During these two weeks which had brought such tragedy into Zeph’s life
the memory of him and his troubles had by no means died out of Miss
Sophy’s mind. She found herself reverting with strange persistency to
the trains of unwonted thought awakened within her by his inexplicable
devotion to his unworthy wife. The more she thought, the surer she became
that the man had done only what she herself would have done in similar
circumstances. “‘For better, for worse,’” she repeated. “That doesn’t
mean but one thing; there aren’t any two ways o’ readin’ or sayin’ such
plain words as that! An’ it’s ‘worse’ he’s got, no mistake. But I’m as
sure ’s I’m alive, that there ain’t many men would take it the way he
does; it’s more the way a woman ’ud do. Strange, too; such a great
strong man ’s he is! six foot if he’s an inch,—I’d have thought he’d made
short work o’ any man that came foolin’ round his wife. I’ll go up ’n’
see how he’s gettin’ along to-morrow.”
But times were busy with Miss Sophy. Midsummer brought crowds of
travellers to Pendar Basin, and the reputation of Miss Sophy’s good table
was so wide that her doors were besieged with applicants for board. She
had to turn them away by dozens, much to the distress of her thrifty
soul; but, as she curtly remarked sometimes to those who wearied her
by importunities, “Four walls is four walls, ’n’ ye can’t make ’em any
bigger. It’s more for my interest to take ye than ’tis for yours to come,
but I haven’t got so much as room for a shake-down left; that’s the
truth.”
In addition to this inroad of boarders, Miss Sophy had other perplexities
on her mind; one of her wise and long-seeing measures had been the
purchase of a small ranch, a few miles from town, where she raised
vegetables and kept poultry and cows. Until this summer the scheme had
worked well; the ranch, in the hands of a faithful Swede and his wife,
yielding her a profit on the investment, and contributing no small share
to the fame of her house. She had called the ranch “Greenhills,” partly
in affection for her old Vermont home, partly because the house stood
in a little park-like open, surrounded by low hills which had springs
in them, and were consequently green when the rest of the plains around
were sere and brown. Greenhills butter and Greenhills poultry, whenever
there was any surplus above Miss Sophy’s own needs, brought fancy prices
in market; and the sole air-castle Miss Sophy had, was the vision of
the time when she would have money enough put away in the bank and on
loans to make it safe for her to give up keeping boarders and live at
Greenhills. And it was Greenhills she had in her thoughts on that evening
when Zeph knocked at her kitchen door, and she had with a hasty impulse,
so unlike her usual circumspection, told him she could give him work.
Something in Zeph’s eyes inspired her with sudden and entire confidence
in him, and she would then and there have taken him into her employ,
had he been so minded; she was near at her wits’ end with the miserable
and dishonest fellows she had employed on the place since the Swede had
gone away in the spring. Bitten by the mining craze, of which there had
been a fresh outburst in the region, he had left her, with only a week’s
warning, in the midst of the spring planting, and everything had seemed
to be going from bad to worse ever since.
“If I could just get that Zeph up there to overlook things! I believe
he’s as honest ’s a Newfoundland dog,” said Miss Sophy. And it was,
after all, not wholly philanthropy which made her, on the very Sunday
afternoon after Zeph’s fray with Nat, turn her steps once more towards
his house. With her usual straightforwardness she was going directly
to him to offer him the situation. “An’ if that wife o’ his is in the
house,” said the resolute Miss Sophy, “I sha’n’t mince any words with
her. I shall just tell her it’s her husband I want, an’ not her, ’n’
she won’t be allowed to set her foot on the place. If he’s fool enough
to come home to her Sundays he can.” From which it is plain to be seen,
that, spite of her tender meditations on the solemn words of the marriage
service, and on the touching faithfulness of Zeph to his erring wife,
Miss Sophy was not quite sound in the practical application of the
doctrine.
But Providence intervened to save her the shock of being suddenly
confronted by the spectacle of the wounded, helpless Zeph. As she
crossed the open in front of his house, Gammer Stein’s sharp eyes spied
her. Gammer was keeping the Sabbath in her wonted fashion, by taking
in vigorous hand the bodies of her grandchildren. Cleanliness, in her
creed, took place of all especial observance of conventional godliness
on the seventh day; and a terrible day it made of it for Bud and Tim.
No possible Sunday purgatory of hard benches and long sermons, as
experienced by the children of more Orthodox parents, could have compared
in terror with the Sunday scrubbings and combings to Gammer Stein’s
grandchildren. The foreshadowing gloom of it fell on them of a Saturday,
and the smart and tingle of it lasted all day Monday, and longer.
It was at a lucky crisis for Bud that Miss Sophy appeared on the scene.
The six days’ tangle of his hair had proved too much both for his
grandmother’s patience and his own, and he had just broken into loud
crying, and she into something as near scolding as her placid nature
ever reached, when, suddenly throwing combs, brushes, scissors, all to
the floor, the old lady cried, “Thar she goes now! Wall, ef thet ain’t
cur’us!” And without another word she ran out of the house, waving her
arms and calling aloud: “Hyar! Miss Burr! Yeow hyar! Don’t yer go nigh
ther house. Yeow wait tell I kin come up ter ye.”
Miss Sophy, surprised, and, if the truth were told, not wholly pleased,
stood still, as admonished, till Gammer reached her, and then coolly
waited for her to speak. Nothing daunted, Gammer gasped breathlessly, “I
allowed ye wuz gwine ter Zeph’s, wan’t yer?”
“Yes,” replied Miss Sophy.
“Wall, I allowed ye wuz, ’n’ I jest dropped everythin’. I wuz er
grapplin’ wi’ Bud’s hair; it’s somethin’ orful, Bud’s hair ez: ’n’ I
jest throwed the combs daown ’n’ run ter tell yer not ter go nigh ther
haouse.” And Gammer stopped for want of breath.
“Why not?” exclaimed Miss Sophy, curiosity getting the better of her
reserve. “What’s happened? Who’s sick?”
“’Taint no sickness, it’s wuss!” replied Gammer, sententiously. “It’s
wuss ’n any sickness. Thet Nat’s cut Zeph all ter pieces, ’n’ he’s layin’
thar; the doctor’s in thar naow,—the city doctor; pore folks hez ter hev
him, yer know. I allow he don’t know much; Zeph wuz bleedin’ orful when
they brung him over; I wuz thar. I never seed sech a sight, ’n’ I don’t
never want ter. I allow he’ll die, sure.”
“Cut to pieces!” interrupted Miss Sophy. “What do you mean? He can’t be
cut to pieces! Is she in there? Did he find her? Who’s takin’ care o’
him?”
“Well, it ez in his face ’n’ jaw, mostly,” replied Gammer; “he ain’t cut
nowhar’s else; ’n’ ther doctor sez when his beard’s growed out agen full,
’twon’t show none. The doctor, he allowed ez he wouldn’t ha’ hed sech a
cut’s thet not fur no woman livin’; he allowed he wouldn’t.”
It was of no use to attempt to direct courses and channels of narrative
in Gammer Stein’s mouth; once launched, she was as unmanageable as a
rudderless boat, and veered wildly from past to present, from actual to
hypothetical, from descriptive to didactic, according to the quarter from
which each sudden reminiscence and emotion struck her. After one or two
vain attempts to interpolate questions or get some consecutive order of
statement, Miss Sophy abandoned all such efforts and patiently listened,
and in the course of half an hour was in possession of the substantial
facts of the case.
Two scarlet spots glowed on her cheeks. “It is the most shameful thing I
ever heard!” she cried, when at length Gammer paused.
“Ain’t it?” said Gammer. “Ain’t she jest a disgrace ter ther whole on us?
I allow thar ain’t no hell, wharever ’tis ner whatsomeever it’s made
outer, thet’s bad enough fur sech’s her.”
“I’m goin’ in to see him,” said Miss Sophy, firmly.
“Yer ain’t, though, be yer?” said Gammer. “Be yer reel steady headed? He
looks orful.”
“I’m goin’ in,” repeated Miss Sophy. “He’s got to be looked after. I
shall ask the doctor what he ought to have to eat.”
“I allow I’ll go ’long tew,” said Gammer. “Tew’s better ’n one.” And she
accompanied Miss Sophy to the door. As they reached it, the doctor came
out.
“Ah! Ah, Miss Burr,” he said, in a tone of relief, “I’m glad to see you
here. How did you hear of it? The man is badly hurt, but he will pull
through if he can be kept quiet. He wants nursing, though.”
Miss Sophy nodded. “Yes, I should think he did,” she said in a wrathful
tone. “I suppose that good-for-nothing wife of his—”
“Don’t speak of her!” broke in the doctor. “She’s a regular she-devil! If
she shows her face here, I’ll have her arrested. He’s better alone, than
with her round. She won’t come, anyhow; she’s left him.”
“Humph!” said Miss Sophy, with something between a snort and a sob. “Good
riddance! I should say.”
“The little chap’s very handy,” continued the doctor, “and he seems fond
of his father. I’ve showed him how to keep the bandages wet; he mustn’t
swallow anything but liquids for a good many days,—only milk at first.
In a day or two, if you can give him some of your good soups, Miss Burr,
that will be all he will need. He’ll pull through. It is a close shave;
but the man’s got the constitution of an ox.”
“I’ll see he has the soups, doctor,” said Miss Sophy, turning away.
“Ain’t yer gwine in?” cried Gammer, disappointed. “Yer said ye wuz gwine
in. I allow ’t w’ud be good fur him ter know he’d got some friends more’n
he’d knowed on.”
Miss Sophy hesitated. A sudden repugnance had seized her.
“No,” she said, “not to-day. I’ll be up again to-morrow. You can tell him
I was here, and that I’ll look after him. He needn’t give himself one
mite of uneasiness about food. I’ll see that he ’n’ the boy have all they
need. I’ll look after ’em.”
“Then I allaow they’ll be looked arter,” said Gammer. “Anybody’d know
jest by ther way yer step aout yer hedn’t no slouch abaout yeow! Yer
powerful active, yer air, fur a woman er yeour build. It’s cur’us naow
what tuk Zeph ter yeour door thet night, ain’t it? He hain’t hed much
luck, but thet wuz luck; I allow ter yeou, looks like ’twuz! Good day
t’ ye, good day! I allaow thet Bud’s got hes hair inter a wuss snarl
’n ’twuz afore, while we’ve been talkin’. Ez soon’s I’ve got through
cleanin’ him up I shell go inter Zeph’s ’n’ straighten aout things thar.”
Miss Sophy went home like one walking in a dream of horror. In the
whole course of her placid thirty-five years no such glimpse as this of
the dark side of human life and human nature had ever reached her. The
currents of existence in her native village were always as smooth as
they were dull; no crime had ever been committed there, neither did any
of the great daily newspapers come into the place with its record of
the wretched iniquities of the outside world. Vaguely Miss Sophy knew
that such things were, as she knew that there were volcanic eruptions
and cyclones; but to find herself thus face to face with, in fact almost
involved in, one of the most dreadful of all human tragedies, stunned her.
“Right here in Pendar Basin, too,” she said to herself, “in this little
village, and ’mongst workin’ folks, too; I declare it’s awful! I don’t
like bein’ mixed up in it, anyhow. It don’t seem decent to even know
about it. But somebody’s got to look after that man, that’s certain; ’n’
I’d rather do it myself without any help than go ’n’ tell anybody such a
story’s that. I’d bite my tongue off first.”
And so with a grim repression which cost Miss Sophy a dear expenditure
of nerve force in the self-restraint it involved, she went about her
business and said not a word to any one of her ministrations to the
wounded man. It was not till the fourth day that she nerved herself up to
accompany Gammer to his bedside. The sight overcame her, and routed her
last vestige of cowardly unwillingness to an open responsibility about
the case.
“I don’t care what’s to be said,” she exclaimed, “nor who’s mixed up in
it; that man ain’t goin’ to lie another day in that hole. I’m goin’ to
have him moved right out to Greenhills and taken care of decent. I can
drive out there every day ’n’ see to him. I do go out pretty near every
day ’s ’tis; ’n’ the air out there’ll half cure him. Why, the flies ’n
that room o’ his are enough to kill him,—just the flies alone! There
ain’t a window nor a door out to Greenhills that hasn’t got mosquito net
in it.”
“Yer don’t mean it, dew yer?” exclaimed Gammer Stein, taken all aback at
the suggestion.
“I do, too!” cried Miss Sophy. “I’m going to the doctor this minute to
ask him if he’s got anything to say against it.”
“I dunno ’s Zeph ud be willin’,” began Gammer, hesitatingly. “I allow—”
“He’ll go if I come for him,” interrupted Miss Sophy, impatiently. “He
isn’t a fool,—that is, not in everything,” she added testily. “I want
him out there to work’s soon ’s he’s able, ’n’ he’ll be right there to
begin.” And Miss Sophy was off.
In an hour she was back again with the doctor, who was heartily in favor
of her scheme. In fact, he said the man’s one chance for life lay in some
such change; the wounds were not of themselves enough to kill him, but
the solitary brooding over his troubles was keeping up a fever in which
he grew daily weaker and daily worse.
When Miss Sophy’s plan was explained to Zeph, he lifted his eyes to her
face in a long, scrutinizing gaze.
“I donno what reason ye’ve got, ma’am,” he said slowly, “for takin’ so
much trouble for me. I ain’t worth it.”
“I dare say you ain’t,” replied Miss Sophy, “but you can’t be left to die
here o’ these flies. If there was a hospital, that’s the place you ought
to go to; but there ain’t any, ’n’ my house out to Greenhills ’s plenty
o’ room in it, ’n’ there’s a man out there can see to all you want. You
don’t want anythin’, the doctor says, but good food ’n’ to be quiet;
’n’ you can have that out there without its costin’ anybody anythin’,
so we’ve decided to move you out there. The men’ll be here about four
o’clock with the wagon.”
“Greenhills ranch?” said Zeph, inquiringly,—a faint gleam of interest
lighting up the sadness in his eyes.
“Yes,” said Miss Sophy, “that’s my ranch; that’s where I was going to
give you work, if you’d wanted it, that night you came to my house; ’n’
just ’s soon ’s you’re on your feet there’s plenty for you to do out
there.”
Zeph made no reply. His eyes turned to Zephie, who stood at the foot of
the bed, listening wide-mouthed to the startling proposition.
Miss Sophy misunderstood the expression of Zeph’s gaze.
“Yes, the boy can go too,” she said. “It’ll be handy to have him there.
There’s plenty o’ room.”
“I was a thinkin’ that it would be hard to be where I couldn’t see him,
ma’am,” said Zeph, slowly. “But I couldn’t take him out there. He’d have
to stay with his mother.”
“Stay with his mother!” shrieked Miss Sophy; and, “His mother!” cried the
doctor. “What d’ ye mean, man!”
Zeph’s face flushed. “I’ve been talkin’ a good many things over with the
boy,” he said, “an’ he’d rather stay an’ help his mother,—a while, at any
rate, till we see how things goes. He was goin’ to see her to-day. That’s
all settled, sir,” he added, as the doctor opened his lips again with an
impatient ejaculation. “There’s things that nobody knows anything about
except folks themselves, an’ other folks can’t judge. I had been plannin’
to go away for a spell ’s soon ’s I was fit to work, ’n’ Zephie was to
stay with his mother till I come back.”
There was a dignity in Zeph’s tone and bearing which lifted the homely
language to the level of eloquence; and the earnest answering look on the
child’s face, as he met his father’s eyes, completed the revelation. This
was indeed no matter for “other folks” to judge of or to interfere with.
“I’ll go out to your place, ma’am,” continued Zeph, again fixing a
bewildered and scrutinizing gaze on Miss Sophy’s face. “I’ll go out, an’
be thankful to ye for the kindness. I think it’s more ’n likely I’ll
get on my feet quicker there ’n here. I ain’t so very bad hurt, ’n’ ’s
soon ’s I’m able to be round, I’ll work out all I owe ye, ma’am, for the
’commodation.”
Miss Sophy laughed in spite of herself.
“I ain’t takin’ you’s a boarder,” she said. “As soon as you are able
to be round, I’ll make a bargain with you, if you’re a mind to, to
look after the ranch. I think you’re about the sort of man I want out
there,—that is, if we can agree about terms,” added Miss Sophy, her
shrewd business habit returning to her; “there will be time enough to
talk about that when you’re up and out.”
Zeph smiled faintly. “We ain’t likely to disagree about terms, ma’am,”
he said. “I don’t rate myself over ’n’ above high. I’ve got a good team,
though, ’n’ wagon, if they’d be any use to ye.”
“Have you?” exclaimed Miss Sophy. “The very thing I was needing. One of
the farm horses has broken down, an’ Waters said I’d have to buy another.
That is lucky,”—and Miss Sophy chuckled to herself at this speedy
returning of the bread she had cast on the waters,—“that is downright
lucky. You can be carried out in your own team, and Waters’ll work one
o’ your horses right in harvestin’ the wheat, ’n’ that’ll save me buyin’
a horse, ’n’ be a good deal more ’n your board to me, which’ll set your
mind to rest about that part on ’t. I always did hate to have anything
to do with horses; don’t know anything about ’em, if I did grow up on
a farm; never could learn to harness ’em; don’t know a bad one from a
good one; expect I’m cheated every time. I dare say you’ll find there’s
nothin’ the matter with this one Waters says ’s sick. When you get out
there you can begin to keep your eye on Waters ’s soon ’s you’re a mind
to. You don’t need to be on your feet to do that, ’n’ he needs watchin’.”
A most injudicious confidence this to put in a stranger, and a thing
wholly foreign to Miss Sophy’s habitual way of talking with persons whom
she did not know. She could not account for it to herself, and felt a
half embarrassment in her own presence, as it were, as she realized it.
With an unconscious effort at reassuring her self-respect, she turned to
the doctor, as they left the house together, and said, “I don’t know how
it is, but there’s something about that fellow makes you trust him ‘on
sight,’ as you say on money notes. Don’t you think he’s all right?”
“No doubt of it,” replied the doctor, heartily. “No doubt of his being ’s
honest ’s the day is long; but I don’t believe he’s much force.”
“How could he help having force, with that great body o’ his?” said Miss
Sophy, ingenuously, coloring as she spoke. “He’s ’most a giant.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of force,” laughed the doctor, privately amused
at Miss Sophy’s standard. “Some of the smallest men I’ve ever known have
had the most force. I don’t know much about this man. Nobody says any
harm of him, though. But that wife of his is a regular devil! He’s a fool
to stick to her’s he does.”
Miss Sophy cast her eyes down. “But he’s married to her,” she said.
“What’s he goin’ to do?”
“Do!” shouted the doctor. And he thought to himself, “Well! of all queer
questions for a steady-going old maid like Sophy Burr to ask! Do!” he
repeated. “Why, get a divorce from her quicker ’n lightning! That’s what
he’d do if he’d got the force you was talking about.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t think that would be right,” persisted Miss Sophy in
a still lower voice, still with downcast eyes. They had been walking
fast, and had just reached her gate, and as she said these last words she
lifted the latch and held it in her fingers, nervously slipping it up and
down. “Gammer Stein says he loves her spite of all she’s done.”
The doctor stared in undisguised amazement. “Loves her!” he ejaculated.
“Yes,” said Miss Sophy; “so Gammer Stein says, and that is the reason he
was down there; he follows her wherever she goes.”
“Well, he is a fool, then,” said the doctor. “Beg your pardon, Miss
Sophy. The word slipped out unawares to me; but that’s what he is!”
“I suppose most folks would call him so,” answered Miss Sophy, conveying
her faint last retaliation and championship in a slight emphasis on the
word “most” as she closed the gate.
“I should say so,” retorted the doctor stiffly, walking away with a
puzzled sense of sudden antagonism towards Miss Sophy, and a general
disposition to reflect contemptuously on spinster views of life. “I
should say so!” he muttered to himself again. “What ever has got into
Sophy Burr, to be standing up for that kind of immorality!”
And probably nothing short of a revelation from Heaven could have made it
apparent to the good doctor’s mind that it was not at all for immorality
that Miss Sophy was “standing up.”
In the cool air and peaceful stillness of the Greenhills ranch Zeph
mended by the hour, mended so fast that it seemed to him like a miracle,
mended spiritually as well as bodily; new resolution, new purpose, awoke
within him; clouds lifted, and he saw clearly what he ought to do. This
new vision and purpose wrote themselves at once in his face. It was
little less than a transformation. So great was the change, that when
one morning Miss Sophy saw him driving up to her gate in the Greenhills
wagon, she did not know him. It was not quite two weeks since the day she
had seen him lying wan and spiritless in his bed.
“Sakes alive!” she ejaculated, “that can’t be Zeph Riker! ’Tis too! Well,
I never! He’s more of a man than I thought.” And there was a certain
indefinable tribute of new respect in her manner as she greeted him with
friendly kindness. “How you have picked up! I didn’t know you at first.
Ready to go to work, ain’t you? You look as if you was!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Zeph. “I’m feelin’ fust-rate now; I’m ready to take
hold o’ anythin’ ye’ve got for me to do, ’n’ very thankful to you, ma’am,
for givin’ me the chance. I expect ye’ve got the right to me; the doctor
he was a tellin’ me to-day that he’d about giv’ me up when you come along
that day ’n’ took me out to your place.”
“Pshaw!” said Miss Sophy. “That’s all nonsense. There was a dozen dead
men in you then! You come in, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do.
I’m goin’ to put a good deal of responsibility on you, ’n’ I don’t expect
you’ll disappoint me.”
“I’ll try not to,” said Zeph, gravely. “I sha’n’t cheat ye; but I might
disap’int ye, for all that. There’s those that’d answer for me not
cheatin’ ye, if ye’d like a reference, or somethin’ o’ the kind,” he
added.
“No!” replied Miss Sophy. “I’ll take you on your own references—and mine!
I ain’t often mistaken in folks, ’n’ I made up my mind the first night I
saw you that I’d like to get you to work for me.”
As soon as the words had passed her lips she would have given much to
recall them. The effect they produced upon Zeph was pitiful to see. In
the flash of a second his face altered. Bitter memories swept over him.
His whole figure seemed to droop, to lose strength; he looked again the
grief-stricken, wandering, vacillating man who had fumbled weakly at her
door that night.
But it passed. In the few moments during which Miss Sophy stood,
embarrassed, dumb, wondering at her own thoughtlessness in having thus
reminded him of his sorrow, Zeph had wrestled himself free from the
sudden grasp of it, and looking her straight in the eyes, said: “I’m
more to be trusted now than I was then, Miss Burr. I was pretty near out
o’ my mind that night. But I know where I stand now, an’ I’m goin’ to
work. I’m all right, ma’am.”
“That’s all right, all right,” exclaimed Miss Sophy, awkwardly. She did
not intend to have any further implication with Zeph’s domestic miseries.
“If he’s going to be my overseer ’n’ run that ranch,” said the shrewd
woman to herself, “he’s just got to be my overseer ’n’ nothin’ else. I
can’t be carryin’ all his troubles on my shoulders. Now he’s on his feet,
he’ll have to steer his own canoe.”
It was only the helpless that appealed to Miss Sophy. People who were,
as she in concise metaphor expressed it, “on their feet” must look out
for themselves. She did, and she expected everybody else to. A very odd
mixture of sympathy and hardness, compassion and coldness, was Miss
Sophy. Even to herself she was puzzling,—so swept away from her bearings
sometimes by great waves of pity and desire to help her fellow-beings,
and again flintily indifferent to suffering, whose shape or phase
antagonized her common sense. There was no limit to her benevolent
activity, generosity, when once her heart was touched; but she was quite
capable of dismissing other cases with a curt, “I’ve no patience with
such people,—no patience at all! They deserve to suffer. Good enough for
them!”
But to keep Zeph her “overseer ’n’ nothin’ else” proved not to be so easy
as Miss Sophy had thought; and the burden of the thought of his sorrows
would not roll off her shoulders as she had intended. Do her best, she
could not shake herself free of a haunting consciousness of his trouble
and a growing admiration for his courageous patience. No word of allusion
to it passed between them. She would not ask, and nothing would have been
further from Zeph’s impulse than to offer, any information in regard to
the state of affairs; but she fell into the habit of studying his face,
and drawing from its expression her own conclusions as to the posture of
matters. When he looked cheery and resolute, and spoke with vivacity, she
said to herself, “Well, he’s gettin’ along with it wonderfully.” Whenever
he looked downcast and was silent, saying only what was needful to be
said, wrath shook her inmost soul, and her soliloquies were vindictive.
“She’s been pesterin’ him, I know she has, the hussy! I’d like to see her
drummed out o’ town!” or “I expect he’s worryin’ himself to death about
those children. I don’t believe but the law’d give ’em to him if he’d set
about it. He could have the boy out at the ranch’s well as not, an’ the
baby could be boarded. I don’t know what the Lord sends children to such
women for!”
Ah, very far was Miss Sophy drifting from the purpose she had laid down
to herself of letting the overseer of her ranch “steer his own canoe”!
She was fast nearing the pass of being ready to snatch from his hands
both rudder and oars. It is a dangerous thing for a woman to thus study
and pity a man. By paths of whose bearing she does not so much as dream,
she is approaching a country whose name, if it were once pronounced
in her ears, would terrify her. But there is no one to pronounce the
name; the paths are winding; no guide-posts are there; no tokens; not
so much as a dropped leaf to show who last went through. Shrewdest of
all commanders in the world is Love, who makes his recruits recruit
themselves.
If Miss Sophy had been told in these days that this constant,
half-tender, half-impatient, half-pitying, half-wrathful watch and
interest she was keeping up in Zeph’s affairs was carrying her straight
and fast into loving him, she would have been ready to slay her
informant, and would have been sure the tale was a lie. All the same
it was true. This was what was coming to Miss Sophy; helpless, unaware,
stout-hearted, sturdy, independent, as she was, it was coming to her, and
she did not know it; in her ignorance she was inviting it, making ready
for it, feeding it. A mighty passion it would be when once it had Miss
Sophy fairly in its clutch; no half-way measure or measures in anything
Miss Sophy did, or became.
And so the days wore on, faster than ever, it seemed to her; with this
new absorbing interest added to her other duties, she appeared to somehow
lose time out of each day, and never, as she phrased it, “get round.”
From morning to night she went about her work with her brown straw hat
pressed tight down on her forehead. This hat was always to Miss Sophy’s
servants a weather-signal. It had hitherto been her habit to wear it
only on days of extra work,—house-cleaning, or the refitting of a room,
moving of a stove, or some such exigency. The sight of it always struck
terror to her workwomen’s hearts. “When Miss Sophy comes down in the
morning with her brown hat on,” one of them once said, “we jest know
we’ve got to look out an’ step lively!” But this summer the brown hat was
worn day after day, till gradually it lost its portentous meaning to the
household. It really was no less a symptom of perturbations than before,
but they were perturbations whose existence no one suspected,—least of
all, Miss Sophy.
The summer had gone and the autumn had begun. October, with its hasty
scurrying snows and threatening sleets, took Miss Sophy by surprise.
“Goodness!” she cried one morning; “if it ain’t snowing a’ready! Of
all climates ever I heard of, I do think this Colorado’s the most
unreasonable. It’s bad enough to keep on snowing into May; but to begin
again the first week in October is a little too much! It don’t seem but
yesterday I had the stoves took down, an’ now they’ve all got to be set
up again. It’s as bad as Vermont, every bit.”
“Why don’t you go to South California, Miss Sophy?” said one of her
boarders, a young engineer, who had recently come from San Diego. “That’s
the climate of all the world; never a flake of snow from one year’s end
to the other; flowers blooming out of doors all winter.”
“Really? Truly?” said Miss Sophy, turning a wondering look at him. “I
didn’t know as ’twas so warm’s that.”
“It isn’t,” the engineer replied, laughing. “That’s the joke of it.
I never suffered more with cold here than I have there, when I’ve
got caught out in the mountains at night; but it isn’t cold by the
thermometer, and that’s what the plants go by, I suppose; at any rate, I
know they’re in bloom all winter, and I’ve seen barley in full head in
January.”
“And never any snow, honest, now?” asked Miss Sophy, incredulously.
“Never,” he replied; “that is, never except on the mountains. Once I saw
a few flakes come down in Los Angeles; it was in February; it lasted
about ten minutes, and everybody in town was out looking at it. There
hadn’t been a flake seen there for nine years.”
“That’s where I’d like to live, then!” ejaculated Miss Sophy. “I guess
I’ll move.”
“Many a true word’s spoken in jest, Miss Sophy,” laughed the young man as
he left the table. “I dare say I’ll see you there yet.”
“You’ll see me in the moon first!” retorted Miss Sophy. “It’s my destiny
to live an’ die in Pendar Basin!” And she honestly thought so.