Jack sounded Mr. Gore's praises loudly in Mariquita's ears, and she
heard them gladly. She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and it was
always pleasant to her to hear them commended.
Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, bidding his daughter note
how Miss Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of her sweetheart.
"Miss Mariquita has not got even a sweetheart," Ginger declared, "and
maybe never will. It isn't the way of her. She was just as proud when
you said a good word for Ben Sturt."
"Ben Sturt! What's _he_ to the young mistress?"
"Just nothing at all--not in that way. Nor yet Mr. Gore isn't. And the
more's the pity. But she's good-hearted. She likes to hear good of
folk--as much as some likes to hear ill of anybody, no matter who."
Jack was a little discouraged--but not effectually.
Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. Why should Miss Mariquita be
thinking of him unless he "let on" how much he was thinking of her?
"Did you ever lie under an apple-tree when the blossom was on it?" he
asked Gore one day.
"I daresay I have."
"And expected to have your mouth full of apples when there was only
blossom on it?"
Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly old face that Gore could
discern the allegorical intent. He was very amused.
"There'd never be much _chance_ of apples," he said carelessly, "if the
tree was shaken till the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more blossom
than the frost does."
Jack was not the only one who thought Gore slow in his wooing; the
cowboys thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, find any fault
with him for his slowness. In general they would have been more critical
of rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had learned to like him
cordially, and wished him success, but Ben was of opinion that more
haste would have been worse speed. He thought that Gore deserved
Mariquita if anyone could, but was sure that even Gore would have to
wait long and be very patient and careful. To Ben Mariquita seemed
almost like one belonging to another world, certainly living on a plane
above his comprehension, where ordinary love-making would be, somehow,
unfitting and hopeless. It had always met with her father's cool
approbation that Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young men about
the place. But she was not wanting in interest for them. They were her
neighbors, and she, who had so much interest for all her little dumb
neighbors of the prairie, had a much higher interest in these bigger,
but not much less dumb, neighbors of the homestead. They were more than
a mere group to her. Each individual in the group was, she knew, as dear
to God as herself, had been created by God for the same purpose as
herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon the Cross had been in as
bitter labor as for the soul of any one of the saints. She was the last
creature on earth to regard as of mere casual interest to herself those
in whom God's interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing.
Perhaps they were rough; it might be that of the great things of which
Mariquita herself thought so habitually, they thought little and seldom:
but she did not think them bad. She thought more of them than they
guessed, and liked them better than they imagined. She would have wished
to serve and help them, and was not indolent, but humble concerning
herself, and shy. She worked for them, more perhaps than her father
thought necessary; in that way she could serve them. But she could not
preach to them, nor exhort them. She would have shrunk instinctively,
not from the danger of ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule
might fall on religion itself, and not merely on her. She would have
dreaded the risk of misrepresenting religion to them, of giving them
ideas of God such as would repel them from Him. She knew that speech was
not easy to her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers; she did not
believe herself to have any readiness of expressing what she felt and
knew, and did not credit herself with great knowledge. She did not
really put them down as being entirely ignorant of what she did know.
The idea of a woman's preaching would have shocked Mariquita, to her it
would have seemed "out of place." She was a humble girl, with a
diffidence not universal among those who are themselves trying to serve
God, some of whom are apt to be slow at understanding that others may be
as near Him as themselves, though behaving differently, and holding a
different fashion of speech.
God who had made them must know more about them, she felt, than she
could. She did not think she understood them very well, but God had made
the men and knew them as well as He knew the women. She was, with all
her ignorance and her limited opportunities of observation and
understanding, able to see much goodness among these neighbors of hers;
He must be able to see much more.
In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They
understood that in her was something higher than their understanding;
that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as
the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have
shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its
selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine
prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps
unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself.
They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware
that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out
of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish
shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior
in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in
her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have
begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her
approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them,
God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption
in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of
them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath,
happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself
and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more
than they understood.
The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would
sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those
tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they
are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and
realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would
note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts--that each tiny spray
was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve,
gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the
prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and
smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked,
and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the
unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature,
and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing
for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their
waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated
Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the
little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message,
Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.
Her rough neighbors saw her near them and (perhaps without knowing that
they knew it) knew that that which made her rare and exquisite was of
Divine origin. She never hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she
spoke to any of them they could listen without dread of some shrewdly
folded rebuke. Yet they could not get away from the fact that she was
herself a perpetual reminder of noble purpose.