PENLOE.
One afternoon Mrs. Herne received a caller. It was Mrs. Cullom. She had
met Mrs. Herne twice at parties and promised to call on her each time,
but for various reasons she had not been able to fulfil her promise.
After the usual introductory talk, Mrs. Cullom said:
"Did you ever see Penloe or his mother, Mrs. Lanair?"
"No," said Mrs. Herne, "who are they?"
Mrs. Cullom replied: "They live up about a mile above where I do. It's
rather lonesome where I live, but it is a very lonesome place where they
live. It is not a good road over there. I don't suppose you were ever on
that road were you?"
"No," said Mrs. Herne, "I have never been over there. Charles said it
was out of the way and a poor road, being muddy in winter and very dusty
in summer."
"Well," said Mrs. Cullom, "Mrs. Lenair has been on that place about two
years. She seems pleasant, but so different from most women. The second
time I called on her, I got there about two o'clock, and I thought I
would have a nice afternoon chat. So I began talking to her about my
work, and telling her how I worked my butter, and talking to her about
my cooking, and I tried to get her to talk, but she would only say a few
words about such things. About five minutes was as long as I could get
her to talk about her butter and cooking. Why, some women would talk by
the hour on such subjects. Now, she did not appear stuck up or proud,
she seemed so pleasant, her face being very bright and pleasing; and
there seemed to be such a feeling of restfulness about her that I liked
to be with her; but she seems to have so little to say about matters we
are all so much interested in. I could not get her to talk about
herself, so I asked about Penloe, if he was at home. She said, yes, he
had returned from San Francisco last week; that he had been away three
months. That surprised me, Mrs. Herne, because I did not think they were
people who had money to spend in visiting and seeing the sights of a
great city. Why, look at their place, it is not much; she sold the fruit
on the trees for two hundred dollars, and outside of the orchard they
have only pasture enough for four head of stock. Their house has four
rooms, the kitchen is the only room I have been in, but it is kept very
neat. I said to her: 'Does Penloe have much business in San Francisco?'
She smiled and said he had business as long as he washed dishes in a
restaurant. That just took my breath away, for to see Penloe you would
think he would be the last man in the world to do work like that. I
cannot tell you how he looks, but he looks so different from the young
men about here; nothing like them at all. He has a face that I like, but
I don't know him enough to say much to him.
"Well, after they had been on that place about eighteen months or so, I
said to Dan one morning after breakfast, that I did not feel like going
out to-day, but I wanted some one here to talk to, and I wished him to
hitch up Puss and Bess and go right up and get Mrs. Lenair to come down
and spend the day with me, and to tell her that when she wished to go
home I would take her back. 'Now, if you don't get a move on you, Dan,'
I said, 'you will come home and find a cold stove and no dinner and your
cook gone.' Dan moved round like a cat on hot bricks. That kind of talk
fetches men to time. I did not have to cook much for dinner because the
day before was Dan's birthday. Dan had killed a veal two days previous
and I made two kinds of rich cake, two kinds of pies, and some cream
puffs. They were very rich. Dan is fond of high living, and he ate very
heartily of it all. I laughed at him, and said I never saw a man that
liked to dig his grave with his teeth so well as he did. So you see I
could get up a good dinner for Mrs. Lenair without having to cook much.
It was not long after Dan left before Mrs. Lenair was with me. Well,
after she had taken off her things and we chatted awhile, I thought I
would tell her the news, as she never goes out anywhere. So I said: 'Did
you hear what a hard time Mrs. Dunn had in confinement? The doctor
thought he would have to take the child with instruments;' but Mrs.
Lenair kept looking out of the window, and all she said was, 'Is that
so?' So I said: 'I suppose you have heard about Mrs. Warmstey's case.
She had a doctor from Orangeville and two from Roseland.' Just as I said
that, she rose from her chair and said so sweetly: 'Mrs. Cullom, I do
want to go out and look at your flowers; they look beautiful from the
window.'
"Well, I was clean took off my feet, because I was just beginning to
tell the most interesting part of Mrs. Warmstey's case. I said: 'Why,
yes, Mrs. Lenair,' and I went out with her. She began to be so chatty I
thought she was some one else for awhile. She appeared delighted with my
flowers, and called them such crack-jaw names, and told me all about
their families, and what relation they were to each other. Why, to hear
her talk, you would think flowers had babies, she went on so about male
and female plants. Then she told me that flowers breathed, and told me
all about their coloring, and how they attracted the bee and dusted
themselves on him, and much more I cannot remember. She talked to and
petted them as if they were alive. You would have thought she had been a
flower herself, the way she went on. She said something about the
pencilings and colorings of the Almighty being in the tulips.
"When we returned to the house my back was feeling kind of lame, and
gave me one or two of those twister pains. I said: 'Oh, my back! It has
got one of its spells on.' Mrs. Lenair said it would soon go away, and,
to my surprise, it did. Only had it about half an hour, and generally
those spells last me all day. I said: 'Mrs. Lenair, do you have any
ailments? I never hear you complain, if you do.' She said she had not
an ache nor pain in her body for a number of years. I threw my hands up
in astonishment, and said: 'You don't say so?' 'That is the truth,' she
said. And I believe her, for she looks ten years younger than she really
is. 'Why,' I said, 'how different you are from the girls and women
around here. Most all the girls not married are ailing more or less, and
about every married woman has her aches and pains. I can't make you
out.'
"Mrs. Lenair laughed, and said: 'If I were like other women I should be
ailing as they are.' Well, I got up just as good a dinner as I knew how.
I put on the table fried ham and eggs, baked veal, potatoes, peas,
canned tomatoes, red currant jelly, fig preserve, canned nectarines,
cream puffs, grape pie, lemon pie, plain cake, and frosted cake; and we
had coffee, chocolate, and milk to drink. I did want her to make out a
good meal, because I thought she never cooked much at home. Well, what
do you think? I could not get her to eat any meat. 'Why,' I said, 'I
would starve if I did not have meat two or three times a day with my
meals.' She said she had not eaten meat for seventeen years, and was
much better without it. She just ate a little potatoes, one egg, some
nectarines, bread and butter, and drank a little milk. I told her she
must try my cream puffs if she would not eat any cake or pie. At last I
did get her to eat a cream puff. That woman don't eat much more than
would keep a mouse alive, and yet she is so hearty and well. I told her
as she ate so little, Dan and I would have to make up for her. And we
did, for we ate as if it were a Thanksgiving dinner. Dan and I say it is
our religion not to die in debt to our stomachs. After dinner I felt
more like sleep than anything else, and I said, 'Mrs. Lenair, let you
and me take a nap.' That seemed to please her, so she laid down on the
lounge and I went and laid on my bed. About an hour later I returned to
the room where I had left Mrs. Lenair.
"'Well,' I said, 'I have just had the boss sleep and feel so much
better. I hope you had a good nap.'
"Mrs. Lenair said, 'I have had a pleasant time lying here, though I did
not sleep any.'
"'Why,' I said, 'I could not lie that way. If I was not sleeping I would
be nervous, and want to be sitting up or moving about.'
"Then I said to her: 'I should think you must get terribly lonesome up
at your place, your son having been away so much, and you all alone with
no one to talk to.'
"She said: 'I haven't known what it was to be lonesome since I have
lived on the place.'
"'Why,' I said, 'I would not live like you do for ten dollars a day.'
She smiled, and said, 'You could not.'
"'I don't see how you can stand it,' I said, 'for it is all I can do to
keep from being lonesome here with Dan, and a team to take me anywhere.
I have more callers in a week than you have in a year. I am fond of
company and so is Dan.'
"Mrs. Lenair said: 'All you have just said, Mrs. Cullom, shows your
life, your world; we all have different worlds,' she added.
"I could hardly understand just what she meant, so I changed the subject
and thought I would talk to her about Penloe.
"'Is he home now,' I asked.
"She said, 'Yes,' he had got through his work and would be at home most
of the time.
"I said: 'Did he ever do any of the kind of work he has been doing at
the different places he worked at before he came to Orangeville? For he
don't look to me,' I said, 'as if he had worked on a ranch or done road
work much.'
"She said, 'He never had done hard work till we came to Orangeville,
having only returned to this country from India about a month before
coming here, and when we were in India, Penloe went to the University of
Calcutta as soon as he was ready to enter as a student. I lived in that
city nineteen years.'
"'Why, have you lived in India,' I said.
"Yes,' she answered. 'I left New York a year after I was married. My
husband represented a New York company in India. He died six years ago,
but we continued to reside there until Penloe finished his University
course.'
"I was clean taken back by what she said. I said, 'It's none of my
business, Mrs. Lenair, but I don't see why a fine looking young man like
Penloe, with the education you say he has had, don't get light, pleasant
work, if he has to work out, instead of working at such hard places with
the toughest crowds of men.'
"All she said was: 'That is his work.'
"Why, Mrs. Herne, do you know that he worked on the streets of the city
of Chicago, and for three months with a gang of a thousand men on the
Coast Railroad between Los Angeles and San Francisco! Then he was at the
Oakdale cattle ranch, cowboying it, with that fast gang of boys that
they keep there. Then he worked for awhile at the Simmons ranch, which
is four miles from Roseland, and Simmons always keeps the hardest crew
of men on his place. They go to Roseland every other night or so and
dance at those low dancing-houses with bad women. They get drunk, fight,
and swear all the time. Simmons' ranch has got the name of being the
toughest place to work anywhere round here.
"One day when Dan was in Roseland, he saw a man he knew from the Simmons
ranch, so he thought he would hear what the fellow had to say about
Penloe, as we both are curious to find out all we can about that
singular young man.
"Dan said: 'Is Penloe working on the Simmons ranch?'
"The man said: 'Yes.'
"Dan said: 'How does he get along?'
"'Get along!' the man said. 'All I have to say is I wish I could get
along as well.'
"Dan said: 'What kind of a chap is he, anyway? I kind of want to know,
as he is a neighbor of mine.'
"'Well,' the man said, 'I will tell you, and then you can judge for
yourself. I never heard him swear or knew of his telling a lie; he don't
drink or tell smutty yarns, or have anything to do with bad women. The
boss says he works well, and when he is not at work he never joins the
boys in their foolish talk. He is by himself a great deal, praying, I
reckon, but he is very sociable if any one will talk sense. Let me tell
you what he did which will show you what kind of a man he is. One cold,
chilly night in December, when we were all sleeping in the barn, each
man having his own blankets, the boys had just turned in when a tramp
came in and asked if he could sleep in the barn. One of the boys said,
'Yes.' The fellow lay down on the hay without any blankets, and as soon
as he was laid down his teeth began to chatter and he shook all over,
for he had a chill. Penloe instantly got up and lit a lantern, took his
blankets over to the tramp and said: 'Here, brother, you have got a
chill. Take my blankets and roll yourself up in them; you will be better
in the morning.' From where I lay I could just see the tramp's face, for
Penloe was holding the lantern so the light went on his face. The fellow
looked up at Penloe thunderstruck. I guess he never had a man speak to
him that way before. He said: 'Well, stranger, you are mighty kind.' So
Penloe helped him to roll the blankets round him, and then he went and
lay down on the hay himself without any covering. The boys did a heap of
thinking that night, but said nothing. The next morning Penloe asked the
tramp how he was, and he said he slept pretty well, but he looked real
miserable, as though he had not had a good square meal for a month and
was weak from chills. Penloe said to the tramp: 'You stay here till I
come back,' and he went to see the boss and told him there was a sick
tramp in the barn, and would he let him stay there and eat at the same
table with us till he got well and strong, and that the boss should take
the tramp's board out of his wages. The boss asked a few questions,
studied awhile, then said, all right, he didn't care. Penloe went back
to the tramp and told him he had seen the boss and he could stay there
till he got well and strong, and to eat his meals with them and it would
not cost him a cent. Tears came in the tramp's eyes, and he tried to
say, 'Thank you, stranger.'
"During the day one of the men told the boss what Penloe had done last
night; about giving his blankets up to a tramp and laying all night
himself without any covering. After supper the boss called Penloe and
told him there was a bed for him in the house, and he wanted him to
sleep in it as long as the tramp was here, and as for the tramp, he
would let the fellow stay here and board till he got a job in the
neighborhood. He would not charge a cent for his board to Penloe. He
himself had no work for the tramp.
"When the boys heard what Simmons said and did in regard to the tramp
and Penloe, one of them said he was more taken back than if he had seen
the devil come out of hell.
"'For you know, Dan,' the man said, 'Old Simmons is a hard nut and as
close-fisted as he can be. Some of the boys think now he has got the
Penloe fever. I think he got a straight look into Penloe's eyes and saw
and felt something he never had seen and felt before. Penloe is a power
when you know him.
"The tramp stayed three days and got well. We thought it would be a
month before he would be well enough to go to work, but it is that
Penloe's doings, I know. He must have some power for healing like they
say Christ had. Penloe is never sick. Heat or cold, dry or wet, seem
just the same to him.
"'The boss got the tramp a job at Kent's ranch. When he left he gave
Penloe his hand, seemed to tremble a moment, tried to speak, but walked
away without uttering a word. Penloe told the boss that the way the
tramp bid him good-bye and thanked him was eloquently touching and
powerful. The boss is very much changed; he is not so close and hard,
and you now see a few smiles on his wife's face, where before you only
saw lines of sadness; and the children, instead of being scared, as they
used to be when they heard his footsteps coming, now run to meet him and
hang around him.
"'Simmons says Penloe was the making of him and family. Simmons has a
high-priced fancy mare that the boys always have said he thought more of
than he did of his family, and no one ever drove her but himself. He
would not loan her out to any one for a day for fifty dollars, yet now
the boys say 'he would let Penloe have the mare to go to hell and back.'
"'Some of the boys also seem to have caught the fever, and it has made a
great change in their lives. Penloe will leave the Simmons ranch soon,
but his influence is there to stay. The man said, 'If you have any more
men like Penloe in Orangeville, send them down this way, for these God
forsaken ranches need men like him!'
"Dan says Penloe is like his mother in regard to tramps. Why, that woman
was all alone, and a tramp called at her house to get a job of work. He
said work was scarce and he had no money and needed some food; that he
was hungry. He told Dan some time afterwards that before she replied she
gave him a close look all over. He said her eye seemed to penetrate him,
and after scrutinizing him very closely, she said: 'Come in, friend, you
can stay here till you can find work.' She set before him plenty of
good, hearty food, put a napkin to his plate, and talked to him
interestingly about matters which seemed to make him feel that he was a
better man. What do you think Mrs. Lenair had him do, Mrs. Herne? Why,
he was shown into the bathroom, and given one of Penloe's night-gowns,
and after he had taken his bath she had him sleep in her spare bedroom.
'Why,' I said to Mrs. Lenair, 'how could you do such a thing? I would no
more have done it than I would have slept in a room with a rattlesnake.'
"She said, 'Mrs. Cullom, that man is my brother, and I treated him as
such, and that thought was so impressed on his mind that it touched his
better nature, and he could only think of me with the best and purest of
feelings. I know that it was impossible for that man to hurt me. I fear
no human being in this world.' The tramp stayed at her house for five
days, and at the end of that time he got a chance at harvesting on the
Thornton ranch. When he came to take leave of Mrs. Lenair, she said to
him: 'You have put in five good full days' work, and here is five
dollars for you'--handing him a five-dollar gold piece. He said: 'You
did not hire me to work, and for what little I have done you have paid
me a thousand times more than it is worth, in your conduct towards me.
You took me, a poor, miserable, worthless, homeless tramp into your
home, as if I had been your own brother, and you acted the true sister
towards me. Now I wish to play the brother's part by giving you my work.
It is the only thing I can do to show you how I appreciate your sisterly
kindness toward me. I can earn all the money I need now at the Thornton
ranch. I shall never forget you, because you are the only woman I ever
met that received me and treated me as a sister would her brother; and
if you ever need any work done on your place, and you have not the money
to pay for its being done, remember I am your brother, and will do it
gladly; more so than if you paid me two dollars a day.' She thanked him
and said he had better take the five dollars, and laid it down on the
table for him to take. He said he never would take it, and left it
there. His last words to her were, 'I am going to be a new man.'
"Dan was on an errand to her place while the tramp was there. He saw him
working in the orchard as if he was trying to do two days' work in one.
Dan said he couldn't hire a man to work as he was working.
"I was rather amused at Dan," continued Mrs. Cullom. "When I returned
from having taken Mrs. Lenair home in the evening (on the day that I
told you that Dan went and brought her in the morning to spend the day),
Dan came and took the team. 'Caroline,' he said, 'if you send me after
Mrs. Lenair many times more I shall be falling in love with her, for I
think she is real good, as well as being smart and bright.' 'What! Dan
Cullom,' I said. 'She wouldn't have an awful talking man like you, even
if you had a diamond on the end of every hair on your head.'"
When Mrs. Cullom was about to leave, Mrs. Herne said: "I have enjoyed
your visit so much, Mrs. Cullom. You have got me interested in Penloe
and his mother. I do so want to see them."
That evening Mrs. Herne related part of Mrs. Cullom's conversation to
her husband and asked him if he knew Penloe or his mother.
"Penloe I have seen a few times, but his mother I have never seen,"
replied he.
"What kind of a man is he?" asked his wife.
"Well," said Charles, "I hardly know him. He is certainly a remarkable
appearing young man. He is so different in his looks and expression from
any man I have ever met or seen; so different from the kind that I have
always associated with, that I could be no judge of such a man any more
than I could be a judge of millinery or silks and satins, for I have had
just about as much to do with one as I have with the other."
"Well," said his wife, "I want you to arrange in some way so we can meet
them, for I am all worked up over them after what Mrs. Cullom has told
me, and am very curious to see them."
"Something will happen in some way, so that we will meet them," he
replied.