say you get on one of them through trains and take your provision and
your knitting, and just live along the road. It isn't as if you had to
change cars at every junction, and get so turned round you don't know
which way your head's set on your shoulders."
Mrs. Weaver's expression began to dissolve into reluctant interest in
these details.
"Well, of course, if you think it'll help your rheumatism, and you've
got your mind made up to go, _some_body'll have to go with you. Have you
asked Jason?"
"No, I haven't." Mrs. Moxom's voice took on an edge. "I can't see just
why I've got to ask people; sometimes I think I'm about old enough to do
as I please."
"Why, of course, mother," soothed the daughter-in-law. "Would you go and
see the girls before you'd start?"
"No, I don't believe I would," answered the old woman, her voice
relaxing under this acquiescence. "They'd only make a fuss. They've
both got good homes and good men, and they're married to them right and
lawful, and there's nothing to worry about. Besides, I'd just get
interested in the children, and that'd make it harder. I've done the
best I knew how by the girls, and I don't know as they've got any reason
to complain"--
"Why, no, mother," interrupted the daughter-in-law, with rising
feathers, "I never heard anybody say but what you'd done well by all
your children. I only thought they'd want to see you. I think they'd
come over if they knew it--well, of course, Angie couldn't, having a
young baby so, but Laura she'd come in a minute."
"Well, I don't believe I want to see them," persisted Mrs. Moxom. "It'll
only make it harder. I guess you needn't let them know I'm goin'. Ethel
and I'll start as soon as she can get ready. Seems like Rob's having a
pretty hard time. He couldn't come after Ethel now if he wanted to. It
wouldn't be right for him to leave that--that--old gentleman."
"Well, I wouldn't want the girls to have any hard feelings towards me."
"The Moxom girls ain't a-going to have any hard feelings towards _you_,
Emma," asserted the old woman, with emphasis.
"She has the queerest way of talking about your sisters, Jason," Mrs.
Weaver confided to her husband later. "It makes me think, sometimes,
she's failing pretty fast."
V
As the road to the foot of the trail grew steeper, Rob Kendall found an
increasing difficulty in guiding his team with one hand. His bride drew
herself from his encircling arm reluctantly.
"You'd better look after the horses," she said, with a vivid blush.
"What'll grandmother think of us?"
The young fellow removed the offending arm and reached back to pat the
old lady's knee.
"I ain't afraid of grandmother," he said joyously. "Grandmother's a
brick. If she stays out here long, she'll soon be the youngest woman on
the mesa. I shouldn't wonder if she'd pick up some nice old gentleman
herself--how's that, grandmother?" He bent down and kissed his wife's
ear. "Catch me going back on grandmothers after this!"
"You haven't changed a bit, Rob," said Ethel fondly; "has he,
grandmother?" She turned her radiant smile upon the withered face behind
her.
The old woman did not answer. The newly wedded couple resumed their
rapturous contemplation of each other.
"How's that funny old man, Rob?" asked Ethel, smoothing out her dimples.
"Old Mosey? He's pretty rocky. I'm afraid he won't pull through." Rob
strove to adjust his voice to the subject. "I'd 'a' got a house down in
town, but I didn't like to leave him. We'll have to go pretty soon,
though. I'm afraid you'll be lonesome up here."
The old woman on the back seat leaned forward a little. The young couple
smiled exultantly into each other's eyes, with superb scorn of the
world.
"Lonesome!" sneered the girl.
Her husband drew her close to him with an ecstatic hug.
"Yes, lonesome," he laughed, his voice smothered in her bright hair.
The old woman settled back in her seat. The team made their way slowly
through the sandy wash between the boulders. When they emerged from the
sycamores, Rob pointed toward the cabin. "That's the place!" he said
triumphantly.
The sunset was sifting through the live-oaks upon the shake roof. Two
tents gleamed white beside it, frescoed with the shadow of moving
leaves. Ethel lifted her head from her husband's shoulder, and looked at
her home with the faith in her eyes that has kept the world young.
"I've put up some tents for us," said the young fellow gleefully; "but
you mustn't go in till I get the team put away. I won't have you
laughing at my housekeeping behind my back. Old Mosey's asleep in the
shanty; the doctor gives him something to keep him easy. You can go in
there and sit down, grandmother; you won't disturb him."
He helped them out of the wagon, lingering a little with his wife in his
arms. The old woman left them and went into the house. She crossed the
floor hesitatingly, and bent over the feeble old face on the pillow.
"It's just as I expected; he's changed a good deal," she said to
herself.
The old man opened his eyes.
"I was sayin' you'd changed a good deal, Moses," she repeated aloud.
There was no intelligence in his gaze.
"For that matter, I expect I've changed a good deal myself," she went
on. "I heard you'd had a fall, and I thought I'd better come out. You
was always kind of hard to take care of when you was sick. I remember
that time you hurt your foot on the scythe, just after we was married;
you wouldn't let anybody come near you but me"--
"Why, it's Angeline!" said the old man dreamily, with a vacant smile.
"Yes, it's me."
He closed his eyes and drifted away again. The old wife sat still on the
edge of the bed. Outside she could hear the sigh of the oaks and the
trill of young voices. Two or three tears fell over the wrinkled face,
written close with the past, like a yellow page from an old diary. She
wiped them away, and looked about the room with its meagre belongings,
which Rob had scoured into expectant neatness.
"He doesn't seem to have done very well," she thought; "but how could
he, all by himself?" She got up and walked to the door, and looked out
at the strange landscape with its masses of purple mountains.
"I've got to do one of two things," she said to herself. "I've just got
to own up the whole thing, and let the girls be mortified, or else I've
got to keep still and marry him over again, and pass for an old fool the
rest of my life. I don't believe I can do it. They've got more time to
live down disgrace than I have. I believe I'll just come out and tell
everything. Ethel!" she called. "Come here, you and Rob; I've got
something to tell you."
The young couple stood with locked arms, looking out over the valley. At
the sound of her voice they clasped each other close in an embrace of
passionate protest against the intrusion of this other soul. Then they
turned toward the sunset, and went slowly and reluctantly into the
house.
Lib
A young woman sat on the veranda of a small redwood cabin, putting her
baby to sleep. The infant displayed that aggressive wide-awakeness which
seems to characterize babies on the verge of somnolence. Now and then it
plunged its dimpled fists into the young mother's bare white breast,
stiffened its tiny form rebelliously, raised its head, and sent gleams
of defiance from beneath its drooping eyelids.
It was late in March, and the ground about the cabin was yellow with
low-growing compositæ. The air was honey-sweet and dripping with
bird-song. Inside the house a woman and a girl were talking.
"Oh, he's not worrying," said the latter. "What's he got to worry about?
He lets us do all that. Lib's got the baby and we've got to bear all the
disgrace. I"--
"Myrtie," called a clear voice from the veranda, "shut up! You may say
what you please about me, and you may say what you please about him, but
nobody's going to call this baby a disgrace."
She caught the child up and kissed the back of its neck with passionate
vehemence. The baby struggled in her embrace and gave a little cry of
outraged dignity.
Indoors the girl looked at her mother and bit her lip in astonished
dismay.
"I didn't know she could hear," she whispered.
A tall young woman came up the walk, trailing her tawdry ruffles over
the fragrant alfileria.
"Is Miss Sunderland"--She colored a dull pink and glanced at the baby.
"I'm Lib Sunderland. Won't you come in?" said Lib.
The newcomer sank down on the upper step and leaned against the post of
the veranda.
"No. I don't want to see any one but you. I guess we can talk here."
The baby sat up at the sound of the stranger's voice and stared at her
with round, blinking eyes. She drew off her cotton gloves and whipped
her knee with them in awkward embarrassment. She had small, regular
features of the kind that remain the same from childhood to old age, and
her liver-colored hair rolled in a billow almost to her eyes.
"Maybe you'll think it strange for me to come," she began, "but I didn't
know what else to do. I'm Ruby Adair."
She waited a little, but her statement awoke no response in Lib's
noncommittal face.
"I don't know whether you know what they're saying over at the store or
not," the visitor went on haltingly.
"No," said Lib, with dry indifference; "there ain't any men in our
family to do the loafin' and gossipin' for us."
"Since you moved over here from Bunch Grass Valley, they're saying that
Thad Farnham is the--is--you know he was in the tile works over there a
year or more ago."
"Yes, I know." Lib's voice was like the crackling of dead leaves under
foot.
"I think it's pretty hard," continued Miss Adair, gathering courage, and
glancing from under the surf of her hair at her listener's impassive
face; "him and me's engaged!"
Lib's eyes narrowed, and the velvety down on her lip showed black
against the whiteness around her mouth.
"What does _he_ say?" she asked.
"What can he say?" Thad's fiancée broke out nervously, "except that it
ain't so. But that doesn't shut people's mouths. Nobody can do that but
you. I think"--she raised her chin virtuously and twisted her gloves
tight in her trembling hands--"that you ought to come out plain and tell
who the man is--I mean the--you know what I mean!"
"Yes," said Lib dully, "I know what you mean."
There was a little silence, broken only by the mad twitter of nesting
linnets in the passion-vine overhead.
"Of course," resumed the stranger, "I wouldn't want you to think but
what I'm sorry for you. You've been treated awful mean by somebody."
A surprised look grew in the eyes Lib fixed upon her visitor. The baby
stirred in its sleep, and she bent down and rubbed her cheek against its
hair.
"You needn't waste any time being sorry for me," she said.
"It's too bad," continued Miss Adair, intent upon her own exalted
charity, "but that doesn't make it right for you to get other folks into
trouble. You'd ought to remember that."
"If you think he's all right, why don't you go ahead and marry him?"
asked Lib.
"My folks would make such a fuss, and besides I don't know as it would
be just right for me to act like I didn't care, after all that's been
said--and me a church-member!"
Miss Ruby bent her head a little forward, as if under the weight of her
moral obligations.
"Has he joined the church?" inquired Lib in a curious voice.
"He's been going to the union meetings regular with me, and he's stood
up twice for prayers, but I dunno 's they'd take him into the church with
all these stories going about. You'd ought to think of that, too--you
may be standing in the way of saving his soul."
"If his soul was lost, it would be awful hard to find," said Lib
quietly.
Her listener's weak mouth slackened. "Wh-at?" she asked, with a little
stuttering gasp.
"Oh, I dunno. Some things _are_ hard to find when they're lost, you
know."
"And you'll speak up and tell the truth?" The visitor arose, gathering
her flounces about her with one hand.
"If I speak up, I'll tell the truth, you can bet on that," said Lib.
Miss Adair waited an instant, as if for some assurance which Lib did not
vouchsafe. Then she writhed down the walk in her twisted drapery and
disappeared.
Thad Farnham and his father had been cutting down a eucalyptus-tree. The
two men looked small and mean clambering over the felled giant, as if
belonging to some species of destructive insect. The tree in its fall
had bruised the wild growth, and the air was full of oily medicinal
odors. Long strips of curled cinnamon-colored bark strewed the ground.
The father and son confronted each other across the pallid trunk. The
older man's face was leathery-red with anger.
"The story's got around that the kid's yours, anyway," he announced. "I
don't care who started it, but if it's true, you'll make a bee-line for
the widow's and marry the girl. D'you hear?"
Thad dropped his eyes sullenly and made a feint of examining the
crosscut saw.
"I don't go much on family," continued old Farnham, "and I never 'lowed
you'd set anything on fire excepting maybe yourself, but I'm not raising
sneaks and liars, and what little I've got hain't been scraped together
to fatten that kind of stock!"
"Who said I lied?"
"Nobody. But I'm going to take you over to face that girl and see what
she says. If you don't foller peaceable, I'll coax you along with a
hatful of cartridges. I hear you've been whining around the revival
meetings. I never suspected you till I heard that!"
"I don't see why you suspect a feller for lookin' after the salvation"--
"Oh, damn your salvation!" broke in the old man.
"Well, I dunno"--
"Well, I _do_!" roared the father; "I know you can't make an angel
without a man to start with, and I'll do what I can to furnish the man,
seein' I'm responsible for you bein' born in the shape of one, and the
preachers may put in the wing and the tail feathers if they can! Now
start that saw!"
* * * * *
Old Farnham and his son sat in the small front room of the widow
Sunderland's cabin. The old man's jaw was set, and he grasped his knees
with his big hairy hands as if to steady himself.
Neither of the men arose when Lib came into the room with the baby. The
old man's eyes followed her as she seated herself without so much as a
glance at his companion.
"My name's Farnham," he began hoarsely. "This is my son Thad. You've met
him, maybe?" He stopped and cleared his throat.
Lib did not turn her head.
"Yes, I've met him," she said quietly.
The old man's face turned the color of dull terra-cotta.
"They say he took advantage of you. I don't know. I wasn't much as a
young feller, but I wasn't a scrub, and I don't savvy scrubs. I fetched
him over here to-day to ask you if it's true, and to say to you if it
is, he'll marry you or there'll be trouble. That don't square it, but
it's the best I can do."
There was a tense stillness in the little room. The baby gave a squeal
of delight and kicked a small red stocking from its dimpled foot. The
old man picked it up and laid it on Lib's lap. She looked straight into
his face for a while before she spoke.
"I guess you're a good man, Mr. Farnham," she said slowly. "I wouldn't
mind being your daughter-in-law, if you had a son that took after you. I
think the baby would like you very well for a grandpap, too. The older
he grows, the more particular I'm getting about his relations. I didn't
think much about anything before he came, but I've done a lot of
thinkin' since. I guess that's generally the way with girls."
She turned toward Thad, and her voice cut the air like a lash.
"Suppose you _was_ the father of this baby, and had to be drug here by
the scruff of the neck to own it, wouldn't you think I'd done the poor
little thing harm enough just by--by _that_, without tackin' you onto
him for the rest of his life? No, sir!" She stood up and took a step
backward. "You go and tell everybody--tell Ruby Adair, that I say this
child hasn't any father; he never had any, but he's got a _mother_, and
a mother that thinks too much of him to disgrace him by marrying a
coward, which is more than she'll be able to say for _her_ children if
she ever has any! Now go!"
For Value Received
A soft yellow haze lay over the San Jacinto plain, deepening into
purple, where the mountains lifted themselves against the horizon. Nancy
Watson stood in her cabin door, and held her bony, moistened finger out
into the tepid air.
"I believe there's a little breath of wind from the southeast, Robert,"
she said, with a desperate hopefulness; "but the air doesn't feel
rainy."
"Oh, I guess the rains'll come along all right; they gener'lly do." The
man's voice was husky and weak. "Anyway, the barley'll hold its own
quite a while yet."
"Oh, yes; quite a long while," acquiesced his wife, with an eager,
artificial stress on the adjective. "I don't care much if the harvest
isn't earlier'n usual; I want you to pick up your strength."
She turned into the room, a strained smile twitching her
weather-stained face. She was glad Robert's bed was in the farthest
corner away from the window. The barley-field that stretched about the
little redwood cabin was a pale yellowish green, deeper in the
depressions, and fading almost into brown on the hillocks. There had
been heavy showers late in October, and the early sown grain had
sprouted. It was past the middle of November now, and the sky was of
that serene, cloudless Californian blue which is like a perpetual
smiling denial of any possibility of rain.
"Is the barley turning yellow any?" queried the sick man feebly.
Nancy hesitated.
"Oh, not to speak of," she faltered, swallowing hard.
Her husband was used to that gulping sob in her voice when she stood in
the door. There was a little grave on the edge of the barley-field. He
had put a bit of woven-wire fence about it to keep out the rabbits, and
Nancy had planted some geraniums inside the small inclosure. There were
some of the fiery blossoms in an old oyster can at the head of the
little mound, lifting their brilliant smile toward the unfeeling blue of
the sky.
"There's pretty certain to be late rains, anyway," the man went on
hoarsely. "Leech would let us have more seed if it wasn't for the
mortgage." His voice broke into a strained whisper on the last word.
Nancy crossed the room, and laid her knotted hand on his forehead.
"You hain't got any fever to-day," she said irrelevantly.
"Oh, no; I'm gettin' on fine; I'll be up in a day or two. The
mortgage'll be due next month, Nancy," he went on, looking down at his
thin gray hands on the worn coverlet; "I calc'lated they'd hold off till
harvest, if the crop was comin' on all right." He glanced up at her
anxiously.
The woman's careworn face worked in a cruel convulsive effort at
self-control.
"It ain't right, Robert!" she broke out fiercely. "You've paid more'n
the place is worth now; if they take it for what's back, it ain't
right!"
Her husband looked at her with pleading in his sunken eyes. He felt
himself too weak for principles, hardly strong enough to cope with
facts.
"But they ain't to blame," he urged; "they lent me the money to pay
Thomson. It was straight cash; I guess it's all right."
"There's wrong somewhere," persisted the woman, hurling her abstract
justice recklessly in the face of the evidence. "If the place is worth
more, you've made it so workin' when you wasn't able. If they take it
now, I'll feel like burnin' down the house and choppin' out every tree
you've planted!"
The man turned wearily on his pillow. His wife could see the gaunt lines
of his unshaven neck. She put her hand to her aching throat and looked
at him helplessly; then she turned and went back to the door. The barley
_was_ turning yellow. She looked toward the little grave on the edge of
the field. More than the place was worth, she had said. What was it
worth? Suppose they should take it. She drew her high shoulders forward
and shivered in the warm air. The anger in her hard-featured face
wrought itself into fixed lines. She recrossed the room, and sat down on
the edge of the bed.
"How much is the mortgage, Robert?" she asked calmly. The sick man gave
a sighing breath of relief, and drew a worn account-book from under his
pillow.
"It'll be $287.65, interest an' all, when it's due," he said, consulting
his cramped figures. Each knew the amount perfectly well, but the feint
of asking and telling eased them both.
"I'm going down to San Diego to see them about it," said Nancy; "I can't
explain things in writing. There's the money for the children's shoes;
if the rains hold off, they can go barefoot till Christmas. Mother can
keep Lizzie out of school, and I guess Bobbie and Frank can 'tend to
things outside."
A four-year-old boy came around the house wailing out a grief that
seemed to abate suddenly at sight of his mother. Nancy picked him up and
held him in her lap while she took a splinter from the tip of his little
grimy outstretched finger; then she hugged him almost fiercely, and set
him on the doorstep.
"What's the matter with gramma's baby?" called an anxious voice from the
kitchen.
"Oh, nothing, mother; he got a sliver in his finger; I just took it
out."
"He's father's little soldier," said Robert huskily; "he ain't a-goin'
to cry about a little thing like that."
The little soldier sat on the doorstep, striving to get his sobs under
military discipline and contemplating his tiny finger ruefully.
An old woman came through the room with a white cloth in her hand.
"Gramma'll tie it up for him," she said soothingly, sitting down on the
step, and tearing off a bandage wide enough for a broken limb.
The patient heaved a deep sigh of content as the unwieldiness of the
wounded member increased, and held his fat little fingers wide apart to
accommodate the superfluity of rag.
"There, now," said the old woman, rubbing his soft little gingham back
fondly; "gramma'll go and show him the turkeys."
The two disappeared around the corner of the house, and the man and
woman came drearily back to their conference.
"If you go, Nancy," said Robert, essaying a wan smile, "I hope you'll be
careful what you say to 'em; you must remember they don't _think_
they're to blame."
"I won't promise anything at all," asserted Nancy, hitching her angular
shoulders; "more'n likely, I'll tell 'em just what I think. I ain't
afraid of hurtin' their feelin's, for they hain't got any. I think
money's a good deal like your skin; it keeps you from feelin' things
that make you smart dreadfully when you get it knocked off."
Robert smiled feebly, and rubbed his moist, yielding hand across his
wife's misshapen knuckles.
"Well, then, you hadn't ought to be hard on 'em, Nancy; it's no more'n
natural to want to save your skin," he said, closing his eyes wearily.
"Robert Watson?"
The teller of the Merchants' and Fruitgrowers' Bank looked through the
bars of his gilded cage, and repeated the name reflectively. He did not
notice the eager look of the woman who confronted him, but he did wonder
a little that she had failed to brush the thick dust of travel from the
shoulders of her rusty cape.
The teller was a slender, immaculate young man, whose hair arose in an
alert brush from his forehead, which was high and seemed to have been
polished by the same process that had given such a faultless and
aggressive gloss to his linen. He turned on his spry little heel and
stepped to the back of the inclosure, where he took a handful of long,
narrow papers from a leather case, and ran over them hastily. Nancy did
not think it possible that he could be reading them; the setting in his
ring made a little streak of light as his fingers flew. She watched him
with tense earnestness; it seemed to her that the beating of her heart
shook the polished counter she leaned against. She hid her
cotton-gloved hands under her cape for fear he would see how they
trembled.
The teller returned the papers to their case, and consulted a stout,
short-visaged man, whose lips and brows drew themselves together in an
effort of recollection.
The two men stood near enough to hear Nancy's voice. She pressed her
weather-beaten face close to the gilded bars.
"I am Mrs. Watson. I came down to see you about it; my husband's been
poorly and couldn't come. We'd like to get a little more time; we've had
bad luck with the barley so far, but we think we can make it another
season."
The men gave her a bland, impersonal attention.
"Yes?" inquired the teller, with tentative sympathy, running his pencil
through his upright hair, and tapping his forefinger with it nervously.
"I believe that's one of Bartlett's personal matters," he said in an
undertone.
The older man nodded, slowly at first, and then with increasing
affirmation.
"You're right," he said, untying the knot in his face, and turning away.