PASSION AND LOYALTY
There was great sorrow felt when the news spread about that Robert
Strafford had died, but there was no surprise, for his friends had long
since seen that he was slipping away from them, having reduced himself
to the last inch of his strength through overwork and anxiety. It was
an old story in Southern California, and one not rightly understood in
the old country, but Ben Overleigh explained it in the letter which he
wrote to Robert’s father.
“We buried him yesterday,” he wrote, “and his wife and we fellows
who had known him and loved him, stood by the grave. He never had
much strength, but what he had, he taxed to the uttermost. These last
months he worked like one possessed. No delicate frame could stand it,
and then he was unhappy about his wife, seeing her so home-sick. That
finished matters for him. I remember when I first met him about four
years ago, I thought it sheer madness for a frail young fellow like
that to come out to a life of physical toil. Ranching is not child’s
play, and if you want to succeed, you don’t sit down and watch your
trees; you work at them the whole time, and it isn’t light work. To
leave a city office, and come and be in the open air during the whole
day sounds inviting, but some of those who try it, and have not much
physical strength, go under. I wish this could be better understood
in the old country. But I expect no one realises, until he tries for
himself, what hard work manual labour really is, when one has never
been accustomed to it, and knows nothing about it. Two years ago a
young English doctor here died in the same way. He knew he had drained
himself of strength, and that his heart was worn out. I want you to
know we all loved your son, and as for myself, he leaves me bereft
indeed. I shall buy his ranch, and work it together with mine. His
wife will no doubt return as soon as she can, but at present there is
a tremendous railway strike going on, and we are entirely cut off from
the Eastern States. But some of the mails get through, and so I will
risk it, and send this letter.”
Ben seemed to be quite a broken man, and went about his work as one
seeing nothing and caring for nothing. Graham and Lauderdale and Holles
tried their best to reach him with their kindness and sympathy; but he
seemed unreachable, as though he had climbed to some distant mountain,
and had cut himself off from human aid. But he liked to have Jesse
Holles near him, remembering always that Jesse had been fond of Robert,
and had given him many an hour of willing help. He looked after his
ranch as usual, and rode over to Hilda every day without fail. He spent
very little of his time with her personally, but worked on Robert’s
ranch, finding a melancholy satisfaction in continuing what his friend
had begun. He tended the horses, and helped Hilda in many ways. He
cultivated, he pruned, and then he came up to the house, and sat down
quietly with her, watching her as she prepared tea, watching and
wondering and turning over many things in his mind. He was intensely
sorry for her, but he had not told her that in words, although he knew
she understood it from his deeds. In spite of all that had occurred,
he could not help being strongly attracted to her, and sometimes when
he was alone at home, he found himself torn in pieces by his great
bereavement, by his sympathy with Hilda’s remorse, by his attraction to
her, and his repulsion from her. Thus the storm swept furiously over
Ben Overleigh. He told her once or twice that he would like to buy
Robert’s ranch, and he thought they would not have any difficulty in
arranging the matter. She did not make any definite reply, nor did she
show any interest in his suggestion. She seemed strangely indifferent
about the fate of the ranch, and about her own affairs and plans,
which were being held in abeyance by the great railway strike. It was
obvious, of course, that she would return home as soon as she could,
but she never once spoke of home, and never once referred to the strike
as interfering in any way with her own intentions. But she did speak of
Robert, and then there was no mistaking the remorse in her manner, and
the awe in her voice.
“I can never forget how I wounded him,” she said.
Ben did not answer her on these occasions; and his silence always stung
her.
“You condemn me utterly,” she said, almost pleadingly, and she showed
by her intensity how much she cared for what this man thought of her.
She showed it all the more as the days went on, and, after all, it was
natural enough that she should turn to him as her only friend in this
distant country, where she was a complete stranger. But the matter did
not end there. She was strongly attracted to him, and either she could
not or would not hide it. At one moment a thrill of contempt would pass
through Ben, and he could have turned from her as from something which
soiled his soul; and at another moment a throb of passion would possess
him, and he could have thrown up everything for her, his loyalty to
his friend, his sense of dignity and fitness, his own estimate of her
character--everything he could have swept to the winds. He noticed,
too, that as the time went on, she seemed to become more reconciled
to the scenery; and indeed the country was looking entrancingly
beautiful. All Robert’s promises to her had come true: the foothills
were powdered with gold; some of the slopes were arrayed in bright
attire of orange-coloured poppies, and others had chosen for themselves
a luxurious garment of wild mustard. Then there was the dazzling green
grass, and the vast expanse of grain-fields, and in the distance yonder
there were patches of purple and yellow flowers, reminding one of
the gorse and heather in the old country. The grim barren mountains
looked down indulgently on all this finery, like old people who have
had their days of vanity, and are content to watch the young bedeck
themselves so gaily. And the air was laden with the heavy fragrances of
the flowers and the orange and lemon blossoms. Hilda drove out every
day, and brought back endless treasures: wild lilac, wild azalea, and
maiden-hair from some distant cañon. Her one consolation was to be
out of the house: she drove, or she rode the pretty little mare which
Robert had chosen so lovingly for her, and sometimes she strolled,
taking with her a stout stick in case she came across any snakes.
Nellie, the pointer, who had fretted piteously since Robert’s death,
went with her, and whatever she did, the dog was always to be seen
following her. Hilda’s health had not suffered from the shock which
she had sustained, but she often looked anxious and desolate, and some
of the people who saw her, thought she had changed sadly. They said
that was not to be wondered at, considering the sad circumstances of
her husband’s death, and the long continuance of the railway strike,
which made it impossible for her to join her friends.
But one evening whilst she was sitting on the honeysuckle porch, Holles
rode up waving a paper in his hands.
“Such good news!” he cried; “the strike is over. There has been some
kind of a compromise between the company and the men, and some of the
mails are through. I’ve got a ton-load for you in this gunny-sack.
Nothing for me, of course, except my religious paper. That never gets
lost.”
She put the magazines on one side, and opened her home letters. They
were the first she had received in answer to her own letter telling of
Robert’s death. Her father wrote most kindly, enclosing an order on one
of the banks to cover her passage-money.
“Of course you will come back at once,” he said, “and take up your life
where you left it.”
The letter fell from her hands.
The old life was offered to her again. There it was waiting for her,
and she was free to go and accept it, and taste once more of the things
for which she had been starving.
She was free. There was no one and nothing to hinder her. She could go
back, and put these sad events and her remorse and her great mistake
away from her remembrance. She argued that one had not to suffer all
through one’s life for a mistake. She had not meant to be cruel to poor
Robert, but she ought never to have come at all. And now she was free
to go, and once at home again these months would seem to her as a time
of which she had dreamed during an uneasy night.
But no sense of gladness or thankfulness came over her. She sat there,
and bit her lips.
Home? What did she want with home?
She rose and went into the living-room, carelessly throwing her letters
and papers on the table. The bank bill fell down, and she stooped and
picked it up, and her fingers moved as though they were being impelled
to tear it in shreds.
But she tossed it whole on to the table. She struck a match to light
the lamp, but changed her mind and let the darkness creep on unrelieved.
Ben Overleigh rode up half an hour afterwards, and found her thus.
“I have come to tell you that the strike is over, and the train service
begins to-morrow,” he said.
“I have heard,” she said rigidly.
“You must be glad to hear the news,” he said. “This time of waiting
must have been very trying for you.”
She did not answer.
“And now at last you will be able to go home to your friends,” he said.
She was silent.
“I wanted to speak to you about the ranch,” he continued, a little
nervously. “I have set my mind on buying the place, and carrying out
Robert’s ideas. I hope you will give me the opportunity. If you look
over his papers, you will find at what figure he valued his property.
I only speak of it, because I thought that the certainty of being able
to sell the ranch and receive money down at once, might make it all the
easier for you, now that the line is open, to arrange your plans, and
return home.”
“Home?” she echoed, as though in sudden pain.
Ben started.
“Yes,” he said quickly, “back to the life for which you have been
hungering ever since you came, back to all those interests which you
threw away, and then so bitterly regretted. Now your path is clear
before you, and you can go straight on, and forget that you ever took a
side-turning which led you to uncongenial pastures. Not every one can
do that.”
“The old life!” she said wildly, “what does one want with the old life?
What do I care about returning? Why should I go home?”
For a moment Ben Overleigh’s heart leapt within him. _Why should she
go home?_ These words were on his very lips, and others came rushing
afterwards, struggling and wrestling for utterance. The storm raging
around and within him for so many weeks, now assailed him with all its
fury--and left him standing as firm as those mountains yonder.
“Why should you stay?” he said calmly; “you have said all along that
this Californian life was detestable to you, and that you could never
reconcile yourself to it. Have you forgotten that afternoon when you
poured out your confidences to me, and eased your mind of your misery?
Do you remember how you spoke of the isolation, the fearful distance
from home, and the absence of stimulus, and the daily drudgery, and the
mistake you had made in coming out to such a wretched land, and to such
a starved existence?”
“Oh, I have not forgotten,” she said excitedly; “that was the first
long breath I’d taken since I left England.”
“And do you remember how you said that if you’d only realised what
you were coming to, nothing would have made you come,” he continued
deliberately,--“neither love nor friendship, nor duty nor regret; and
that if you had been a man, you would have preferred to starve in your
old career rather than settle in such a land as this?”
“Yes, yes,” she broke in, “and I meant every word I said.”
“And do you remember how you asked me what it was we found to like
in the life,” he continued, “and whether we would not throw it up
to-morrow if we could, and what in the name of heaven we got in
exchange for all we had lost?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” she said breathlessly; “and do you remember
what you said then about the women?”
“I said that we men gained in every particular, and that it was a life
for men and not for women,” he answered.
“Ah, but there was something else,” she said, almost desperately. “You
said they came off badly here, but that their one salvation was to love
passionately, desperately--”
“And if I did say so,” he said, turning to her fiercely, “what has that
to do with you and me?”
There was no mistaking the ring of contempt in his voice. She smarted
in every fibre of her, and instantly gathered herself together.
“No, you are right,” she said, with a quick nervous laugh. “It has not
anything to do with you and me.”
He had struck a match as she spoke, and lit the lamp, and she came from
the window where she had been standing, and pushed into a heap the
letters and papers which were scattered over the table.
“That railway strike has lasted a terribly long time,” she said, in a
tone of voice utterly different from her trembling accents of a few
minutes past. “But now, thank goodness, it is all over, and I can
arrange my plans at last. My father has sent the money for my return.
But it is good of you to wish to make things easy for my journey. I
shall not, however, need any more ready money, you see, for the cheque
is large enough to pay my expenses twice over to England.”
Ben stood there half stunned by her sudden change of manner, and by the
consummate way in which she swept from her horizon the whole of this
incident between them.
“And now about the ranch,” she continued, with the dignity of a queen.
“I will look out the papers to-morrow, and then we will settle it as
you wish. I do not know any one to whom I could sell dear Robert’s
ranch with greater pleasure than to you. But you must pay me at your
leisure. There is no hurry.”
“Good God!” thought Ben. “A few minutes ago this woman was all but
throwing herself at my feet, and now she stands there and patronises
me.”
He could scarcely control his anger and scorn, but he mastered himself,
and said quietly:
“I shall be very grateful to have old Robert’s ranch. It will be some
consolation to me to take care of it and make it my own. You know we
loved each other, he and I. But as for payment, I shall prefer to give
the money down, at once.”
“That shall be just as you please,” she said, with gracious
condescension. “And now good-night. I am very tired.”
She held out her hand to him, but he looked her straight in the face,
bowed slightly, and left her.