It was true that the actual intercourse between Mariquita and her
father's apprentice or pupil was much less frequent or close than might
be imagined by anyone strange to the way of life of which they formed
two units.
At meals they sat at the same table, but during the greater part of
every day he was out upon the range, and she at home, within the
homestead, or near it. Yet it was also true that between them there was
something not existing between either and any other person: a friendship
mostly silent, an interest not the less real or strong because of the
silence. To Gore she was a study, of profounder interest than any book
he knew. To make a counter-study of him would have been alien from
Mariquita's nature and character; but his presence, which she did not
ponder, or consider, as he did hers, brought something into her life.
Perhaps it chiefly made her less lonely by revealing to her how lonely
she had been. Of his beauty she never thought--never till the end. Of
hers he thought much less as he became more and more absorbed in
herself--though its fineness was always more and more clearly perceived
by him.
On that first afternoon, when he had first seen her, it had instantly
struck him as possessing a quality of rarity, elusive and never to be
defined. Miss Jackson's almost gorgeous prettiness, her brilliant
coloring, her attractive shapeliness, had been hopelessly and finally
vulgarized by the contrast--as the two young women stood on the level
lip of the river-course in the unsparing, unflattering light.
That Miss Jackson promptly decided that Mariquita was stupid, he had
seen plainly; and he had not had the consolation of knowing that she was
stupid herself. She was, he knew, wise enough in her generation, and by
no means vacant of will or purpose. But she was, he saw, stupid in
thinking her young hostess so. Slow, in some senses, Mariquita might be;
not swift of impression, though tenacious of impression received, nor
willing to be quick in jumping to shrewd (unflattering) conclusion, yet
likely to stick hard to an even harsh conclusion once formed.
These, however, were slight matters. What was not slight was the sense
she gave him of nobility: her simplicity itself noble, her complete
acquiescence in her own complete ignorance of experience--her innate,
unargued conviction of the little consequence of much, often highly
desired, experience.
Of the world she knew nothing, socially, geographically even. Of women
her knowledge was (as soon he discovered) a mere memory, a memory of a
group of nuns--for her other companions at the Convent had been
children. Of men she knew only her father and his cowboys. And no one,
he perceived, knew her.
But Gore did not believe her mind vacant. That rare quality could not
have been in her beauty if it had been empty. Yet--there was something
greater than her mind behind her face. The shape of that perception had
entered instantly into his own mind; and the perception grew and
deepened daily, with every time he was in her presence, with every
recollection of her in absence.
Her mind might be a garden unsown. But behind her face was the light of
a lamp not waiting to be lit, but already lighted (he surmised) at the
first coming of conscious existence, and burning steadily ever since.
Whose hand had lighted it he did not know yet, though he knew that the
lamp, shining behind her face, her mere beauty, was her soul. Her father
was not mistaken in his notion that the young man regarded the girl to
whom he addressed so little of direct speech, with a veneration that
disconcerted Don Joaquin and was condemned by him as out of place. Not
that he, of course, found fault with _respect_: absence of that he would
grimly have resented; but a _culte_, like Gore's, a reverence literally
devout, seemed to the old half-Indian Latin, high-falutin, unreal: and
Don Joaquin abhorred unrealities.
Probably the young man condemned the old as hide-bound in obtuseness of
perception in reference to his daughter. As a jewel of gold in a swine's
snout she may well have seemed to him. If so, some inkling of the fact
would surely penetrate the old horse-raiser's inner, taciturn, but
acutely watchful consciousness. His hide was by no means too thick for
that. And, if so again, that perception would not enhance his
appreciation of the critic.
Elderly fathers are not universally more flattered by an exalted
valuation of their daughters than by an admiring estimation of
themselves.
To himself, indeed, Gore was perfectly respectful. And he had to admit
that the stranger learned his work well and did it well--better than the
cowboys whom Don Joaquin was not given to indulge in neglect or
slackness.
He had a notion that the cowboys considered Gore too respectable--as to
which their master held his judgment in suspense. In a possible
son-in-law respectability, unless quite suspiciously excessive, would
not be much "out of place"--not that Don Joaquin admitted more than the
bare possibility, till he had fuller certainty as to the stranger's
circumstances and antecedents, what he called his "conditions." Given
satisfactory conditions, Mariquita's father began to be conscious that
Gore as a possible son-in-law might simplify a certain course of his
own.
For Sarella continued steadily to commend herself to his ideas. He held
her to be beautiful in the extreme, and her prudence he secretly
acclaimed as admirable. That she was penniless he was quite aware, and
he had a constant, sincere affection for money; but, unless penniless,
such a lovely creature could hardly have been found on the prairie, or
be expected to remain there; an elderly rich husband, he considered,
would have much more hold on a young and lovely wife if she _were_
penniless.
That the young woman had expensive tastes he did not suppose, and he had
great and not ungrounded confidence in his own power of repression of
any taste not to his mind, should any supervene.
Don Joaquin had two reasons for surveying with conditional approval the
idea of marrying Sarella--when he should have made up his mind, which he
had not yet done. One was to please himself: the other was in order that
he might have a son. Mariquita's sex had always been against her. Before
her arrival he had decided that his child must be a boy, and her being a
girl was out of place. He disliked making money for some other man's
wife.