[Mrs. Tom Daly, of Bisuka in the Northwest, writes to her invalid sister
spending the summer on the coast of Southern California.]
I
You know I am always ready to sacrifice truth to politeness, if the truth
is of that poor, stingy upstart variety everybody is familiar with and if
the occasion warrants the expense. We all know politeness is not cheap, any
more than honesty is politic. But surely I mistook my occasion, one day
last winter--and now behold the price!
We are to have a bride on our hands, or a bride-elect, for she isn't
married yet. The happy man to be is rustling for a home out here in the
wilds of Idaho while she is waiting in the old country for success to crown
his efforts. How much success in her case is demanded one does not know.
She is a little English girl, upper middle class, which Mrs. Percifer
assures us is _the_ class to belong to in England at the present day,--from
which we infer that it's her class; and the interesting reunion is to
take place at our house--the young woman never having seen us in her life
before.
She sailed, poor thing, this day week and will be forwarded to us by her
confiding friends in New York as soon as she arrives. Meantime she will
have heard from us from the Percifers: that is something.
Really they were very nice to us in New York, last winter, the
Percifers--though one must not plume one's self too much. It began as
a business flirtation down town between the husbands, and then Tom
confidingly mentioned that he had a wife at his hotel. We unfortunate women
were dragged into it forthwith, and more or less forced to live up to it.
I cannot say there was anything riotous in the way she sustained her part.
She was so very impersonal in fact, when we said good-by, that my natural
tendency to invite people to come and stay with us, on the spur of any
moment, was strangled in my throat.
But one must say something by way of retaliation for hospitality one cannot
reject. So I put it off on any friends of theirs who might have occasion to
command us in the West. We should be so happy, and so forth. And, my dear,
she has taken me up on it! She's not impersonal now. She is so glad--for
dear Kitty's sake--that we are here, and she is sure we will be very
good to her--such a sweet girl, no one could help being--which rather
cuts down the margin for our goodness. The poor child--I am quoting Mrs.
Percifer--knows absolutely no one in the West but the man she is coming
to marry (?)and can have no conception of the journey she has before her.
She will be _so_ comforted to find us at the end of it. And if anything
unforeseen should occur to delay Mr. Harshaw, the fiancé, and prevent his
meeting her train, it will be a vast relief to Kitty's friends to know that
the dear brave little girl is in good hands--ours, if you can conceive it!
Please observe the coolness with which she treats his _not_ meeting that
train, after the girl has traversed half the globe to compass her share of
their meeting.
Well, it's not the American way; but perhaps it will be when bad times have
humbled us a little more, and the question is whether we can marry our
daughters at all unless we can give them dowries, or professions to support
their husbands on, and "feelings" are a luxury only the rich can afford.
I hope "Kitty" won't have any; but still more I hope that her young man
will arrive on schedule time, and that they can trot round the corner and
be married, with Tom and me for witnesses, as speedily as possible.
* * * * *
I've had such a blow! Tom, with an effort, has succeeded in remembering
this Mr. Harshaw who is poor Kitty's fate. He must have been years in this
country,--long enough to have citizenized himself and become a member of
our first Idaho legislature (I don't believe you even know that we are a
State!). Tom was on the supper committee of the ball the city gave them.
They were a deplorable set of men; it was easy enough to remember the nice
ones. Tom says he is a "chump," if you know what that means. I tell him
that every man, married or single, is constitutionally horrid to any other
man who has had the luck to be chosen of a charming girl. But I'm afraid
Harshaw wasn't one of the nice ones, or I should have remembered him
myself; we had them to dinner--all who were at all worth while.
Poor Kitty! There is so little here to come for _but_ the man.
Well, my dear, here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kitty has arrived, and _one_
Mr. Harshaw. Where _the_ Mr. Harshaw is, _quien sabe_! It's awfully late.
Poor Kitty has gone to bed, and has cried herself to sleep, I dare say, if
sleep she can. I never have heard of a girl being treated so.
Tom and the other Mr. Harshaw are smoking in the dining-room, and Tom is
talking endlessly--what about I can't imagine, unless he is giving this
young record-breaker his opinion of his extraordinary conduct. But I must
begin at the beginning.
Mrs. Percifer wired us from New York the day the bride-elect started, and
_she_ was to wire us from Ogden, which she did. I went to the train to meet
her, and I told Tom to be on the watch for the bridegroom, who would come
in from his ranch on the Snake River, by wagon or on horseback, across
country from Ten Mile. To come by rail he'd have had to go round a hundred
miles or so, by Mountain Home. An American would have done it, of course,
and have come in with her on the train; but the Percifers plainly expected
no such wild burst of enthusiasm from him.
The train was late. I walked and walked the platform; some of the people
who were waiting went away, but I dared not leave my post. I fell to
watching a spurt of dust away off across the river toward the mesa. It
rolled up fast, and presently I saw a man on horseback; then I didn't see
him; then he had crossed the bridge and was pounding down the track-side
toward the depot. He pulled up and spoke to a trainman, and after that he
walked his horse as if he was satisfied.
This is Harshaw, I thought, and a very pretty fellow, but not in the
least like an Idaho legislator. I can't say that I care for the sort
of Englishman who is so prompt to swear allegiance to our flag; they
never do unless they want to go in for government land, or politics, or
something that has nothing to do with any flag. But this youngster looked
ridiculously young. I simply knew he was coming for that girl, and that
he had no ulterior motives whatever. He was ashy-white with dust--hair,
eyebrows, eyelashes, and his fair little mustache all powdered with it;
his corduroys, leggings, and hat all of a color. I saw no baggage, and I
wondered what he expected to be married in. He leaned on his horse dizzily
a moment when he first got out of the saddle, and the poor beast stretched
his fore legs, and rocked with the gusts of his panting, his sides going
in and out like a pair of bellows. The young fellow handed him over to a
man to take to the stables, and I saw him give him a regular bridegroom's
tip. He's all right, I said to myself, and Tom _was_ horrid to call him
a "chump." He beat himself off a bit, and went in and talked to the
ticket-agent. They looked at their watches.
"I don't think you'll have time to go uptown," said the ticket-man.
Harshaw came out then, and _he_ began to walk the platform, and to stare
down the track toward Nampa; so I sat down. Presently he stopped, and
raised his hat, and asked if I was Mrs. Daly, a friend of Mrs. Percifer of
London and New York.
Not to be boastful, I said that I knew Mrs. Percifer.
"Then," said he, "we are here on the same errand, I think."
_I_ was there to meet Miss Kitty Comyn, I told him, and he said so was he,
and might he have a little talk with me? He seemed excited and serious,
very.
"Are you _the_ Mr. Harshaw?" I asked, though I hadn't an idea, of course,
that he could be anybody else.
"Not exactly," he said. "I'm his cousin, Cecil Harshaw."
"Is Mr. Harshaw ill?"
He looked foolish, and dropped his eyes. "No," said he. "He was well last
night when I left him at the ranch." Last night! He had come a hundred
miles between dark of one day and noon of the next!
"Your cousin takes a royal way of bringing home his bride--by proxy," I
said.
"Ah, but it's partly my fault, you know"--he could not quell a sudden
shamefaced laugh,--"if you'd kindly allow me to explain. I shall have to
be quite brutally frank; but Mrs. Percifer said"--Here he lugged in a
propitiatory compliment, which sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it
fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he
babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and his
perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and American
colloquialisms, not to say slang.
"It's like this, Mrs. Daly. A man oughtn't to be a dog-in-the-manger about
a girl, even if he has got her promise, you know. If he can't get a move on
and marry her before her hair is gray, he ought to step out and give the
other fellows a chance. I'm not speaking for myself, though I would have
spoken three years ago if she hadn't been engaged to Micky--she's always
been engaged to him, one may say. And I accepted the fact; and when I came
over here and took a share in Micky's ranch I meant right by him, and God
knows I meant more than right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she must
be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he
has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad
with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not
looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl
waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass
I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to
offer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over his
natural difficulty--laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, only
he's slow, and it's hard to get him to look things square in the face.
It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, that
I undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a
----. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say to
her"--His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level of
ordinary conversation, with the remark, "It's a facer, by Jove!"
I managed not to smile. If he'd undertaken, I said, to "boom" his cousin's
marriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit for
disinterestedness; but so few good acts were ever rewarded in this world! I
seemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might be
heroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark.
"Ah," he said feelingly, "it's fierce! I never was so rattled in my life.
But before you give me too much credit for disinterestedness, you know, I
must tell you that I'm thinking of--that--in short, I've a mind to speak
for myself now, if Micky doesn't come up to time."
I simply looked at him, and he blushed, but went on more explicitly. "He
could have married her, Mrs. Daly, any time these three years if he'd had
the pluck to think so. He'd say, 'If we have a good season with the horses,
I'll send for her in the fall.' We'd have our usual season, and then he'd
say, 'It won't do, Cecy.' And in the spring we are always as poor as
jack-rabbits, and so he'd wait till the next fall. I got so mad with his
infernal coolness, and the contrast of how things were and how she must
think they were! Still, I knew he'd be good to her if he had her here, and
he'd save twice as much with her to provide for as he ever could alone. I
used to hear all her little news, poor girl. She had lost her father, and
there were tight times at home. The next word was that she was going for a
governess. Then I said, 'You ought to go over and get her, or else send for
her sharp. You are as ready to marry her now as ever you will be.'
"'I'm too confounded strapped,' said he. I told him I would fix all that if
he would go, or write her to come. But the weeks went by, and he never made
a move. And there were reasons, Mrs. Daly, why it was best that any one who
cared for him should be on the ground. Then I made my kick. I don't believe
in kicking, as a rule; but if you do kick, kick hard, I say. 'If you don't
send for her, Micky, I'll send for her myself,' I said.
"'What for?' said he.
"'For you,' said I, 'if you'll have the manliness to step up and claim her,
and treat her as you ought. If not, she can see how things are, and maybe
she'll want a change. You may not think you are wronging her and deceiving
her,' I said, 'but that's what you are; and if you won't make an end of
this situation' (I haven't told you, and I can't tell you, the whole of it,
Mrs. Daly), 'I will end it myself--for your sake and for her sake and for
my own.' And I warned him that I should have a word to say to her if he
didn't occupy the field of vision quite promptly after she arrived. 'One of
us will meet her at the train,' said I, 'and the one who loves her will get
there first.'
"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him at
the ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it,
he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I was
not bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. Then
I cabled her just the question, Would she come? and she answered directly
that she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and I
told Micky what I'd done.
"And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from that
moment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I haven't a
blessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, I
should say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength of
the situation, seeing it's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rum
justice in it; but think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake of
punishing me!
"Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast of
it, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including the
fact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and try
to smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance?
There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet."
The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of his
tale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for "Micky."
"If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler,
wouldn't it?"
I agreed that it would. Then I made the only suggestion it occurred to me
to offer in the case--that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheon
or breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet Miss
Comyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. My
husband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and after
dinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactory
message, he could cast himself into the breach.
"And I'm sorry for you," I said; "for I don't think you will have an easy
time of it."
"She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that's better than sending
me friendly little messages in her letters to Micky."
I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of his
extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good
faith--as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as
convincing as a scene in comic opera.
"By the way," said he, "I didn't encumber myself with much luggage this
trip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in."
I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he as
recklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thought
he did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the whole
of him from head to foot as pale as a plaster cast with dust, except his
bright blue eyes, which had hard, dark circles around them.
"The train is coming," I warned him.
"_She_ is coming! _À la bonne heure!_" he cried, and was off on a run, and
whistled a car that was going up Main Street to the natatorium; and I knew
that in ten minutes he would be reveling in the plunge, while I should be
making the best of this beautiful crisis of his inventing to Miss Comyn.
* * * * *
My dear, they are the prettiest pair! Providence, no doubt, designed
them for each other, if he had not made this unpardonable break. She has
a spirit of her own, has Miss Kitty, and if she cried up-stairs alone
with me,--tears of anger and mortification, it struck me, rather than of
heart-grief,--I will venture she shed no tears before him.
As Mr. Michael Harshaw did not arrive, we gave Mr. Cecil his opportunity,
as promised, of speech with his victim and judge. He talked to her in the
little sitting-room after dinner--as long as she would listen to him,
apparently. We heard her come flying out with a sort of passionate
suddenness, as if she had literally run away from his words. But he had
followed her, and for an instant I saw them together in the hall. His
poor young face was literally burning; perhaps it was only sunburn, but I
fancied she had been giving him a metaphorical drubbing--"ragging," as Tom
would call it--worse than Lady Anne gave Richard.
She was still in a fine Shakespearean temper when I carried her off
up-stairs. Reserves were impossible between us; her right to any privacy
in her own affairs had been given away from the start; that was one of the
pleasing features of the situation.
"_Marry_ him! marry _him_!" she cried. "That impertinent, meddlesome boy!
That false, dishonorable"--
"Go slow, dear," I said. "I don't think he's quite so bad as that."
"And what do I want with _him_! And what do you think he tells me, Mrs.
Daly? And whether there's any truth in him, how do I know? He declares
it was not Michael Harshaw who sent for me at all! The message, all the
messages, were from him. In that case I have been decoyed over here to
marry a man who not only never asked me to come, but who stood by and let
me be hoaxed in this shameful way, and now leaves me to be persecuted by
this one's ridiculous offers of marriage,--as if I belonged to all or any
of the Harshaws, whichever one came first! Michael may not even know that
I am here," she added in a lower key. "If Cecil Harshaw was capable of
doing what he has done, by his own confession, it would be little more to
intercept my answers to his forgeries."
That was true, I said. It was quite possible the young man lied. She would,
of course, give Mr. Michael Harshaw a chance to tell _his_ story.
"I cannot believe," said the distracted girl, "that Michael would lend
himself, even passively, to such an abominable trick. Could any one believe
it--of his worst enemy!"
Impossible, I agreed. She must believe nothing till she had heard from her
lover.
"But if Michael did not know it," she mused, with a piteous blush, "then
Cecil Harshaw must have sent me that money himself--the insolence! And
after that to ask me to marry him!"
Men were fearfully primitive still, after all that we had done for them, I
reminded her, especially in their notions of love-making. Their intentions
were generally better than their methods. No great harm had been done,
for that matter. A letter, if written that night, would reach Mr. Michael
Harshaw at his ranch not later than the next night. All these troubles
could wait till the real Mr. Harshaw had been heard from. My husband would
see that her letter reached him promptly, and in the mean time Mr. Cecil
need not be told that we were proving his little story.
I was forced to humor her own theory of her case; but I have no idea,
myself, that Cecil Harshaw has not told the truth. He does not look like
a liar, to begin with, and how silly to palm off an invention for to-day
which to-morrow would expose!
Tom is still talking and talking. I really must interfere and give Mr.
Cecil a chance to go. It is quite too late to look for the other one. If he
comes at this hour, there is nothing he can do but go to bed.
... Well, the young man has gone, and Tom is shutting up the house, and I
hope the bride is asleep, though I doubt it. Have I told you how charming
she is? Not so discouragingly tall or so classic as the Du Maurier goddess,
but "comfy," much more "comfy," to my mind. Her nose is rudimentary,
rather, which doesn't prevent her having a mind of her own, though noses
are said to have it all to say as to force of character. Her upper lip has
the most fascinating little pout; her chin is full and emotional--but these
are emotional times; and there is a beautiful finish about her throat and
hands and wrists. She looks more dressed in a shirt-waist, in which she
came down to dinner, her trunk not having come, than some of us do in the
best we have. Her clothes are very fresh and recent, to a woman of Idaho;
but she does not wear her pretty ears "cachées," I am glad to say. They are
very pretty, and one--the left one--is burned pure crimson from sitting
next the window of her section all the way from Omaha.
But why do I write all this nonsense at twelve o'clock at night, when all
I need say by way of description is that we want her to stay with us,
indefinitely if necessary, and let her countrymen and lovers go to--their
ranch on the Snake River!
* * * * *
What do you suppose those wretches were arguing about in the dining-room
last night, over their whisky and soda? Sentiment was "not in it," as they
would say. They were talking up a scheme--a scheme that Tom has had in mind
ever since he first saw the Thousand Springs six years ago, when he had the
Snake River placer-mining fever. It was of no use then, because electrical
transmission was in its infancy, its long-distance capacities undreamed of.
But Harshaw was down there fishing last summer, and he was able to satisfy
the only doubt Tom has had as to some natural feature of the scheme--I
don't know what; but Harshaw has settled it, and is as wild as Tom himself
about the thing. Also he wants to put into it all the money he can
recover out of his cousin's ranch. (I shouldn't think the future of that
partnership would be exactly happy!) And now they propose to take hold of
it together, and at once.
Harshaw, who, it seems, is enough of an engineer to run a level, will go
down with Tom and make the preliminary surveys. Tom will work up the plans
and estimates, and prepare a report, which Harshaw will take to London,
where his father has influence in the City, and the sanguine child sees
himself placing it in the twinkling of an eye.
Tom made no secret with me of their scheme, and I fell upon him at once.
"You are not taking advantage of that innocent in your own house!" I said.
"Do you take him for an innocent? He has about as shrewd a business
head--but he has no money, anyhow. I shall have to put up for the whole
trip."
To be honest, that was just what I had feared; but it didn't sound well
to say so. Tom is always putting up for things that never come to
anything--for us.
He tried to propitiate me with the news that I was to go with them.
"And what do you propose to do with our guest?"
"Take her along. Why not? It's as hard a trip as any I know of, for the
distance. Her troubles won't keep her awake, nor spoil her appetite, after
the first day's ride."
"I don't know but you are right," I said; "but wild horses couldn't drag
her if _he_ goes. And how about the other Harshaw--the one she has promised
to marry?"
"She isn't going to marry him, is she? I should think she had gone about
far enough, to meet that fellow halfway."
Even if she wasn't going to marry him, I said, it might be civil to tell
him so. She had listened to his accuser; she could hardly refuse to listen
to him.
"I think, myself, the dear boy has skipped the country," said Tom, who is
unblushingly on Cecil's side. "If he hasn't, the letter will fetch him. She
will have time to settle his hash before we start."
"Before we start! And when do you propose to start?"--I shouldn't have been
surprised if he had said "to-morrow," but he considerately gives me until
Thursday.
The truth is, Lou, it is years and years since I have been on one of these
wild-goose chases with Tom. I have no more faith in this goose than in any
of the other ones, but who wants to be forever playing the part of Wisdom
"that cries in the streets and no man regards her"? One might as well be
merry over one's folly, to say nothing of the folly of other people. I
confess I am dying to go; but of course nothing can be decided till the
recreant bridegroom has been heard from.
This morning, when I went to Kitty's door for her letter, I found she
hadn't written it. She made me come in while she "confessed," as she said.
"I couldn't submit to the facts last night," she faltered. "I had to
pretend that I thought he didn't know; but of course he does--he must. I
wrote him from home before I started, and again from New York. I can't
suppose that Cecil would intercept my letters. He is not a stage villain.
No; I must face the truth. But how can I ever tell it to mamma!"
"We will arrange all that by and by," I assured her (but I don't see myself
how she can tell the truth about this transaction to anybody, her mother
least of all, who would be simply wild if she knew how the girl has been
betrayed and insulted, among utter strangers); meantime I begged her to
promise me that she would not waste--
She interrupted me quickly. "I have wasted enough, I think. No; don't be
afraid for me, Mrs. Daly, and for Heaven's sake don't pity me!"
I had just written the above when Tom came in and informed me that the
"regular candidate had arrived," and requested to know if we were to have
them both to dinner, or if the "dark horse" was to be told he needn't come.
"Of course he can't come!" I screamed; "let him keep himself as dark as
possible."
"Then you needn't expect me," said Tom. "Cecy and I will dine at the
Louvre." And I would give a good deal if I could dine there too, or any
where but with this extraordinary pair of lovers.
I went out to meet the real Harshaw, embarrassed with the guilty
consciousness of having allowed my sympathies to go astray; for though in
theory I totally disapprove of Cecil Harshaw, personally I defy anybody not
to like him. I will except prejudiced persons, like his cousin and the lady
he is so bent on making, by hook or by crook, _a_ Mrs. Harshaw.
Mr. Harshaw the first (and last to arrive) has shaved his mustache quite
recently, I should say, and the nakedness of his upper lip is not becoming.
I wonder if she ever saw him with his mouth bare? I wonder if she would
have accepted him if she had? He was so funny about his cousin, the
promoter; so absolutely unconscious of his own asinine position. He argued
very sensibly that if, after waiting four years for him, she couldn't wait
one day longer, she must have changed in her feelings very decidedly, and
that was a fact it behooved him to find out. Better now than later. I think
he has found out.
Possibly he was nicer four years ago. Men get terribly down at heel,
mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in these
out-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily making
growth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself has
helped to develop her. It must have been a knot of perpetual doubt and
self-questioning. No one need tell me that she really loves him; if she
did, if she had, she could not take his treatment of her like this. Perhaps
the family circumstances constrained her. They may have thought Harshaw
had a fortune in the future of his ranch, with its river boundary of
placer-mines. English girls are obedient, and English mammas are practical,
we read.
She is practical, and she is beginning to look her situation in the face.
"I shall want you to help me find some way to return that money," she said
to me later, with an angry blush--"that money which Cecil Harshaw kindly
advanced me for my journey. I shall hate every moment of my life till that
debt is paid. But for the insult I never can repay him, never!
"We are a large family at home--four girls besides me, and three boys;
and boys are so expensive. I cannot ask mamma to help me; indeed, I was
hoping to help her. I should have gone for a governess if I had not been
duped into coming over here. Would there be any one in this town, do
you think, who might want a governess for her children? I have a few
'accomplishments,' and though I've not been trained for a teacher, I am
used to children, and they like me, when I want them to."
I thought this a good idea for the future; it would take time to work it
up. But for the present an inspiration came to me,--on the strength of
something Tom had said,--that he wished I could draw or paint, because he
could make an artist useful on this trip, he condescended to say, if he
could lay his hand on one. All the photographs of the Springs, it seems,
have the disastrous effect of dwarfing their height and magnitude. There
is a lagoon and a weedy island directly beneath them, and in the camera
pictures taken from in front, the reeds and willows look gigantic in the
foreground, and the Springs--out of all proportion--insignificant. This
would be fatal to our schemers' claims as to the volume of water they are
supposed to furnish for an electrical power plant to supply the Silver City
mines, one hundred miles away. Hence the demand of Science for Art, with
her point of view.
"Just the thing for her," I thought. "She can draw and water-color, of
course; all English girls do." And I flew and proposed it to Tom. "Pay her
well for her pictures, and she'll make your Thousand Springs look like Ten
Thousand." (That was only my little joke, dear; I am always afraid of your
conscience.) But the main thing is settled; we have found a way of inducing
Kitty to go. Tom was charmed with my intelligence, and Kitty, poor child,
would go anywhere, in any conceivable company, to get even with Cecil
Harshaw on that hateful money transaction. When I told her she would have
to submit to his presence on the trip, she shrugged her shoulders.
"It's one of 'life's little ironies,'" she said.
"And," I added, "we shall have to pass the ranch that was to have been"--
"Oh, well, that is another. I must get used to the humorous side of my
situation. One suffers most, perhaps, through thinking how other people
will think one suffers. If they would only give one credit for a little
common sense, to say nothing of pride!"
You see, she will wear no willows for him. We shall get on beautifully,
I've no doubt, even with the "irony" of the situation rubbed in, as it
inevitably will be, in the course of this journey.
Tom solemnly assures me that the other Harshaw's name is not Micky, but
"Denis;" and he explains his having got into the legislature (quite
unnecessarily, so far as I am concerned) on the theory that he is too lazy
even to make enemies.
I shall get the governess project started, so it can be working while we
are away. If you know of anybody who would be likely to want her, and could
pay her decently, and would know how to treat a nursery governess who is
every bit a lady, but who is not above her business (I take for granted she
is not, though of course I don't know), do, pray, speak a word for her.
I'll answer for it she is bright enough; better not mention that she is
pretty. There must be a hundred chances for her there to one in Idaho. We
are hardly up to the resident-governess idea as yet. It is thought to be
wanting in public spirit for parents not to patronize the local schools.
If they are not good enough for the rich families, the poor families feel
injured, and want to know the reason why.
To return to these Harshaws. Does it not strike you that the English are
more original, not to say queer, than we are; more indifferent to the
opinions of others--certain others? They don't hesitate to do a thing
because on the face of it it's perfectly insane. Witness the lengths they
go, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen to
set their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have the
love of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding,
high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons," who have
inherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without having
inherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to be
responsible for them.
I note what you say about my tendency to slang, and how it "seems to grow
upon me." It "seems" to, alas! for the simple reason, I fear, that it
does. I can remember when I used carefully to corral all my slang words in
apologetic quote-marks, as if they were range-cattle to be fenced out from
the home herd--our mother-tongue which we brought with us from the East,
and which you have preserved in all its conscientious purity. But I give
it up. I hardly know any longer, in regard to my own speech, which are my
native expressions and which are the wild and woolly ones adopted off the
range. It will serve all human purposes of a woman irretrievably married
into the West. If the worst come to the worst, I can make a virtue of
necessity and become a member of the "American Dialect Society"--a member
in good standing.
* * * * *
This is the morning of our glorious start. I am snatching a few words with
you while the men are packing the wagon, which stands before the door.
What a sensation it would make drawn up in front of--Mrs. Percifer's, for
instance, in Park Avenue! Here no one turns the head to look at it.
I told Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to have
two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any
fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending,
make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking
themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony
ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of
course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls of blankets.
We don't go out of our way to be uncomfortable; that is the tenderfoot's
pet weakness. The "kitchen-box" and the "grub-box" sit shoulder to shoulder
in the back of the wagon. The stovepipe, tied with rope in sections, keeps
up a lively clatter in concert with the jiggling of the tinware and the
thumps and bumps of the camp-stove, which has swallowed its own feet, and,
by the internal sounds, doesn't seem to have digested them.
I spent last evening covering the canteens with canvas. The maiden was
quite cheerful, sorting her drawing-materials and packing her colors and
sketch-blocks. She laughs at everything Tom says, whether she sees the
point or not, and most when there is none to see. Tom will be cook, because
he prefers his own messing to any of ours, and we can't spare room in the
wagon for a regular camp chef. Mr. Harshaw is the "swamper," because he
makes himself useful doing things my lord doesn't like to do. And Kitty is
not Miss Co-myn, as we called it, but Miss "Cummin," as they call it,--"the
Comin' woman," Tom calls her. Mr. Billings, the teamster, completes our
party.
* * * * *
Sept.--Never mind the date. This is to-morrow morning, and we are at
Walter's Ferry. It seems a week since we left Bisuka. We started yesterday
on the flank of a dust-storm, and soon were with the main column, the wind
pursuing us and hurling the sweepings of the road into the backs of our
necks. The double-sides raised us out of the worst of the dust, else I
think we should have been smothered. It was a test of our young lady's
traveling manners. She kept her head down and her mouth shut; but when I
shrieked at her to ask how she was standing it, she plucked her dusty veil
from between her lips and smiled for answer.
We two have the back seat, Tom sits in front with Billings, and the
"swamper" sits anywhere on the lumps and bumps which our baggage
makes, covered by the canvas wagon-sheet. He might have ridden his
horse--everybody supposed he would; but that would have separated him from
the object of his existence; the object sternly ignoring him, and riding
for miles with her face turned away, her hand to her hat, which the wind
persistently snatched at. It was her wide-brimmed sketching-hat--rather a
daring creation but monstrously becoming, and I had persuaded her to wear
it, the morning being delusively clear, thinking we were to have one of
our midsummer scorchers that would have burned her fair English face to a
blister.
Mr. Harshaw thought she would be tired, wearing her hand continually in the
air, and suggested various mechanical substitutes,--a string attached to
the hat-trimming, a scarf tied over her head; but a snubbing was all the
reward he got for his sympathy.
"When this hand is tired I take the other one," she said airily.
We lunched at Ten Mile, by the railroad track. Do you remember that
desolate place? The Oregon Short Line used to leave us there at a little
station called Kuna. There is no Kuna now; the station-house is gone; the
station-keeper's little children are buried between four stakes on the bare
hill--diphtheria, I think it was. Miss Kitty asked what the stakes were
there for. Tom didn't like to tell her, so he said some traveler had made a
"cache" there of something he couldn't carry with him, and the stakes were
to mark the spot till his return.
"And will nobody disturb the cache?" asked Miss Kitty. I couldn't bear
to hear them. "They are graves," I whispered. "Two little children--the
station-keeper's--all they had." And she asked no more questions.
Mr. Harshaw had got possession of the canteen, and so was able to serve the
maiden, both when she drank and when she held out her rosy fingers to be
sprinkled, he tilting a little water on them slowly--with such provoking
slowness that she chid him; then he let it come in gulps, and she chid
him more, for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain very
prettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the game
to be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestal
of virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don't
care to be made the stamping-ground for their little differences.
The horses were longer at their lunch than we, and Miss Kitty requested
her traveling-bag. "And now," she said, "I will get rid of this fiend of a
hat," whereas she had steadily protested for miles that she didn't mind it
in the least. She took out of her bag a steamer-cap, and when she had put
it on I could see that poor Harshaw dared not trust himself to look at her,
her fair face exposed, and so very fair, in its tender, soft coloring,
against that grim, wind-beaten waste of dust and sage.
I shall skip the scenery on the road to Walter's Ferry, partly because we
couldn't see it for the dust; and if we had seen it, I would not waste it
upon you, an army woman. But Walter's Ferry was a hard-looking place when
we crawled in last night out of the howling, dirt-throwing wind.
The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering and
tugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loaded
with dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hooted
and we howled,--the men did,--and the ferry-keeper came out and stared at
us in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if we
could have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river,
which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely to
sleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp.
The one guest-room at the Ferry that could be called private was given to
Kitty and me; but we used it as a sitting-room till bedtime, there being
nowhere else to go but into the common room where the teamsters congregate.
We stood and looked at each other, in our common disguise of dust, and
tried to find our feet and other members that came awake gradually after
the long stupor of the ride. There was a heap of sage-brush on the hearth
laid ready for lighting. I touched a match to it, and Kitty dropped on her
knees in front of its riotous warmth and glow. Suddenly she sprang up and
stared about her, sniffing and catching her breath. I had noticed it too;
it fairly took one by the throat, the gruesome odor.
"What is this beastly smell?" She spoke right out, as our beloved English
do. Tom came in at that moment, and she turned upon him as though he were
the author of our misery.
"What _has_ happened in this horrid room? We can't stay here, you know!"
The proposition admitted of no argument. She refused to draw another breath
except through her pocket-handkerchief.
By this time I had recognized the smell. "It's nothing but sage-brush," I
cried; "the cleanest, sterilest thing that grows!"
"It may be clean," said Kitty, "but it smells like the bottomless pit.
I must have a breath of fresh air." The only window in the room was a
four-pane sash fixed solid in the top of the outside door. Tom said we
should have the sweepings of the Snake River valley in there in one second
if we opened that door. But we did, and the wind played havoc with our
fire, and half the country blew in, as he had said, and with it came Cecil,
his head bent low, his arms full of rugs and dust-cloaks.
"You angel!" I cried, "have you been shaking those things?"
"He's given himself the hay-fever," said Tom, heartlessly watching him
while he sneezed and sneezed, and wept dust into his handkerchief.
"Doesn't the man do those things?" Miss Kitty whispered.
"What, our next Populist governor? Not much!" Tom replied. Kitty of course
did not understand; it was hopeless to begin upon that theme--of our labor
aristocracy; so we sent the men away, and made ourselves as presentable as
we could for supper.
I need not dwell upon it; it was the usual Walter's Ferry supper. The
little woman who cooked it--the third she had cooked that evening--served
it as well, plodding back and forth from the kitchen stove to the
dining-room table, a little white-headed toddler clinging to her skirts,
and whining to be put to bed. Out of regard for her look of general
discouragement we ate what we could of the food without yielding to the
temptation to joke about it, which was a cross to Tom at least.
"Do you know how the farmers sow their seed in the Snake River valley?" he
asked Miss Kitty. She raised eyes of confiding inquiry to his face.
"They prepare the land in the usual way; then they go about five miles to
windward of the ploughed field and let fly their seed; the wind does the
rest. It would be of no use, you see, to sow it on the spot where it's
meant to lie; they would have to go into the next county to look for their
crop, top-soil and all."
Now whenever Tom makes a statement Miss Kitty looks first at me to see how
I am taking it.
* * * * *
It is a fair, pale morning, as still as a picture, after last night's
orgy of wind and dust. The maiden is making her first sketch on American
soil--of the rope-ferry, with the boat on this side. She is seated in
perfect unconsciousness on an inverted pine box--empty, I trust--which
bears the startling announcement, in legible lettering on its side, that it
holds "500 smokeless nitro-powder cartridges." Now she looks up disgusted,
to see the boat swing off and slowly warp over to the other side. The
picturesque blocks and cables in the foreground have hopelessly changed
position, and continue changing; but she consoles herself by making
marginal notes of the passengers returning by the boat,--a six-horse
freight-team from Silver City, and a band of horses driven by two realistic
cow-boys from anywhere. The driver of the freight-team has a young wildcat
aboard, half starved, haggard, and crazed with captivity. He stops, and
pulls out his wretched pet. The cow-boys stop; everybody stops; they make
a ring, while the dogs of the ferry-house are invited to step up and
examine for themselves. The little cat spits and rages at the end of its
blood-stained rope. It is not a pretty show, and I am provoked with our men
for not turning their backs upon it.
* * * * *
Sunday, at Broadlands. From Walter's Ferry, day before yesterday, we
climbed back upon the main road, which crosses the plateau of the Snake,
cutting off a great bend of the river, to see it again far below in the
bottom of the Grand Cañon.
The alkali growth is monotonous here; but there was a world of beauty
and caprice in the forms of the seed-pods dried upon their stalks. Most
of these pretty little purses were empty. Their treasure went, like the
savings of a maiden aunt, when the idle wind got hold of it. There is an
almost humorous ingenuity in the pains Nature has taken to secure the
propagation of some of the meanest of her plant-children. The most
worthless little vagabond seeds have wings or fans to fly with, or
self-acting bomb-receptacles that burst and empty their contents (which
nobody wants) upon the liberal air, or claws or prickers to catch on with
to anything that goes. And once they have caught on, they are harder to get
rid of than a Canadian "quarter."
"And do you call this a desert?" cries Miss Kitty. "Why, millions of
creatures live here! Look at the footprints of all the little beasties.
They must eat and drink."
"That is the cheek of us humans," said Tom. "We call our forests solitudes
because _we_ have never shown up there before. Precious little we were
missed. This desert subsisted its own population, and asked no favors
of irrigation, till man came and overstocked it, and upset its domestic
economies. When the sheep-men and the cattle-men came with their foreign
mouths to fill, the wild natives had to scatter and forage for food, and
trot back and forth to the river for drink. They have to travel miles now
to one they went before. Hence all these desert thoroughfares."
And he showed us in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and a
horned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopher
skipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their own
broad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break in
the cañon wall, where the thirsty tracks went down.
We plodded along, and having with much deliberation taken the wrong road,
we found ourselves about nightfall at the bottom of the cañon, in a perfect
cul-de-sac. The bluffs ahead of us crowded close to the river, stretching
their rocky knees straight down into deep water, and making no lap at all
for our wagon to go over. And now, with this sweet prospect before us, it
came on steadily to rain. The men made camp in the slippery darkness, while
we sat in the wagon, warm and dry, and thanked our stars there were still a
few things left that men could do without our aid or competition. Presently
a lantern flashed out, and spots of light shifted over them as they
slaved--pounding tent-pegs, and scraping stones away from places where our
blankets were to be spread, hacking and hewing among the wet willows, and
grappling with stovepipes and tent-poles; and the harder they worked the
better their spirits seemed to be.
"I wish some of the people who used to know Cecil Harshaw in England could
see him now," said Kitty.
"What did he do in England?" I asked.
"He didn't hammer stovepipes and carry kitchen-boxes and cut fire-wood, you
know."
"Don't you like to see men use their muscle?" I asked her. "Very few of
them are reflective to any purpose at his age."
"Why, how old, or how young, do you take him to be?"
"I think you spoke of him as a boy, if I remember."
"If I called him a boy, it was out of charity for his behavior. He's within
six months of my own age."
"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed.
"It's always 'girls' and 'men,'" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a man
now, he never will be."
I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. _I_ thought
Cecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly,
so very far amiss with his behavior.
"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Daly, to defend him, I am sure. I suppose he
could do no less than propose to me, after he had brought me out to marry a
man who didn't appear to be quite ready; and if it had to be done, it was
best to do it quickly."
So _that_ was what she had been threshing out between whiles? I might have
tried to answer her, but now the little tent among the willows began to
glow with fire and candlelight, and a dark shape loomed against it. It was
Cecil Harshaw, bareheaded, with an umbrella, coming to escort us in to
supper.
I never saw such a pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night,
nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance across
the table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either the
beginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction.
I shall have to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't go
on by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawl
out of the cañon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriously
to walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk with
us; and how Kitty made it difficult for him to walk with both of us by
staving on ahead, with the step of a young Atalanta. I was so provoked with
her that I let her take her pace and I took mine. Fancy a woman of my age
racing a girl of her build and constitution seven miles to Broadlands! Poor
Harshaw was cruelly torn between us, but he manfully stuck to his duty. He
would not abandon the old lady even for the pleasure of running after the
young one, though I absolved him many times, and implored him to leave me
to my fate. I take pride in recording his faithfulness, and I see now why
I have always liked him. He wears well, particularly when things are most
harassing.
It certainly was hard upon him when I gave out completely, toiling through
the sand, and sat down to rest on the door-stone of a placer-miner's
cabin (cabin closed and miner gone), and nowhere through the hot, morning
stillness could we catch a sound or a sight of the runaway. I could almost
hear his heart beat, and his eyes and ears and all his keen young senses
were on a stretch after that ridiculous girl. But he kept up a show of
interest in my remarks, and paid every patient attention to my feeble
wants, without an idea of how long it might be my pleasure to sit there.
It was not long, however it may have seemed to him, before we heard
wagon-wheels booming down a little side-cañon between the hills. The team
had managed to drag the wagon up through a scrubby gulch that looked
like no thoroughfare, but which opened into a very fair way out of our
difficulties.
When we had come within sight of Broadlands Ferry, all aboard except Kitty,
and still not a sign nor a sound of her, our hearts began to soften toward
that willful girl.
Tom requested Harshaw to jump out and see if he couldn't round up his
countrywoman. But Harshaw rather haughtily resigned--in favor of a better
man, he said. Then Tom stood up in the wagon and gave the camp call,
"Yee-ee-ip! yee-ip, ye-ip!" a brazen, barbarous hoot. Kitty clapped both
hands to her ears when she was first introduced to it, but it did not fetch
her now. Tom "yee-iped" again, and as we listened there she was, strolling
toward us through the greasewood, with the face of a May morning! She
wouldn't give us the satisfaction of seeing her run, but her flushed
cheeks, damp temples, and quick, sighing breath betrayed her. She _had_
been running fast enough.
"Kitty," I said severely, "there are rattlesnakes among those rocks."
"Are there?" she answered serenely. "But I wasn't looking for rattlesnakes,
you know. See what lovely things I did find! I've got the 'prospecting'
fever already."
She had filled her pockets with specimens of obsidian, jaspers, and
chalcedonies, of colors most beautiful, with a deep-dyed opaqueness, a
shell-fracture, and a satiny polish like jade. And she consulted us about
them very prettily--the little fraud! Of course she was instantly forgiven.
But I notice that since our arrival at Broadlands, Harshaw has not troubled
her with his attentions. They might be the most indifferent strangers, for
all that his manner implies. And if she is not pleased with the change, she
ought to be, for she has made her wishes plain.