"Does your husband want _all_ the water?" she persisted. "Do I understand
that he must have it all?"
I supposed she was talking of the Snow Bank, and since she was determined
we should discuss the affair in this social way, I said he would have
to have a great deal; and I told her about the distance the power would
have to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the rest
of it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got started
unintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. It
is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom
pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face
of a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot.
"It shall never go through,--not _that_ scheme--not if"--Then she
remembered to whom she was talking, and set her lips together, and two
great shiny drops stood in her eyes.
"Don't, don't, you child!" I said. "Don't worry about their old scheme! If
it must come it will come; but as a rule, a scheme, my dear, is the last
thing that ever does go through. There's plenty of time."
"But I can't give in," she said. "No; I _must_ try to hinder it all I
can. I will be honest with you. I like you all; of all the strangers who
have come here I never liked any people better. But your husband--must
_not_--set his heart on _all_ that water! It doesn't belong to him."
"Does it belong to you, dear?"
"The _sight_ of it belongs to me," she said. "I will not have the place
all littered up with their pipes and power-plants. Look out there! Look at
that! Has any one the right to come here and spoil such a lovely thing as
that?"--This is what it is to be the daughter of an artist.
"And how about the other despoiler," I asked--"the young man with the
pneumatic pipe?"
"The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated.
"'Pump,' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_
pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that they
incommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush them
away as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls."
"I do not own the bluffs," she said in a distant, tremulous voice.
But the true answer to my question, as I surmise, was the sudden, helpless
flush which rose, wave upon wave, covering her poor little face, blotting
out all expression but that of painful girlish shame. Here, if I'm not
mistaken, will be found the heart of the difficulty. Miss Malcolm's
sympathies are evidently with compressed air rather than with electrical
transmission. I shall tell Tom he need waste no more arguments on her. Let
him first compound with his rival of the pump.
* * * * *
I suppose there is just such a low, big moon as this looking in upon you
where you sit, you little dot of a woman, lost in the piazza perspectives
of the Coronado; and you might think small things of our present
habitation--a little tent among the bushes, with wind-blown weeds against
the moon, shifting their shadow-patterns over our canvas walls. But you'd
not think small things of our Sand Springs Fall by night, that glimmers on
the dark cliff opposite--cliff, and mist-like cataract, and the low moon
throwing the shadow of the bluff across it, all repeated in the stiller,
darker picture of the lagoon. I shall not inflict much of this sort of
thing upon you; but the senseless beauty of it all gives one a heartache.
Why should it be here, where you and I shall never see it together--where
I shall leave it soon, never to see it again? Tom says we are coming
back--when the great scheme is under way. Ah, the scheme, the scheme! It
looks very far away to-night, and so do some other schemes that I had set
my heart on unaware, foolish old woman that I am. As if there was only one
way in this--world for young men and women to be happy!
Harshaw brought me your sweet letter yesterday. It was stage-day, and he
went up over the bluffs to the ferry mail-box at the cross-roads, where the
road to Shoshone Falls branches from the road to Bliss.
I read to Kitty what you wrote me about the Garretts and their children,
and the going to New York and then to Paris. (Thank you so much, dear, for
your prompt interest in my little bride that isn't to be!) She had two
letters of her own which she had read by herself, and afterward I thought
she had been crying; but with her it is best not to press the note of
sympathy. Neither does she like me to handle her affairs with gloves on,
so to speak. So I plunged into the business in a matter-of-fact tone, and
she replied in the same. Her objection is to going east to New York, and
then to the other side. "I had rather stay in California," she said, "or
anywhere in the West." Naturally; westward lies the way of escape from
social complications.
She is afraid of the Percifers, and of meeting people she knows in Paris.
But an offer like this was exceptional in this part of the world, I
reminded her. A nurse for the boy, a maid, and only two little girls of
eight and ten on her hands; and such nice people as the Garretts, who have
been all over the world!
"Well," she said, "I should certainly like to get away from here as soon as
possible. From _here_, not from _you_!" she added, looking me in the face.
Her eyes were full of tears. We clasped hands on that.
"What is it? Has anything else happened?" I asked; for I knew by her looks
that something had.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I should so like to take myself and my troubles
seriously once in a while. No sooner do I try, but something perfectly
farcical is sure to happen. If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh.
It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear!
I'm so fond of him!"
The "old dear," it seems, is Micky's father--a very superior sort of father
for such a son to have, but accidents will happen in the best-regulated
families. He is a gallant widower of fair estate, one of those splendid old
club-men of London; a very expensive article of old gentleman, with fine
old-fashioned manners and morals, and a few stray impulses left, it would
seem by what follows. According to the father's code, the son has not
conducted himself in his engagement to Kitty Comyn as a gentleman should.
Thereupon the head of the house goes to Miss Kitty's mother and makes the
_amende honorable_ by offering his hand and heart and fortune to his son's
insulted bride! The mother is touched and pleased not a little by this
prompt espousal of her daughter's cause; and having wiped away all tears
from _her_ eyes, this gallant old gentleman is coming over to America, for
the first time in his life, to make his proposal to the bride herself! He
is not so old, to get down to particulars; sixty-three doesn't look so
old to some of us as it does to Miss Kitty. He is in fine health, I doubt
not, and magnificently preserved. Kitty's mother is not at all averse, as
I gather, to this way of settling her child's difficulties. She rather
pleadingly assures Kitty that Mr. Harshaw senior has solemnly sworn that
this is no unpleasant duty he feels called on to perform; not only his
honor, but his affections are profoundly enlisted in this proposal. Kitty
has had for years a sacred place in his regard; and from thinking of her as
a daughter absolutely after his own heart, it is but a step to think of her
in a still nearer--the nearest--relation. He begs her mother to prepare her
for no perfunctory offer of marriage, but one that warms with every day's
delay till he can take the dear child under his lifelong protection. Not to
punish or to redress does he come, but to secure for himself and posterity
a treasure which his son had trampled under foot. Somehow we did not feel
like laughing, after all. Kitty, I think, is a little frightened. She
cannot reach her mother, even with a cable dispatch, before this second
champion will arrive.
"He's an awfully grand old fellow, you know. I could never talk to him as I
do to the boys. If he thinks it his duty to marry me, I don't know if I can
help myself. Poor Uncle George! I've always called him 'uncle' like his own
nieces, who are all my friends. I never thought that I should be 'poor-ing'
Uncle George! But he can't have heard yet of Micky's marriage. Fancy his
going down to the ranch to stay with Micky and that woman! And then for a
girl like me to toss him aside, after such a journey and such kindness! I
don't know how I shall ever have courage to do it. There are fine women in
London who would jump at the chance of being Mrs. Harshaw--not Mrs. Micky,
nor Mrs. Stephen, nor Mrs. Sidney, but _Mrs. Harshaw_, you understand?" I
understood.
"And now," she said, producing the second letter, "you _will_ laugh! And
you may!"
The envelope contained a notification, in due form, of the arrival from New
York, charges not paid, of some five hundred pounds of second-class freight
consigned to Mrs. Harshaw, Harshaw's ranch, Glenn's Ferry (via Bisuka).
"These things belong to me," said Kitty. "They cost me the last bit of
money I had that was my own. Mrs. Percifer, who is so clever at managing,
persuaded me I should need them directly on the ranch--curtains and rugs
and china, and heaven knows what! She nearly killed me, dragging me about
those enormous New York shops. She said it would be far and away cheaper
and better to buy them there. I didn't mind about anything, I was so scared
and homesick; I did whatever she said. She saw to getting them off, I
suppose. That must have been her idea, directing them to Mrs. Harshaw. She
thought there would be no Kitty Comyn, no _me_, when these got here. And
there isn't; _this_ is not the Kitty Comyn who left England--six weeks, is
it?--or six years ago!"
"How did the letter reach you?" I asked. We examined the envelope. It bore
the postmark, not of Bisuka, but of Glenn's Ferry, which is the nearest
post-office to the Harshaw ranch. Micky's wife had doubtless opened the
letter, and Micky, perceiving where the error lay, had reinclosed, but some
one else had directed it--the postmaster, probably, at his request--to
Kitty, at our camp. That was rather a nice little touch in Micky, that last
about the direction.
"Come, he is honest, at the least," I said, "whether Mrs. Micky would have
scrupled or not. She could claim the things if she chose."
"She is quite welcome," said Kitty. "I don't know what in the world I shall
do with them. There'll be boxes and bales and barrels--enough to bury me
and all my troubles. I might build me a funeral pyre!"
We fell into each other's arms and screamed with laughter.
"Kitty, we'll have an auction," I cried. "There's nothing succeeds like
an auction out here. We'll sell the things at boom prices--we'll sell
everything."
"But the bride," said Kitty; "you will have to keep the bride." And without
a moment's warning, from laughing till she wept, she began to weep in
earnest. I haven't seen her cry so since she came to us, not even that
miserable first night. She struggled with herself, and seemed dreadfully
ashamed, and angry with me that I should have seen her cry. Did she suppose
I thought she was crying because she wasn't going to be a bride, after all?
* * * * *
"Oh, Mrs. Daly, I feel so ill!" were Kitty's first words to me when I woke
this morning. I looked her over and questioned her, and concluded that a
sleepless night, with not very pleasant thoughts for company, might be held
responsible for a good share of her wretchedness.
"What were you lying awake about? Your new champion, Uncle George?" I asked
her.
She owned that it was. "Don't you see, Mrs. Daly, mamma doesn't leave room
for the possibility of my refusing him. And if I do refuse him, he'll
simply take me back to England, and then, between him and mamma, and all of
them, I don't know what may happen."
"Kitty," I said, "no girl who has just escaped from one unhappy engagement
is going to walk straight into another with her eyes wide open. I won't
believe you could be so foolish as that."
"You don't understand," she said, "what the pressure will be at home--in
all love and kindness, of course. And you don't know Uncle George. He is
so sure that I need him, he'll force me to take him. He'll take me back to
England in any case."
"And would you not like to go, Kitty?"
"Ah, wouldn't I! But not in that way."
She sat up in her flannel camp-gown, and began to braid up her loosened
hair.
"Kitty," I commanded, "lie down. You are not to get up till luncheon."
"I have a plan," she said, "and I must see Cecil Harshaw; he must help me
carry it out. There is no one else who can."
"You have all day to see him in."
"Not all day, Mrs. Daly. He must be ready to start to-morrow. Uncle George
will reach Bisuka on the fifteenth, not later. Cecil must meet him there;
first, to prepare him for Micky's new arrangement, and second, to persuade
him that he does not owe me an offer of marriage in consequence. Cecil
will know how to manage it; he must know! I will not have any more of the
Harshaws offering themselves as substitutes. It will be very strange if I
cannot exist without them somehow."
It struck me that the poor child's boast was a little premature, as she
seemed to be making rather free use of one of the substitutes still, as
a shield against the others; but it was of a piece with the rest of the
comedy. I kept her in bed till she had had a cup of tea; afterward she
slept a little, and about noon she dressed herself and gave Cecil his
audience. But first, at her request, I had possessed him with the main
facts and given him an inkling of what was expected of him. His face
changed; he looked as he did after his steeplechase the day I saw him
first,--except that he was cleaner,--grave, excited, and resolved. He had
taken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a cause
like this! I would have left them to have their little talk by themselves,
but Kitty signified peremptorily that she wished me to stay, with a
flushed, appealing look that softened the nervous tension of her manner.
"I would do anything on earth for you, Kitty," Cecil said most gently and
fervently; "but don't ask me to give advice--to Uncle George of all men--on
a question of this kind--unless you will allow me to be perfectly frank."
"It's a family question," said Kitty, ignoring his proviso.
"I think it would get to be a personal question very soon between Uncle
George and me. No; I meddled in one family question not very long ago."
"It's very strange," said Kitty restlessly, "if you can't help me out
of this in some way. I cannot be so disrespectful to him, the dear old
gentleman! He ought not to be put in such a position, or I either. How
would you like it if it were your father?"
Cecil reddened handsomely at this home thrust. "I'd have a deuce of a time
to stop him if he took the notion, you know; it's not exactly a son's or a
nephew's business. There is only one way in which I can help you, Kitty.
You must know that."
He had struck a different key, and his face was all one blush to correspond
with the new note in his voice. I think I never saw a manlier, more
generous warmth of ardor and humility, or listened to words so simply
uttered in such telling tones.
"What way is that?" asked Kitty coldly.
"Forgive me! I could tell him that you are engaged to me."
"That would be a nice way--to tell him a falsehood! I should hope I had
been humiliated enough"--
She snatched her handkerchief from her belt and pressed it to her burning
face. I rose again to go. "Sit still, pray!" she murmured.
"It need not be a falsehood, Kitty. Let it be anything you like. You may
trust me not to take advantage. A nominal engagement, if you choose, just
to meet this exigency; or"--
"That would be cheating," cried Kitty.
"The cheat would bear a little harder on me than on any one else, I think."
"You are too good!" Kitty smiled disdainfully. "First you offer yourself to
me as a cure, and now as a preventive."
"Kitty, I think you ought at least to take him seriously," I remonstrated.
"By all that's sacred, you'll find it's serious with me!" Cecil ejaculated.
"Since when?" retorted Kitty. "How many weeks ago is it that I came out
here by your contrivance to marry your cousin? Is that the way a man shows
his seriousness? You sacrificed more to marry me to Micky than some men
would to win a girl themselves."
"I did, and for that very reason," said Cecil.
"I should like to see you prove it!"
"Kitty, excuse me," I interrupted. "_I_ should like to ask Mr. Harshaw one
question, if he does not mind. Do you happen to have that picture about
you, Mr. Harshaw?"
I thought I was looking at him very kindly, not at all like an inquisitor,
but his face was set and stern. I doubt if he perceived or looked for my
intention.
"'That picture,' Mrs. Daly?" he repeated.
"The photograph of a young lady that you jumped into the river to
save--don't you remember?"
Cecil smiled slightly, and glanced at Kitty. "Did I say it was a photograph
of a lady?"
"No; you did not. But do you deny that it was?"
"Certainly not, Mrs. Daly. I have the picture with me; I always have it."
"And do you think _that_ looks like seriousness? To be making such
protestations to one girl with the portrait of another in your coat pocket?
We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by the
river."
He saw my meaning now, and thanked me with a radiant look. "Here is the
picture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely _you_ might
have known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago and have wanted ever
since; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I tried
to save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because I
thought she loved him. Or, if he couldn't be saved, I wanted to expose him
and save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I was
for my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself for
your sake, Kitty."
I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobody
tried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as the
little water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees beside
her, whispering, "I stole it from Micky's room at the ranch. That was no
place for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?"