is good judgment for a young

  woman. They're the bait for men--half the weapons in the battle.

  They win men, and they hold men--" She broke off to demand almost

  fiercely: "And you, you would keep your husband?--always,

  always--if you can?"

  "I intend to. I will make him love me always and always."

  Saxon ceased, troubled and surprised that she should be so

  intimate with a stranger.

  "'Tis a queer thing, this love of men," Mercedes said. "And a

  failing of all women is it to believe they know men like books.

  And with breaking hearts, die they do, most women, out of their

  ignorance of men and still foolishly believing they know all

  about them. Oh, la la, the little fools. And so you say, little

  new-married woman, that you will make your man love you always

  and always? And so they all say it, knowing men and the queerness

  of men's love the way they think they do. Easier it is to win the

  capital prize in the Little Louisiana, but the little new-married

  women never know it until too late. But you--you have begun well.

  Stay by your pretties and your looks. 'Twas so you won your man,

  'tis so you'll hold him. But that is not all. Some time I will

  talk with you and tell what few women trouble to know, what few

  women ever come to know.--Saxon!--'tis a strong, handsome name

  for a woman. But you don't look it. Oh, I've watched you. French

  you are, with a Frenchiness beyond dispute. Tell Mr. Roberts I

  congratulate him on his good taste."

  She paused, her hand on the knob of her kitchen door.

  "And come and see me some time. You will never be sorry. I can

  teach you much. Come in the afternoon. My man is night watchman

  in the yards and sleeps of mornings. He's sleeping now."

  Saxon went into the house puzzling and pondering. Anything but

  ordinary was this lean, dark-skinned woman, with the face

  withered as if scorched in great heats, and the eyes, large and

  black, that flashed and flamed with advertisement of an

  unquenched inner conflagration. Old she was--Saxon caught herself

  debating anywhere between fifty and seventy; and her hair, which

  had once been blackest black, was streaked plentifully with gray.

  Especially noteworthy to Saxon was her speech. Good English it

  was, better than that to which Saxon was accustomed. Yet the

  woman was not American. On the other hand, she had no perceptible

  accent. Rather were her words touched by a foreignness so elusive

  that Saxon could not analyze nor place it.

  "Uh, huh," Billy said, when she had told him that evening of the

  day's event. "So SHE'S Mrs. Higgins? He's a watchman. He's got

  only one arm. Old Higgins an' her--a funny bunch, the two of

  them. The people's scared of her--some of 'em. The Dagoes an'

  some of the old Irish dames thinks she's a witch. Won't have a

  thing to do with her. Bert was tellin' me about it. Why, Saxon,

  d'ye know, some of 'em believe if she was to get mad at 'em, or

  didn't like their mugs, or anything, that all she's got to do is

  look at 'em an' they'll curl up their toes an' croak. One of the

  fellows that works at the stable--you've seen 'm--Henderson--he

  lives around the corner on Fifth--he says she's bughouse."

  "Oh, I don't know," Saxon defended her new acquaintance. "She may

  be crazy, but she says the same thing you're always saying. She

  says my form is not American but French."

  "Then I take my hat off to her," Billy responded. "No wheels in

  her head if she says that. Take it from me, she's a wise gazabo."

  "And she speaks good English, Billy, like a school teacher, like

  what I guess my mother used to speak. She's educated."

  "She ain't no fool, or she wouldn't a-sized you up the way she

  did."

  "She told me to congratulate you on your good taste in marrying

  me," Saxon laughed.

  "She did, eh? Then give her my love. Me for her, because she

  knows a good thing when she sees it, an' she ought to be

  congratulating you on your good taste in me."

  It was on another day that Mercedes Higgins nodded, half to

  Saxon, and half to the dainty women's things Saxon was hanging on

  the line.

  "I've been worrying over your washing, little new-wife," was her

  greeting.

  "Oh, but I've worked in the laundry for years," Saxon said

  quickly.

  Mercedes sneered scornfully.

  "Steam laundry. That's business, and it's stupid. Only common

  things should go to a steam laundry. That is their punishment for

  being common. But
the pretties! the dainties! the flimsies!--la

  la, my dear, their washing is an art. It requires wisdom, genius,

  and discretion fine as the clothes are fine. I will give you a

  recipe for homemade soap. It will not harden the texture. It will

  give whiteness, and softness, and life. You can wear them long,

  and fine white clothes are to be loved a long time. Oh, fine

  washing is a refinement, an art. It is to be done as an artist

  paints a picture, or writes a poem, with love, holily, a true

  sacrament of beauty.

  "I shall teach you better ways, my dear, better ways than you

  Yankees know. I shall teach you new pretties." She nodded her

  head to Saxon's underlinen on the line. "I see you make little

  laces. I know all laces--the Belgian, the Maltese, the

  Mechlin--oh, the many, many loves of laces! I shall teach you

  some of the simpler ones so that you can make them for yourself,

  for your brave man you are to make love you always and always."

  On her first visit to Mercedes Higgins, Saxon received the recipe

  for home-made soap and her head was filled with a minutiae of

  instruction in the art of fine washing. Further, she was

  fascinated and excited by all the newness and strangeness of the

  withered old woman who blew upon her the breath of wider lands

  and seas beyond the horizon.

  "You are Spanish?" Saxon ventured.

  "No, and yes, and neither, and more. My father was Irish, my

  mother Peruvian-Spanish. 'Tis after her I took, in color and

  looks. In other ways after my father, the blue-eyed Celt with the

  fairy song on his tongue and the restless feet that stole the

  rest of him away to far-wandering. And the feet of him that he

  lent me have led me away on as wide far roads as ever his led

  him."

  Saxon remembered her school geography, and with her mind's eye

  she saw a certain outline map of a continent with jiggly wavering

  parallel lines that denoted coast.

  "Oh," she cried, "then you are South American."

  Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

  "I had to be born somewhere. It was a great ranch, my mother's.

  You could put all Oakland in one of its smallest pastures."

  Mercedes Higgins sighed cheerfully and for the time was lost in

  retrospection. Saxon was curious to hear more about this woman

  who must have lived much as the Spanish-Californians had lived in

  the old days.

  "You received a good education," she said tentatively. "Your

  English is perfect."

  "Ah, the English came afterward, and not in school. But, as it

  goes, yes, a good education in all things but the most

  important--men. That, too, came afterward. And little my mother

  dreamed--she was a grand lady, what you call a

  cattle-queen--little she dreamed my fine education was to fit me

  in the end for a night watchman's wife." She laughed genuinely at

  the grotesqueness of the idea. "Night watchman, laborers, why, we

  had hundreds, yes, thousands that toiled for us. The peons--they

  are like what you call slaves, almost, and the cowboys, who could

  ride two hundred miles between side and side of the ranch. And in

  the big house servants beyond remembering or counting. La la, in

  my mother's house were many servants."

  Mercedes Higgins was voluble as a Greek, and wandered on in

  reminiscence.

  "But our servants were lazy and dirty. The Chinese are the

  servants par excellence. So are the Japanese, when you find a

  good one, but not so good as the Chinese. The Japanese

  maidservants are pretty and merry, but you never know the moment

  they'll leave you. The Hindoos are not strong, but very obedient.

  They look upon sahibs and memsahibs as gods! I was a

  memsahib--which means woman. I once had a Russian cook who always

  spat in the soup for luck. It was very funny. But we put up with

  it. It was the custom."

  "How you must have traveled to have such strange servants!" Saxon

  encouraged.