The Worthingtons' private parlor in the Rideau House was hot and close,
although a fog had drifted in at nightfall and cooled the outside air.
Two of its occupants, however, were totally unmindful of the heat and
the mingled odors of upholstery, gas, and varnish that prevailed within
its highly decorated walls. The third, a compact, elderly,
prosperous-looking gentleman, whose face wore a slight cloud of _ennui_,
stood by the open window gazing out, not so much from a desire to see
what was going on outside as from a good-natured unwillingness to see
what was taking place within.
Mr. Frederick Sterling, a shade paler and several shades graver than of
old, was looking at the elderly gentleman's daughter in an unmistakable
way; and the daughter herself, a fair creature, with the fairness of
youth and health and plenty, was returning his gaze with one that was
equally unmistakable.
"Do you mean to tell me, Frederick, that the poor thing _walked_ all
that distance in that intolerable heat?"
The young man nodded dismally.
"That's what they say, Annette. It makes one feel like a beast."
"I don't see why you need say that, Frederick. I'm sure they ought to
have done something, after the awful danger you were in." The young
woman swept toward him, with one arm outstretched, and then receded, and
let her hand fall on the back of a chair, as her father yawned audibly.
"Of course there was danger, Annette; but that doesn't remove the fact
that I was a hot-headed idiot."
"You mustn't talk so. It is not polite to me. I am not going to marry an
idiot."
"But you've promised."
The young people laughed into each other's eyes.
"Frederick," said the young girl, after a little silence, during which
they drifted into the rigid plush embrace of a sofa, "I'm going up to
see that girl and thank her."
The young man leaned forward and caught her wrists.
"You--angel!"
"Yes, I'm going to-morrow. Of course you can't go."
"Oh, good Lord, no," groaned her lover.
"But papa can. There will be plenty of time; we don't leave until
evening. And in spite of what her father did, I feel kindly toward the
girl. There must be some good in her; she seemed to want to do you
justice. How does she look, Frederick?"
The soft-voiced inquisitor drew her wrists from the young fellow's
grasp, and flattened his palms between hers by way of an anaesthetic.
"Did you ever see her?"
"Oh, yes, once or twice. A lank, forlorn, little red-headed
thing,--rather pretty. Oh, my God, Annette!"
The girl raised the tips of his imprisoned fingers to her lips.
"Couldn't you send her something, Frederick, some little keepsake,
something she would like, if she would like anything that wasn't too
dreadful?"
The young fellow's face brightened.
"Annette, you _are_ an angel."
"No, I'm not; there are no brunette angels. I am a very practical young
woman, and I'm going with you to buy something for that poor girl; men
don't know how to buy things." She dropped her lover's hands, and went
out of the room, returning with her hat and gloves, and, going to her
father's side, she said: "Papa, Frederick and I are going out for
awhile. He wants to get a little present for a poor young girl, the
daughter of that awful wretch who--that--you know. It seems she saw it
all, and came down to say that Frederick was not to blame. Of course it
was unnecessary, for the judge and every one saw at once that he did
perfectly right; but it _was_ kind of her, and it was a _very_ hot day.
Do you mind staying here alone?--or you can go with us, if you like."
"No, thank you; I don't mind, and I don't like," said the elderly
gentleman dryly.
"And you'll not be lonely?"
"No, I think not; I've been getting acquainted with myself this trip,
and I find I'm a very interesting though somewhat unappreciated old
party."
The young girl put down her laughing face, and her father swept a kiss
from it with his gray mustache. Then the two young creatures went out
into the lighted streets, laughing and clinging to each other in the
sweet, selfish happiness that is the preface to so large a part of the
world's misery.
They came back presently with their purchase, a somewhat obtrusively
ornate piece of jewelry, which Annette pronounced semi-barbarous;
being, she said, a compromise between her own severely classical taste
and that of Sterling, which latter, she assured her father, was entirely
savage.
She fastened the trinket at her throat, where it acquired a sudden and
hitherto unsuspected elegance in the eyes of her lover, and then
unclasped it, and held it at arm's-length in front of her before she
laid it in its pink cotton receptacle.
"I do hope she will be pleased, Frederick," she said, with a soft,
contented little sigh.
And the young man set his teeth, and smiled at her from the depths of a
self-abasement that made her content a marvel to him.
Annette went up to the mountains with her father the next day, stopping
the carriage under the pepper-trees in front of the Withrow cabin, and
stepping out a little bewildered by the meanness and poverty and squalor
of it all.
The children came out and stood in a jagged, uneven row before her, and
the hounds sniffed at her skirts and walked around her curiously. Mrs.
Sproul appeared in the doorway with the baby, shielding its bald head
from the sun with her husband's hat, and Lysander emerged from between
two dark green rows of orange-trees across the way, his hoe on his
shoulder.
"I want to see your daughter, the young girl,--the one that walked to
Los Angeles the other day," she said, looking at the woman.
"M'lissy?" queried Mrs. Sproul anxiously. "Lysander, do you know if
M'lissy's about?"
Her husband nodded backward.
"She's over in the orchard, lookin' after the water. I'll"--
The stranger took two or three steps toward him and put out her hand.
"May I go to her? Will you show me, please? I want to see her alone."
Lysander bent his tall figure and moved along the rows of orange-trees,
until he caught a glimpse of Melissa's blue drapery.
"She's right down there," he said, pointing between the smooth trunks
with his hoe. "It's rough walkin',--I've just been a-throwin' up a
furrow fer the irrigatin'; but I guess you c'n make it."
She went down the shaded aisle between the orange-trees, Mrs. Sproul
looking after her dubiously, as a person guilty of a serious breach of
decorum in asking to see any one alone.
Melissa leaned on her hoe, and watched her approach with listless
amazement. She took in every detail of her daintily clad
loveliness,--the graceful sway of her drapery as she walked, the cluster
of roses in her belt, and the wide hat with its little forest of curling
plumes.
"You are Melissa?" The stranger put out her softly gloved hand, and
Melissa took it in limp, rustic acquiescence. "Mr. Sterling wished me
to come,--and I wanted to come myself,--to thank you for what you did;
it was very kind, and you were very brave to undertake it, and for one
you scarcely knew--it was very, _very_ good of you."
Melissa colored to the little ripples of vivid hair about her temples.
"Is he gone away?" she asked, rubbing her hands up and down on the worn
handle of the hoe.
"No, but he is going this evening. Of course he could not stay. It would
be very painful for him, for all of you. Is there anything he can do for
you? He will be so glad if he can be of use to you in any way"-- She
hesitated, watching the pained look grow in her listener's face.
"Ain't he never comin' back?" asked Melissa wistfully.
Annette opened her brown eyes wide, and fixed them on the girl's face.
"I don't know," she faltered.
"I'd like to keep his hankecher," Melissa broke out tremulously. "I hurt
my arm oncet up where they was blastin', and he tied it up fer me with
his hankecher. I was takin' it to 'im that Sunday. I had it all washed
and done up. I'd like to keep it, though,--if you think he wouldn't
care." Her eyes filled, and her voice broke treacherously. "That's all.
Tell 'im good-by."
Annette was gazing at her breathlessly. It came over her like a cloud,
the poverty, the hopelessness, the dreariness of it all. She made a
little impetuous rush forward.
"Oh, yes, yes," she said eagerly, through her tears; "and he is so
sorry, and he sent you these,"--she took the roses from her belt, her
lover's roses, and thrust them into Melissa's nerveless grasp,--"and
I--oh, _I_ shall love you always!"
Then she turned, and hurried through the sun and shadow of the orchard
back to the carriage.
"I am ready to go now," she said, somewhat stiffly, to her father.
All the way down the dusty mountain road, over which Melissa had
traveled so patiently, she kept murmuring to herself, "Oh, the poor
thing,--the poor, poor thing!"
Some years afterwards, when Mr. Frederick Sterling's girth and dignity
had noticeably increased, he saw among his wife's ornaments a gaudy
trinket that brought a curious twinge of half-forgotten pain into his
consciousness. He was not able to understand, nor is it likely that he
will ever know, how it came there, or why there came over him at sight
of it a memory of sycamores and running water, and the smell of sage and
blooming buckthorn and chaparral.