REDFIELD met his young guest in dinner-coat, looking extremely urban, and
presented his "friend and neighbor, Mr. Enderby."
Enderby turned out to be the owner of the voice with the English accent
which Lee Virginia had heard in the hall, but he was very nice, and a
moment later Mrs. Redfield entered with Mrs. Enderby, a large lady with a
smiling face. Then a voice she knew spoke from behind her: "I don't need a
presentation. Miss Wetherford and I have already met."
She turned to meet Ross Cavanagh, the young ranger.
"How did you get here?" she asked, in wonder.
"I rode across the hills; it's not far."
He too was in evening dress, and as she stared at him in surprise he
laughingly protested. "Please don't scrutinize this coat too closely. It's
the only one I've owned for ten years, and this is the only house in which
I'd _dare_ to wear it."
Bridges (who turned out to be a State senator) was a farmer-like elderly
man wearing a badly fitting serge suit. He was markedly Western; so was
his wife, who looked rather uneasy and hot.
It was all delightfully exciting to Lee Virginia, and to be taken in to
dinner by the transfigured ranger completed her appreciation of the
charming home and its refined hostess.
Redfield shone as host, presenting an admirable mixture of clubman and
Western rancher. His natural sense of humor, sharpened by twenty years of
plains life, was Western. His manner, his habits of dress, of dining, of
taking wine, were uncorruptedly Manhattan. Enderby, large, high-colored,
was naturally a bit of what we know as the "haw-haw type" of Englishman--a
thoroughly good fellow, kindly, tolerant, brave, and generous, who could
not possibly change his spots. He had failed utterly to acquire the
American idiom, and his attempts at cowboy slang were often
amusing--especially to Redfield, who prided himself on being quite
undistinguishable in a cow-camp.
Virginia and Ross, being the only young folk at the table, were seated
together, and Enderby remarked privately: "Ross, you're in luck."
"I know I am," he replied, heartily.
He was (as Redfield had said) highly susceptible, made so by his solitary
life in the mountains, and to be seated close beside this maid of the
valley stirred his blood to the danger-point. It was only by an effort of
the will that he kept in touch with Redfield's remarks.
"Enderby never can grow accustomed to his democratic neighbors," Redfield
was saying. "He's been here six years, and yet when one of his cowboy
friends tells him to 'go to hell' he's surprised and a bit offended."
"Oh, it isn't that," explained Mrs. Enderby; "it's to have your maids say
'All right' when you ask them to remove the soup. It's a bit shocking also
to have your cook or housemaid going about the house singing some wretched
ditty. What was that one, Charley, that Irma Maud sang till we were nearly
wild (Irma Maud was my chambermaid). What was it? Something about 'Tixey
Ann.'"
"Oh, I know it perfectly!" exclaimed Enderby. "'If you want to make a
niggah feel good--'"
"No, no; that's another one."
Redfield interposed. "You wouldn't have them go about in sullen stealth,
would you? Think how song lightens their drudgery."
"Ah yes; but if it drives the family out-of-doors?"
"It shouldn't. You should take it all as a part of the happy world of
democracy wherein even the maid-servant sings at her toil."
"But our democratic neighbors are all the time coming to look round the
place. We've no privacy whatever. On Sunday afternoon they drive through
the grounds in procession; you'd think our place a public park and we the
keepers."
In all this banter Virginia was given the English viewpoint as to Western
manners and conditions. She perceived that the Enderbys, notwithstanding
their heavy-set prejudices, were persons of discernment and right feeling.
It certainly was impertinent of the neighbors to ride through the grounds
as if they were public, and Mrs. Enderby was justified in resenting it.
Ross turned to her. "Enderby is the kind of Englishman who wants to adapt
himself to new conditions, but can't."
"You don't seem like an Englishman at all."
"Well, I was caught young, and, besides, I'm really Irish--on my father's
side."
"Oh, that's different!" she exclaimed, as though that somehow brought him
nearer to her own people.
"It is, isn't it?" he laughingly agreed. "But Enderby--I suppose his
pedigree goes back to Cedric and his swineherds. You can't change that
kind."
"I hadn't the least thought of seeing you here. How did you happen to
come?"
"Redfield telephoned me at the mill, and I came at once. I haven't been
here since May, and I just thought I'd take a half a day off. Luckily, my
understudy was with me. I left him 'on the job.'"
He did not tell her that she was the principal reason for this sudden
descent upon Elk Lodge, and no one but Redfield knew the killing ride he
had taken in order to be in at the beginning of the dinner. The girl's
face and voice, especially her voice, had been with him night and day as
he went about his solitary duties. Her life problem had come to fill his
mind to a disturbing degree, and he was eager to know more of her and of
her struggle against the vice and vulgarity of the Forks.
"How is your mother?" he asked, a few minutes later.
"Not at all well. Mr. Redfield is to take the doctor back with us
to-morrow." The ecstasy died out of her face, and the flexible lips
drooped with troubled musing. "I am afraid she suffers more than she will
admit."
"She needs a rest and change. She should get away from her seat at that
cash-register, and return to the open air. A touch of camp-life would help
her. She sticks too close to her work."
"I know she does, but she won't let me relieve her, even for an hour. It
isn't because she doesn't trust me; she says it's because she doesn't want
me sitting there--so--publicly. She doesn't oppose my housekeeping any
more--"
"You certainly have made the old hotel into a place of miraculous
neatness."
She flushed with pleasure. "I have done something, but not as I'd like to
do. I really think if mother wishes to sell she could do so now to much
better advantage."
"I've no doubt of it. Really, I'm not being funny, Miss Wetherford, when I
say you've done something heroic. It's no easy thing to come into a place
like that and make it habitable. It shows immense courage and
self-reliance on your part. It's precisely the kind of work this whole
country needs."
His praise, sincere and generous, repaid her for all she had gone through.
It was a great pleasure to hear her small self praised for courage and
self-reliance by one whose daily work was heroic. All things conspired to
make a conquest of her heart, for the ranger bore himself with grace, and
dealt with his silver deftly. His face, seen from the side, was older and
sterner than she had thought it, but it was very attractive in line.
She said: "Mr. Redfield and I were talking of 'the war' to-day--I mean our
'cattle-man's invasion'--and I learned that you were the sergeant who came
for the prisoners."