AT THE RAINBOW'S END
"Helen's lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece
Drink the ocean's dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon's purple show
Restless centuries ago;
Stately empires wax and wane--
Babylon, Barbary and Spain--
Only one thing, undefaced,
Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned,
--Dear, how long ago we learned!"
--FREDERICK LAWRENCE KNOWLES.
Starlit and moonlight leagues, the slow, fresh dawn; in the cool of
the morning, Bransford came to the crest of the ground-swell known as
Frenchman's Ridge, and saw low-lying Arcadia dim against the north, a
toy town huddling close to the shelter of Rainbow Range; he splashed
through the shallow waters of Alamo, failing to a trickle before it
sank in the desert sands; and so came at last to the moat of Arcadia.
With what joyous and eager-choking heart-beat you may well guess: not
the needlessness of those swift pulses or of that joy. For Ellinor was
not there. With Mrs. Hoffman, she had gone to visit the Sutherlands at
Rainbow's End. And Jeff could not go on. Arcadia rose to greet him in
impromptu Roman holiday.
Poor Bransford has never known clearly what chanced on that awful day.
There is a jumbled, whirling memory of endless kaleidoscopic troops of
joyful Arcadians: Billy White, Monte, Jimmy, Clarke, the grim-smiling
sheriff, the judge. It was dimly borne upon him by due or both of the
two last, that there were yet certain formalities to be observed in the
matter of his escape from custody of the Law and of the horse he had
borrowed from the court house square. Indeed, it seemed to Jeff, in a
hazy afterthought, that perhaps the sheriff had arrested him again. If
so, it had slipped Jeff's mind, swallowed up in a gruesome horror of
congratulations, hand-shakings, back-slappings, badinage and questions;
heaped on a hero heartsick, dazed and dumb. Pleading weariness, he tore
himself away at last, almost by violence, and flung himself down in a
darkened bedroom of the Arcadian Atalanta.
One thing was clear. Headlight was there, Aforesaid Smith, Madison:
but his nearest friends, Pringle, Beebe and Ballinger, though they had
hasted back to Arcadia to fight Jeff's battles, were ostentatiously
absent from his hollow and hateful triumph: Johnny Dines had pointedly
refused to share his night ride from Helm's: and Jeff knew why, sadly
enough. The gods take pay for the goods they give: and now that goodly
fellowship was broken. The thought clung fast: it haunted his tossing
and troubled slumbers, where Ellinor came through a sunset glow,
swift-footed to meet him: where his friends rode slow and silent into
the glimmering dusk, smaller and smaller, black against the sky.
* * * * *
The Sutherland place made an outer corner of Rainbow's End, bowered
about by a double row of close and interlaced cottonwoods on two sides,
by vigorous orchards on the other two.
The house had once been a one-storied adobe, heroically proportioned,
thick-walled, cool against summer, warm in what went by the name
of winter. The old-time princely hospitality was unchanged, but
Sutherland had bought lots in Arcadia of early days; and now, the
old gray walls of the house were smooth with creamy stucco, wrought
of gypsum from the White Sands; the windows were widened and there
was a superimposed story, overhanging, wide and low. The gables were
double-windowed, shingled and stained nut-brown, the gently sloping
roof shingled, dormered and soft green: the overflow projecting to
broad verandas on either side, very like an umbrella: a bungalow with
two birthdays--1866:1896.
Miss Ellinor Hoffman had deserted veranda, rocking-chair and hammock.
With a sewing basket beside her, she sat on a pine bench under a
cottonwood of 1867, ostensibly basting together a kimono tinted like
a dripping sea shell, and faced with peach-blossom. . The work went
slowly. Her seat was at the desert corner of the homestead which was
itself the desert outpost of a desert town: and her blood stirred to
these splendid horizons. The mysterious desert scoffed and questioned,
drew her with promise of strange joys and strange griefs. The iron-hard
mountains beckoned and challenged from afar, wove her their spells of
wavering lights and shadows; the misty warp and woof of them shifting
to swift fantastic hues of trembling rose and blue and violet,
half-veiling, half-revealing, steeps unguessed and dreamed-of sheltered
valleys--and all the myriad-voice of moaning waste and world-rimming
hill cried "Come!"
Faint, fitful undertone of drowsy chords, far pealing of elfin bells;
that was pulsing of busy _acequias_, tinkling of mimic waterfalls. The
clean breath of the desert crooned by, bearing a grateful fragrance
of apple-blossoms near; it rippled the deepest green of alfalfa to
undulating sheen of purple and flashing gold.
The broad fields were dwarfed to play-garden prettiness by the vastness
of overwhelming desert, to right, to left, before; whose nearer
blotches of black and gray and brown faded, far off, to a nameless
shimmer, its silent leagues dwindling to immeasurable blur, merging
indistinguishable in the burning sunset.
"East by up," overguarding the oasis, the colossal bulk of Rainbow
walled out the world with grim-tiered cliffs, cleft only by the
deep-gashed gates of Rainbow Pass, where the swift river broke through
to the rich fields of Rainbow's End, bringing fulfilment of the fabled
pot of gold--or, unused, to shrink and fail and die in the thirsty sand.
Below, the whilom channel wandered forlorn--Rainbow no longer, but Lost
River--to a disconsolate delta, waterless save as infrequent floods
found turbulent way to the Sink, when wild horse and antelope revisited
their old haunts for the tender green luxury of these brief, belated
springs.
Incidentally, Miss Hoffman's outpost commanded a good view of Arcadia
road, winding white through the black tar-brush. Had she looked,
she might have seen a slow horseman, tiny on the bare plain below
the tar-brush, larger as he climbed the gentle slope along that
white-winding road.
But she bent industrious to her work, smiling to herself, half-singing,
half-humming a foolish and lilty little tune:
"A tisket, a tasket--a green and yellow basket;
I wrote a letter to my love and on the road I lost it--
I crissed it, I crossed it--I locked it in a casket;
I missed it, I lost it----"
And here Miss Hoffman did an unaccountable thing. Wise Penelope
unraveled by night the work she wove by day. Like her in this, Miss
Ellinor Hoffman now placidly snipped and ripped the basting threads,
unraveled them patiently, and set to work afresh.
"Now, there's no such thing as a Ginko tree;
There never was--though there ought to be.
And 'tis also true, though most absurd,
There's no such thing as a Wallabye bird!"
Miss Hoffman was all in white, with a white middy blouse trimmed in
scarlet, a scarlet ribbon in her dark hair: a fine-linked gold chain
showed at her neck. A very pretty picture she made, cool and fresh
against the deep shade and the green--but of course she did not know
it. She held the shaping kimono at arm's length, admiring the delicate
color, and fell to work again.
"Oh, the jolly miller, he lives by himself!
As the wheel rolls around he gathers in his pelf,
A hand in the hopper and another in the bag--
As the wheel rolls around he calls out, '_Grab!_'"
So intent and preoccupied was she, that she did not hear the
approaching horse.
"Good evening!"
"Oh!" Miss Hoffman jumped, dropping the long-suffering kimono. A
horseman, with bared head, had reined up in the shaded road alongside.
"How silly of me not to hear you coming! If you're looking for Mr.
Sutherland, he's not here--Mr. David Sutherland, that is. But Mr. Henry
Sutherland is here--or was awhile ago--maybe half an hour since. He was
trying to get up a set of tennis. Perhaps they're playing--over there
on the other side of the house. And yet, if they were there, we'd hear
them laughing--don't you think?"
Mr. Bransford--for it was Mr. Bransford, and he was all dressed in
clothes--waited with extreme patience for the conclusion of these
feverish and hurried remarks.
"But I'm not looking for Sutherland. I'm looking for you!"
"Oh!" said Ellinor again. Then, after a long and deliberate survey,
the light of recognition dawned slowly in her eyes. "Oh, I _do_ know
you, don't I? To be sure I do! You're Mr. ---- the gentleman I met on
Rainbow Mountain, near Mayhill,--Mr.--ah yes--Bransford!"
"Why, so I am!" said Jeff, leaning on the saddle-horn. One half of Mr.
Bransford wondered if he had not been making a fool of himself and
taking a great deal for granted: the other half, though considerably
alarmed, was not at all deceived.
Miss Ellinor did not actually put her finger in the corner of her
mouth--she merely looked as if she had. "Ah!--Won't you ... get down?"
she said helplessly. "What a beautiful horse!"
"Why, yes--thank you--I believe I will."
He left the beautiful horse to stand with dangling reins, and came over
to the bench, silent and rather grim.
"Won't you sit down?" said Ellinor politely. "Fine day, isn't it?"
"It's a wonderful day--a marvelous day--a stupendous day!" said this
exasperated young man. "No, I guess it's not worth while to sit down. I
just wanted to find out where you lived. I asked you once before, you
know, and you didn't tell me."
"Didn't I? Oh, do sit down! You look so grumpy--tired, I mean." Rather
grudgingly, she swept the sewing basket from the bench to the grass.
Jeff's eyes followed the action. He saw--if you call it seeing--the
snipped threads on the grass, the yet unpicked bastings, white against
the peach-pink facing; but he was a mere man, hardly-circumstanced, and
these eloquent tidings were wasted upon his clumsy intellect: as had
been the surprising good fortune of finding Miss Ellinor exactly where
she was.
Nerving himself with memory of the Quaker Lady at the masquerade--if,
indeed, that had ever really happened--Jeff took the offered seat.
The young lady matched two edges together, smoothed them, eyed the
result critically, and plied a nimble needle. Then she turned clear and
guileless eyes on her glooming seatmate.
"You look older, somehow, than I thought you were, now that I
remember," she observed, biting the thread. "You've been away, haven't
you?"
"Thought you were going away, yourself, so wild and fierce?" said Jeff,
evading.--_Been away, indeed!_
Ellinor threaded her needle.
"Mamma _was_ talking of going for a while," she said tranquilly. "But
I'm rather glad we didn't. We're having a splendid time here--and Mr.
White's going to take us to the White Sands next week. He'll be down
to-morrow--at least I think so. He's fine! He took us to Mescalero
early in the spring. And the young people here at Rainbow's End are
simply delightful. You must meet some of them. Listen! There they
are now--I hear them. They _are_ playing tennis. Come on up and I'll
introduce you. I can finish this thing any time." She tossed the poor
kimono into the basket.
"No," said this unhappy young man, rising. "I believe I'll go on back.
Good-by, Miss Ell--Miss Hoffman. I wish you much happiness!"
"Why--surely you're not going now? There are some nice girls here--they
have heard so much of you, but they say they've never met you. Don't
you want----"
Jeff groaned, fumbling blindly at the bridle. "No, I wish I'd never
seen a girl!"
"Why-y! That's not very polite, is it?----Are--are you--mad to me?"
said Ellinor in a meek little voice.
"Mad? No," said Jeff bitterly. "I'm just coming to my senses. I've been
dreaming. Now I've woke up!"
"Angry, I mean, of course. I just say it that way--'are you mad to
me'--sometimes--to be--to be--nice, Mr. Bransford!"
"You needn't bother! Good-by!"
"But I'll see you again----"
"_Never!_"
"----when you're not so--cross?"
Jeff reached for his stirrup.
"Oh, well! If you're going to be huffy!. Never it is, then, by all
means! No--wait! I must give you back your present."
"I have never given you a present. Some other man, doubtless. You
should keep a list!" said Jeff, with bitter and cutting scorn.
The girl turned half away from him and hid her face with trembling
hands; her shoulders shook with emotion.
"Look the other way, sir! Turn your head! You shall have your present
back and then if you're so anxious to go--Go!"
"Miss Hoffman, I never gave you a present in my life," Jeff protested.
"You did!" sobbed Ellinor. She turned upon him, stamping her foot. "You
said, when you gave it to me, that you hoped it would bring me good
luck. And you've forgotten! _You'd_ better keep a list! Turn your head
away, I tell you!" She sank down on the bench.
Confused, mazed, bewildered, Jeff obeyed her.
She sprang to her feet. She was laughing, blushing, glowing. In her
hand was the little gold chain.
"Now, you may look. Hold out your hand, sir!"
Jeff's mind was whirling; he held out his hand. She laid a little gold
locket in his palm. It was warm, that little locket.
"I have never seen this locket before in my life!" gasped Jeff.
"Open it!"
He opened it. The little eohippus glared up at him.
"Ellinor!--_Charley Gibson!_"
"Tobe! Jeff!--_Jamie!_"
The little eohippus stared unwinking from the grass.
THE BEGINNING
* * * * *
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
GOOD MEN AND TRUE
_Illustrated._
The story of a brave and humorous American of to-day in deadly peril on
our Texan frontier.
"Ingeniously constructed, so clever, so full of genuine
humor."--_New York Tribune._
"As genuine a comedy of bloodshed as the literature of American
manners can furnish."--_Living Age._
"Very near to being a model of what such a story should be. About
as good as it could be made."--_Springfield Republican._
"Abounds in real humor and has a touch that is unmistakably
Stevensonian."--_Philadelphia Press._
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK