Camp at the Thousand Springs. A little grass peninsula running out between
the river and a narrow lagoon, a part of Decker's ranch, two miles by water
below the Springs and half a mile from Decker's Ferry, set all about with
a hedge of rose, willow, and wild-currant bushes, sword-grass, and tall
reeds,--the grasses enormous, like Japanese decorations,--crossing the
darks of the opposite shore and the lights of the river and sky. Our tents
are pitched, our blankets spread in the sun, our wagon is soaking its tired
feet in the river. Tom and Harshaw are up-stream somewhere, fishing for
supper. Billings is bargaining with Old Man Decker for the "keep" of his
team. Kitty and I are enjoying ourselves. There is a rip in one of the back
seams of my jacket, Kitty tells me, but even that cannot move me.
I say we are enjoying ourselves; but my young guest has developed a new
mood of late which gives poignancy to my growing tenderness for the girl.
She has kept up wonderfully, with the aid of her bit of a temper, for which
I like her none the less. How she will stand this idleness, monotony, and
intimacy, with the accent of beauty pressing home, I cannot say. I rather
fear for her.
The screws have been tightened on her lately by something that befell at
the Harshaw ranch. Our road lay past the place, and Harshaw had to stop for
his surveying instruments, also to pack a bag, he said,--with apologies for
keeping us waiting.
I think we were all a little nervous as we neared the house. Very few women
could have spelled the word "home" out of those rough masculine premises. I
wondered if Kitty was not offering up a prayer of thanksgiving for the life
she had been delivered from.
Harshaw jumped down, and, stooping under the wire fence, ran across the
alfalfa stubble to the house as fast as he could for the welcome of a
beautiful young setter dog--Maisie he called her--that came wildly out to
meet him. A woman--not a nice-looking woman--stood at the door and watched
him, and even at our distance from them there was something strange in
their recognition.
Kitty began to talk and laugh with forced coolness. Tom turned the horses
sharply, so that the wagon's shadow lay on the roadside, away from the
house. "Get out, hadn't you better?" he suggested, in the tone of a
command. We got out, and Kitty asked for her sketching-bag.
"Kitty," I whispered, pointing to the house, "draw _that_, and send it to
your mother. She will never ask again why you didn't care to live there."
"That has nothing to do with it," she retorted coldly. "I would have lived
there, or anywhere, with the right person."
There was no such person. I couldn't help saying it.
She is very handsome when she looks down, proud and a trifle sullen when
you "touch her on the raw," as the men say.
"But there _is_ such a person, Kitty," I ventured. I had ventured, it
seemed, too far.
"You are my hostess. Your house is my only home. Don't be his accomplice!"
I thought it rather well said.
Now that woman's clothes were hanging on the line (and very common-looking
clothes they were), so she could not have been a casual guest. Moreover,
she was pacing the hard ground in front of the house, and staring at us
with a truculent yet uneasy air. Curiosity was strong, and a sort of anger
possessed me against the place and everybody connected with it.
When Cecil came out, looking very hot and confused for him, who is always
so fresh and gay, I inquired, rather shortly perhaps, "Who is your
visitor?"
"I have no visitor," he answered me, as cool as you please. But there was
a protest in his eye. I was determined not to spare him or any of the
Harshaws.
"Your housekeeper, then?"
"I have no housekeeper."
"Who is the lady stopping at your house?"
"I have no house."
"Your cousin's house, then?"
"If you refer to the person I was talking to--she is my cousin's
housekeeper, I suppose."
Tom gave me a look, and I thought it time to let the subject drop. This was
in Kitty's presence, though apparently she neither saw nor heard. I walked
on ahead of the wagon, so angry that I was almost sick. Instantly Harshaw
joined me, with a much nicer, brighter look upon his face.
"Mrs. Daly," he said, "I want to beg your pardon. I could not answer your
question before Miss Comyn. The lady, as you were pleased to call her, is
Mrs. Harshaw, _my cousin_--Micky's wife, you understand."
"Since when?"
"Day before yesterday, she tells me. They were married at Bliss."
"Well, I should say it was 'Bliss' for Kitty Comyn that _she_ is not Mrs.
Harshaw--too," I was about to add, but that would be going rather far. "And
what did you want to bring that girl over here for?"
"Mrs. Daly, I have told you,--I thought she loved him."
"And what of his love for her?"
"Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has
married! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be
the deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that."
Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what the
saving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have been
offered up to that end?
"You leave out one small feature of the case," said Harshaw, with a sick
and burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love her
myself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man,
she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But I
didn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! I
couldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smash
things. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing,
but I had to do something."
I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I did
say to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-century
young Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of his
simple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was,
or how promptly she had been succeeded.
"But just now you said you wanted her to know the truth."
"Not the whole truth. Great Scott! she knows enough. No need to rub it in."
"She knows just enough about this to misunderstand, perhaps. In justice
to yourself--she heard you beating about the bush--do you want her to
misunderstand you?"
"Oh, hang me! I don't expect her to understand me, or even tolerate me,
yet. Mine is a waiting race, Mrs. Daly."
"Very well; you can wait," I said. "But news like this will not wait. She
will be obliged to hear it; you don't know how or where she may hear it.
Better let her hear it first in as decent a way as possible."
"But there is no decent way. How can I explain to you, or you to her,
such a measly affair as this? It began with a question of money he owed
that woman on the ranch. He bought it of her,--and a cruel bad bargain it
was,--and he never could make his last payment. She has threatened him,
and played the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. His
governor would have helped him out; but, you see, Micky has been a rather
expensive boy, and he has given the old gentleman to understand that the
place is paid for,--to account for money sent him at various times for that
ostensible purpose,--and on that basis the bargain was struck, between
our governors, for my interest in the ranch. My father bought me in, on a
clear title, as Uncle George represented it, in perfect good faith. I've
never said a word, on the old gentleman's account; and Micky has never
dared undeceive his father, who is the soul of honor in business, as in
everything else. I am sorry to bore you with family affairs; but it's
rather rum the way Micky's fate has caught up with him, through his one
weakness of laziness, and perhaps lying a little, when he was obliged to.
How this affair came about so suddenly I can't say. Didn't like to ask her
too many questions; and Micky, poor devil, faded from view directly he saw
us coming. But at a venture: she had heard he was going to be married, and
came down here to make trouble when he should arrive with his bride; but he
came back alone, disgusted with life, and found her here. It was easier to
marry her than--pay her, we'll say. She has been something over-generous,
perhaps. She would rather have had him, any time, than her money, and now
was the time. She took advantage of a weak moment."
"A weak and a spiteful moment," I kindly added. "Now if he hastens the news
to England, and the Percifers hear of it in New York, how pleasant for
Kitty to have all her friends hear that _he_ is married and _she_ is not!"
"Great Heavens!" said the young fellow, "if she would let me hasten the
news--that she is married to me!"
"Why don't you appeal to her pride and her spirit now while they are in the
dust? Why do you bother with sentiment now?"
I liked him so much at that moment that I would have had him have Kitty, no
matter what way he got her.
"Yes," he said; "why not take advantage of her, as everybody else has
done?"
"Some people's scrupulousness comes rather late," I said.
"To those who don't understand," he had the brazenness to say. "What is
done is done. It's a rough beginning--awfully rough on her. The end must
atone somehow. If I don't win her I shall be punished enough; but if I do,
it will be because she loves me. And pray God"--He stopped, with that look.
It is a number of years since a young man has looked at me in that way, but
a woman does not forget.
It was rather difficult telling to Kitty the story of her old lover's
marriage, as I took it on myself to do. Not that she winced perceptibly;
but I fear she has taken the thing home, and is dwelling on it--certain
features of it--in a way that can do no good. From a word she lets slip now
and then, I gather that she is brooding over that fancy of hers that Cecil
Harshaw offered himself by way of reparation, as she was falling between
two stools,--her own home and her lover's,--to save her from the ground.
As since that rainy night in the wagon she has never distinctly referred
to this theory of his conduct, I have no excuse for bringing it up, even
to attack it. In fact, I dare not; she is in too complicated a mood. And,
after all, why should I want her to marry either of them? Why should the
"hungry generations" tread her down? She is nice enough to stay as she is.
Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped to
confirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw's disinterestedness.
At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many such
places, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo)
Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavy
sand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drank
with such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, and
putting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breast
pocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and the
river had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick,
and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. We
saw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, which
he caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; and
precious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on,
smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwing
off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to
follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less
realized it--his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch;
the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot
where the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore.
I am sorry to say that my husband's first words to the man he may be said
to have saved from death were, "You young fool, what did you do that for?"
"For this," Harshaw panted, slapping his wet breast.
"For a pocket-book! Great Sign! What had you in it? I wouldn't have done
that for the whole of the Snake River valley."
"Nor I," laughed Harshaw.
"Nor the Bruneau to boot."
"Nor I."
"What did you do it for, then?"
"For this," Harshaw repeated.
"For a piece of pasteboard with a girl's face on it, or some such toy, I'll
be sworn!"
Harshaw did not deny the soft impeachment.
"I didn't know you had a girl, Harshaw," Tom began seductively.
"Well, I haven't, you know," said Harshaw. "There was one I wanted badly
enough, a few years ago," he added with engaging frankness.
"When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of second
dentition?"
"Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed."
"Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I'd keep out of that Snake
River," my husband advised.
Kitty's face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy.
"Do _you_ know who Harshaw's 'girl' was?" I asked her the other night, as
we were undressing,--without an idea that she wouldn't see where the joke
came in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtains
of our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kitty
worships there awhile every night before she goes to bed.
"No," she said. "I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the families
that have always known each other." The simple child! She hadn't understood
him, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can't make out whether
she is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yet
the cleverness of a young girl's mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainly
in spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon that
precious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty.
Great good may it do her!
The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facing
west across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of the
day and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has no
use for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does draw
it; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons,
and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, in
moonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will,
she never can do it.
"Oh, you exquisite, hopeless thing! Why can't I let you alone!" she cries;
"and why can't you let _me_ alone!"
"It is rather hard, the way the thing doubles up on you," says Tom.
"The real fall, right side up, is bad enough; but when it comes to the
reflection of it, standing on its head in the lagoon, I should lie right
down myself. I wouldn't pull another pound."
("_Lay_ down," he said; but I thought you wouldn't stand it. Tom would
never spoil a cherished bit of dialect because of shocking anybody with his
grammar.)
Kitty throws herself back in the dry salt-grass with which the whole of
our little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains,
through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sun
rises long before we see him, above the dark-blue mountains beyond the
shore.
"Won't somebody repeat
'There is sweet music here that softlier lies?'"
Kitty asks, letting her eyelashes fall on her sun-flushed cheeks. Her face,
as I saw it, sitting behind her in the grass, was so pretty--upside down
like the reflection of the waterfall, its colors all the more wonderfully
blended.
We did not all speak at once. Then Harshaw said, to break the silence, "I
will read it to you, if you don't mind."
"Oh, have you the book?" Kitty asked in surprise.
He went to his tent and returned with _a_ book, and sitting on the grass
where she could hear but could not see him, he began. I trembled for him;
but before he had got to the second stanza I was relieved: he could read
aloud.
"Now _there_ is a man one could live on a Snake River ranch with," I felt
like saying to Kitty. Not that I am sure that I want her to.
When he had finished,
"O rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more!"
Tom remarked, after a suitable silence, that it was all well enough for
Harshaw, who would be in London in six weeks, to say, "We will not wander
more!" But how about the rest of us?
Kitty sat straight up at that.
"Will Mr. Harshaw be in London six weeks from now?" The question was almost
a cry.
"Will you?" she demanded, turning upon him as if this was the last injury
he could do her.
"I suppose so," he said.
"And you will see my mother, and all of them?"
"I think so--if you wish."
She rose up, as if she could bear no more. Harshaw waited an instant, and
then followed her; but she motioned him back, and went away to have it out
with herself alone.
I took up the book Harshaw had left on the grass. It was "Copp's
Manual"--"For the use of Prospectors," etc.
* * * * *
After all, it is not so sure that Harshaw will go to London. There has been
an engineer on the ground since last summer, when all this water was free.
He has located a vast deal of it, perhaps the whole. Tom says he can hold
only just as much as he can use; I hope there will be no difference of
opinion on that point. There generally is a difference of opinion on points
of location when the thing located is proved to have any value. The prior
locator has gone East, they tell us at the ranch, on a business visit,
presumably to raise capital for his scheme; which, as I understand it,
is to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for
irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping
arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are
clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing,
creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was
pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the plan is perfectly
feasible.
The wall of the river cañon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each
story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters
gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich
under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that
sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the
bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and might
the next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the pretty
island between itself and the river. Winter and summer the volume of water
never varies, and the rate of discharge is always the same, and the water
is never cold, though I have just said it is. It looks cold until the rocks
warm it with their gemlike tints, like a bride's jewels gleaming through
her veil. Back of the bluffs, where it might be supposed to come from,
there is nothing for a hundred miles but drought and desert plains. I don't
care for any of their theories concerning its source. It is better as it
is--the miracle of the smitten rock.
You can fancy what wild presumption it must seem that a mere man should
think to reverse those torrents and make them climb the bluff or cram them
into an iron pipe and send them like paid laborers to hoist and pump and
grind, and light the streets at Silver City, a hundred miles away. And how
the cataracts will shout while these two pigmies compare their rival claims
to ownership--in a force that with one stroke could lay them as flat as
last year's leaves in the bottom of a mill-race!
The particular fall my schemer has located for his own--other claims to be
discussed hereafter--is called the "Snow Bank." He says he doesn't want the
earth: this one cataract is enough for him. To look at the whole frontage
of the springs and listen to their roar, one would think there might be
water enough for them both, poor children! Hardly what you'd call two bites
of a cherry!
If the springs were the half of a broken diamond bracelet, the Snow Bank
would be its brightest gem, lying separate in the case--perhaps the one
that was the clasp. It is half hidden by the shoulder of a great barren
bluff which, at a certain angle of the sun, throws a blue shadow over it.
At other times the fall is almost too bright in its foaming whiteness for
the eye to endure.
Kitty is painting it with this shadow half across it; but the light shines
upon it at its source. Tom is doubtful if she is showing the fall to the
best advantage for his purpose, but he is obliging enough to let the artist
try it in her own way first.
"Go up there," she says, "and stand at the head of the spring, if you want
to show by comparison how big it is, or how small you are."
He goes, and gets in position, and Kitty makes some pencil-marks on the
margin of her sketch. Then she waves her hands to tell him, across the
shouting current, that she is done with him. She has been so quick that
he thinks he must have mistaken her gesture. Then Harshaw makes the
train-conductor's signal for the train to move on.
"You see," she says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder,
"_that_ would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal
pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make
a little black dot like that look like a man."
"In this particular sketch, for his purpose, he'd rather look like a dot
than a man, I dare say," said Harshaw.
"Well, shall I put him in? I can make a note of it on the margin: 'This
black dot is Mr. Daly, standing at the spring-head. He is six feet'"--
"But he isn't, you know," Harshaw says. "He's five feet ten--if he's that."
"Ten and a half," I hasten to amend.
Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate it
under the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into the
lagoon--not _our_ lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovely
Sand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves,
before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by the
lagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres,
not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, propping
up a large hop-vine, showed against a mass of birch and cottonwood on the
river side of the island.
"What a place for a honeymoon!" said I.
"There is material there for half of a honeymoon," said Tom--"not bad
material, either."
"Oh, yes," I said; "we have seen her--that is, we have seen her sunbonnet."
"Kitty, you've got a rival," I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre of
the island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank,
_our_ Snow Bank, was an artist's big white umbrella.
"Why should I not have, in a place like this?" she said. "If the schemers
arrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? _We_ shall leave it as we
find it; we don't intend to carry it away in our pockets." She stopped, and
blushed disdainfully. "I forgot," she murmured, "my own mercenary designs."
"I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, may
I ask?" Harshaw had turned on his side on the grass, and half rose on one
elbow as he looked at her.
"That is strange," mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. "You have always
been so interested in my affairs!"
"I always shall be," he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness.
"I ought to be so grateful."
"But unfortunately you are not."
"I should be grateful--if you would move a little farther to the right, if
you please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to water
her horses again."
Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe,
and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently,
as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet,
the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped to
drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pink
sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue
sky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon.
There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other
note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet
would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I
had seen it.
"_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you see
the face inside it."
"Have you seen it?"
"Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her,
as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?"
"As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" I
requested to be told.
"Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one.
She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of
every live enterprise."
"Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't see
what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet.
"I don't say that it's always on business," Tom threw in significantly.
"Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with
her?" I demanded.
"I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone," said Tom,
"inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines.
She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl
who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an
artist--one of the great unappreciated"--
"So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted.
"Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listened
to my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He had
made a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with the
world on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She was
somebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informality
about the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They both
died, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant,
though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned."
"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"
"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail.' She is the owner of
something else we do want--this piece of ground,"--he looked about him and
waved his hand,--"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand.
And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won't
lease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of that
piece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery and
nonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridge
the lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there."
"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe
her off the face of the earth--abolish her and her pretty island at one
fell swoop?"
"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven't
approached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch."
"So good of you!" I murmured.
"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house."
"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing
for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such
grasping profanation."
"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her,--I wouldn't ask
him to woo her in cold blood,--it would be a monstrous convenient way to
settle it."
"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone.
"They are not pretty things to say, in the first place."
"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it time
somebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for the
joys of life on the crumbs of her society."
"Do you suppose she cares whom he talks to, or whom he spends his time
with?"
"Perhaps she doesn't care. I should like to give her a chance to see if she
cares, that's all."
Tom's location notice being plain for all eyes to read, the mistress of
the island naturally inquired what he wanted with the Snow Bank; and he,
thinking she would see at once the value to her ranch of such a neighboring
enterprise, frankly told her of his scheme. Nothing of its scientific
interest, its difficulties, its commercial value, even its benefit to
herself, appealed to the little islander. To her it was simply an attempt
to alter and ruin the spot she loved best on earth; to steal her beautiful
waterfall and carry it away in an ugly iron pipe. Whether the thing could
be done, she did not ask herself; the design was enough. Never would she
lend herself, or anything that was hers, to such an impious desecration!
This was her position, which any child might have taken in defense of a
beloved toy; but she was holding it with all a woman's force and constancy.
I was glad of it, I said to Tom, and I hoped she would stand them off
for all she was worth. But I am not really glad. What woman could love
a waterfall better than her husband's success? There are hundreds of
waterfalls in the world, but only this one scheme for Tom.
But anent this hitch, it teases me a little, I confess, on Kitty's account,
when Cecil meanders over to the island at all hours of the day. To be sure,
it relieves Kitty of his company; but is she so glad, after all, to be
relieved?
It was last Friday, after one of Harshaw's entirely frank but perfectly
unexplained absences, that he came into camp and inquired if there was any
clam-broth left in the kitchen. I referred him to the cook. Finding there
was, he returned to me and asked if he might take a tin of it to Miss
Malcolm for her patient.
"Who is Miss Malcolm?" I asked. But of course who could she be but the lady
of the island, where he spends the greater part of his time? He was welcome
to the clam-broth, or anything else he thought would be acceptable in that
quarter, I said. And how was the patient?
"Oh, she's quite bad all the time. She doesn't get about. I wonder if
you'd mind, Mrs. Daly, if I asked you to look in on her some day? The old
creature's in a sad way, it seems to me."
Of course I didn't mind, if Miss Malcolm did not. Harshaw seemed to feel
authorized to assure me of that fact. So I went first with Tom, and then I
went again alone, leaving Harshaw in the boat with Kitty.
Miss Malcolm's maid or man servant, or both--for she does the work of both,
and looks in her bed (dressed in a flannel bed-sack, her head tied up in
an old blue knitted "fascinator") less like a woman than anything I ever
beheld--appears to have had a mild form of grippe fever, and having never
been sick in her life before, she thought she was nearing her end. My
simple treatment, the basis of which was quinine and whiskey, seemed to
strike old Tamar favorably; and after the second visit there was no need to
come again to see her. But by this time I was deep in the good books of her
mistress, who knows too little of illness herself to appreciate how little
has been done, by me at least, or how very little needed to be done after
restoring the old woman's confidence in her power to live. (The last time I
saw her she still wore the blue fascinator, but with a man's hat on top of
it; she was waddling toward the cow-corral with half a haystack, it looked
like, poised on a hay-fork above her head. She was certainly a credit to
her doctor, if not to her _corsétière_, she and the haystack being much of
a figure.)
Miss Malcolm's innocent gratitude is most embarrassing, really painful,
under the circumstances, and the poor child cannot let the circumstances
alone. She imagines I am always thinking about Tom's scheme. It is evident
that _she_ is; and not being exactly a woman of the world, out of the
fullness of her heart her mouth speaketh. That would be all right if she
would speak to somebody else. _I_ don't want to take advantage of her
gratitude, as she seems determined I shall do.
"You must think me a very strained, sentimental creature," she said to me
the last time, "to care so much for a few old rocks and a little piece of
foamy water."
I didn't think so at all, I told her. If I had lived there all my life, I
should feel about the place just as she did.
Here she began to blush and distress herself. "But think how kind you have
all been to me! Mr. Harshaw was here every day, after he found how ill poor
Tamar was. He did so many things: he lifted her, for one thing, and that
I couldn't have done to save her life. And your two visits have simply
cured her! And here I am making myself a stumbling-block and ruining your
husband's plans!"