THE RETURN
It was strange to Hilda to be going home to Lame Jones County by
railroad. Not once before, since that journey from New York that
brought the Van Brunts to Texas, had she traveled on a train. The
thought flitted vaguely through her mind—why she’d hardly know how
to act—what to do.
But, once settled in the car, sunk in her own thoughts, she found
that the people in the other seats or passing in the aisles were
almost like shadows. Even the Marchbankses out there at the ranch,
in that queer breakfast at dawn, Mrs. Marchbanks and Maybelle
stealing down for it in wrappers, sitting with her under the
colonel’s watchful eye, hadn’t been real people. They all swung in a
sort of dream. Mrs. Marchbanks’s little signals to her when the man
at the end of the table wasn’t looking—that trying to get in a word
alone with her before the final good-by. What did it matter?
Maybelle’s anxious, apologetic whisper that she’d tried to find out
what Pa said in his telegram—guessed it was just a notification to
the folks at the Sorrows of Hilda’s unexpected return—got little
attention. Fayte wasn’t at the table. Probably he hadn’t come back
from Juan Chico.
But, when they’d driven the miles in to the station, the colonel
hardly speaking a word to her on the way, they didn’t see anything
of Fayte there, either—and Hilda felt sure that the colonel was both
disappointed and angry at that. He was angrier still when she openly
posted with her own hand the note she had written to Pearse. Then
they were checking her trunk; the colonel was having it brought
close to the track where it could be loaded as soon as the train
pulled in. Some one came hastily around the corner of the building,
speaking to her as Miss Van Brunt, lifting his hat—the marshmallow
man—the man who had stolen the ride with Maybelle on the way to the
dance—the person Maybelle called Gene. In the morning light he
looked more hard and objectionable even than she’d thought. His air
was furtive. She moved back a step; he followed up, saying
hurriedly:
“I didn’t mean to be rough last night when you butted in on my game.
Of course I took you for Maybelle. How about her? She send me any
word? Have her folks found out anything? What’s my chance to see her
now?”
“What—what’s all this?” Marchbanks pounced on them from around the
pile of baggage—he had heard every word. “Stop—wait, Hilda!”
The train roared in; her trunk—the only one to go—was hustled
aboard.
“Hold on!” But she went past him. It was the conductor who helped
her up the step, while he shouted “All aboard!” As the train moved
out, she looked back to see the two men confronted. The wheels
gathered speed. Soon the station was a toy house, those two she’d
left beside the track just little vibrating dots—and finally they
were out of sight.
Thump-thump of the wheels—the swift-flying landscape outside of the
windows.... Time—place—were things that wavered, dissolved. She was
again the little girl Hilda of nearly twelve years ago, on that
journey from New York to Texas; her mother lying ill in a berth the
porter had made up; all the people trying to be kind to them, but
the Masterses seeming like own folks; Pearse’s mother sitting
beside her mother, fanning the sufferer’s pale face, and her
Boy-On-The-Train making himself a little girl’s hero. With this came
more sense of reality than anything about her held. She could see it
and feel it more vividly than she saw the conductor when he came
through for her ticket now, or these other people about her in the
seats of this other train.
Through the long day’s journey, the stopping and starting, the
getting on and getting off of passengers at stations, Hilda lived
over and over the few short days that Pearse Masters—in the
flesh—had occupied in her life; the many long hours that he had been
with her mentally. Why he’d always been there. He was one of the
fundamental facts of existence—like Uncle Hank.
He had asked her to stay in Encinal County so he could see her—once
again, anyway. She’d failed him. She hadn’t stayed. Well—but—she’d
told him in that note why she couldn’t stay. And she fairly begged
him to come right over to the Three Sorrows as quick as he could.
Would he do it? And if he did.... How would it be when he came?
At the lowest of her depression she had a sick, cold clammy feeling
that what she’d done—hiding Pearse in the cyclone cellar, and never
telling Uncle Hank all these years; keeping him out of sight when
she met him that night at the camp-fire, and again when she saw him
on the trail the day the rustlers were at the ranch; not admitting
to Uncle Hank when he talked to her on the door-stone that there was
such a person as Pearse in Encinal County, and that his presence was
the greater part of the reason for her wanting to go to the
Alamositas to school—sometimes all this arrayed itself against her
and seemed unforgivable. Then she’d excuse herself—and Pearse—by
remembering how long ago most of it was. He was different now. She
was different. Yet it was a very pale, spent Hilda who saw, for the
first time, the roof-lines of the little new station out on the
western edge of the Three Sorrows, who got up and followed with
dragging step when a porter jerked her valises together and started
out with them.
Uncle Hank was there to meet her with the buckboard. Well, it was a
relief to have him to face—first. Uncle Hank was going to be the
hardest part of it. She could deceive the others, if necessary; but
she knew those kind blue eyes would look right through her.
And that’s just what they seemed to do as he swung her down from the
steps, searched her face gravely and said in a sort of subdued tone:
“My, it’s a weight off my mind to have you here, all right, Pettie!”
Then after another anxious survey of her pale cheeks, the lips that
she couldn’t keep from quivering, the eyes that were only bright
because of unshed tears, he finished on a falling note, “I got Lee
Marchbanks’s telegraft about noon.”
The trunk had been thrown off. The train thundered away. Now Burch
rode in from the trail, swung down from his pony, and came across to
give her the usual funny, bumping kind of Burch kiss and ask in
blunt boy fashion as he picked up the valises:
“What started you home all in a hurry before the term was over,
Hilda? Not sick, are you?”
She glanced sidewise at Uncle Hank, who was bringing her trunk to
lash on the back of the buckboard, and got a little shake of the
head, which showed that he alone had whatever disquieting
information there was in that telegram of Colonel Marchbanks’s.
“S’pose we leave sister tell us why she come home when she’s ready
to say, Bud,” he suggested. “Reckon we’re glad to see her—whatever’s
the reason. When folks get back ’tain’t polite, right at the first
go-off, to ask too many questions, or so I was fetched up to
believe.”
“All right, Uncle Hank.” Burch, piling valises into the buckboard,
grinned across at the old man strapping on the trunk. “Of course
you’d stick up for Hilda, whatever she did. You always do. All I’ve
got to say is that it takes something more than a quitter to get
ready for college. Bet I beat her yet.”
“I guess you will, Buddie.” Hilda’s foot was on the step. “I never
said I was going to college, anyhow. Uncle Hank and I are going to
be partners and run the ranch; you know that.”
Burch stared up at her, absently chucking a bag to see if it was
firm.
“Aw, that was the talk when we had to save money. We don’t, now.
Hilda,” with a sharper look at her, “I believe you are sick. You
look like it, anyhow.”
“Ride on ahead, son,” Hank said gently. “Tell Auntie we met the
girl, and it’s all right. You and her can talk out this college
business when we get home. This child has had a hard trip. No wonder
she looks sorta peaked; traveling on the railroad is mean work, if
you ask me.”
“But it’s lovely to have our own station, right here on our own
land,” Hilda put in nervously. “It’s ever so exciting.”
“Ye-es,” drawled Burch, grinning again as he heaved himself into the
saddle and held his pony for a moment close beside them. “I noticed
how excited you were when you first came—just like some one walking
in their sleep.” He loosened the rein and galloped ahead.
There was a trying moment just after he was gone. Uncle Hank
wouldn’t demand anything of her—he never did. That was what made it
so hard. She must begin. She couldn’t begin. As though he felt her
trouble, he said in a low tone,
“I wasn’t aiming to ask any questions, Pettie.” The hurt in his
voice pierced her. “I can wait for you to say your say.”
“Oh, can you, Uncle Hank?” Her voice was husky. “Would you do that?
I think—or anyhow I hope—that he’ll be over here at the Three
Sorrows—well—soon. If you could wait until then—”
“I’ll wait.” The old man’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, on the
empty plain. “That telegraft of Lee Marchbanks’s sorta made me think
there might be a young man coming over here to see me pretty soon.”
“Did it? Did they say it was—Pearse Masters?”
Hank glanced up at her with a brief nod.
“That’s the name,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll show it to you,” and
he began searching through his pockets. “Long as it wasn’t that
feller Fayte Marchbanks,” he muttered half to himself, “I felt I had
something left to be thankful for. What’s that name again, Pettie?
Masters?”
“Pearse Masters.” Hilda, studying his face, saw that apparently he
had never heard the name before. It meant nothing to him. But Pearse
knew Uncle Hank by name; seemed to have known him—or known of him—a
long time. Oh, why couldn’t she have had a chance to be told about
that before she came home! The telegram was being smoothed out on
her knee. She glanced down at it.
“Your ward, Hilda Van Brunt, made attempt to elope from
my house with man named Masters. Am sending her home on
this morning’s train. Marchbanks.”
She sat staring at it dumbly. Of course that was what the colonel
would have said. But she could tell Uncle Hank the truth about that.
She could tell him the whole thing. And he would believe her. As she
began to speak, some one behind them called out,
“Hi, Pearsall!”
Looking around, they saw the agent standing in the station door
waving a paper. Uncle Hank turned, almost with an air of relief,
went back and got it. Hilda watched as he read and re-read the
message, spoke to the man over his shoulder, and then came toward
her, his hat pushed back, his hair ruffled, demanding, as he turned
the sheet over to her,
“What in time does this mean, Pettie? I can’t make nothing of it.
The agent says that it’s been delayed. Looks like Marchbanks must
have sent it soon after you took the train.”
“He did,” said Hilda, as she read. “He must have sent it right there
at the station at Juan Chico.” For the second yellow sheet that she
and Uncle Hank now read together ran:
“Statement in my earlier message entire mistake. Very
much regret whole circumstance and apologize to Miss
Hilda. She behaved most honorably. She will explain.
“Marchbanks.”
And explain Hilda did, as she and Uncle Hank finally drove away,
headed for home. When all was told, and Uncle Hank seemed relieved
as she expected he’d be—he said slowly,
“And yet you tell me this young man, of the name of Masters, is
coming over here to see me, Pettie?” Hank tried to smile. “No, you
needn’t answer that. I said I’d ask no questions. Looks like I might
keep my word—for a few minutes, anyhow.”
The buckboard rattled ahead. Hank’s wide gaze took in the Three
Sorrows pastures, the glimpse, beyond there, of the low roof. There
was the property he had pulled out of debt, saved for Charley Van
Brunt’s children. Not so young as he had been—no, not so young. Yet
to Hilda’s eyes, which had always seen him with the silver in his
hair, he shouldn’t have appeared noticeably older than when on that
first occasion, in the office room, she, frightened that he was
going away and leaving her, had wanted to say to him, in the words
of her fairy tale, “If you will never forsake me, then I will never
forsake you.” He stirred uneasily and began to speak.
“You got my last letter?”
Instantly there flashed into her mind the details of that letter: a
sort of summing up of the Three Sorrows business affairs—in which
he’d reminded her that she was said to be his partner in them, but
in fact, though he was their guardian, she and Burch owned
everything in full, and would be his employers, and he wanted her to
see what this railroad proposition meant to the estate. It had come
the day before the dance at Graingers. Other things, to her much
more important, had so filled her thoughts that she had not answered
it. She came to herself now with the knowledge that Uncle Hank was
stealing glance after glance at her, apparently distressed by the
look in her face.
“I—oh, of course, you did write me in the letter all about it,” she
said confusedly. “I guess I didn’t quite understand. Are we—will it
put us out of debt, Uncle Hank?”
“Pays everything.” The old man smiled a little sadly. “With the
State & Gulf Line running that spur right through here, gives
a-plenty to pay off—and stands to make you and Burch rich young
folks. Within a few years, if things is managed right, you’ll be
very rich, I doubt not. You can see from that, Pettie, why Lee
Marchbanks’s news of you—” He broke off and gave his attention to
his team, finishing after a minute, “You will both be rich. I ain’t
uneasy about Burch. He’s a boy; and old-headed at that. It’s
you—and—and things like this telegraft that scares me.”
No, it wasn’t that he really looked so much older; he seemed somehow
stricken, disappointed. Why, he’d had that second telegram—she’d
explained how the first one came to be sent—that it was all a
mistake; yet he could sit there and tell her that the ranch was paid
out of debt and they were going to be rich—and still look that way.
Well, it was— Oh, didn’t he know she wasn’t forsaking him—that she
never would? You might like another person very much too. That
didn’t mean—
“You—you will try to like him, Uncle Hank, when he comes—if he
comes?” Hilda spoke with tremulous eagerness. “I—oh, I just feel as
though it would break my heart if you and he weren’t friends.”
“All right, Pettie girl.” Again that effort to smile; it made her
throat choke up. “You know the Bible says it’s hard for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle. I’ve been told that the needle’s eye
is really a low gate, so called, and the beast has to kneel down and
shuffle through on his knees. Reckon that’s the way any young men
you bring around will have to come through with your Uncle Hank.”
“Oh—I’m just hoping to get him over here for you to see—that’s all.”
The red rushed up in Hilda’s face; she flashed a shaky little smile
at him. “How could he be a friend of mine—without being a friend of
yours?”
He seemed about to answer that; thought better of it; finally said
mildly:
“Pettie, spose we don’t speak no more of the matter—till he comes.
Let’s put it by and be just like old times. There’s your Auntie on
the porch. It’s doing Miss Valeria lots of good to be rich again.
She’s a’ready got in new servants. I doubt not she has many a fine
plan laid for you—now that expense doesn’t have to be considered.”
But all time is new time. Even “times” are always new ones—never
just like “old times.” Always something has been taken out—or
something added—that makes the new different. Here was Hilda eager,
fond, loving everything and everybody on the ranch of the Three
Sorrows more demonstratively than ever before in her life, yet Hank
felt the difference as she rushed up the steps to greet her aunt, as
she ran through the house to find Sam Kee in his kitchen.
An unseen presence seemed to come with her, very real: the young man
who would be here in the flesh to-morrow—or the next day—or the
next. Oh, he’d come. Hank never doubted that. Surely it was the
thought of him that gave her such glowing cheeks, lit soft fires
under the dusk of her lashes as they sat that night at the table.
“After all,” smiled Miss Val, very complacent in the new order of
things, “it’s as well that Hilda’s come home. That ranch place
wasn’t very suitable. Mr. Pearsall and I have been talking about
your future, Hilda. Probably a good finishing school near New York
for awhile—and then travel.”
Hilda and Uncle Hank exchanged a glance, both acutely conscious of
the young man who was coming to the Three Sorrows on the next day—or
the next. Neither said a word to Miss Valeria of the matter. They
were still partners, that far. If Pearse Masters’ coming was to be
the wedge between them—it had not yet divided them completely.