Up Skiplap Canyon
The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having
lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently
sectional. The Angstead twins told of their late fishing trip to Lake
St. John for salmon, of projected tours to British Columbia for
mountain sheep, and to Manitoba for elk and moose.
Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the
preparation of _oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne._
Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in
itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually
addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders,
and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward
her.
Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one
of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and
that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended.
Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales,
travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in
which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the
abiding credit of American tact and gentility.
Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the
freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom.
Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be
laughing, and inquiry brought this:
"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He
thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of
well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on
each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God.
But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of
countries with me. I'll tell you that."
Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that
loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their
empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and
himself through the stamp mill.
At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted.
After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he
would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in
Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already
cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl
went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining
camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track.
Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the
busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canyon,
cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure
of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road
paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a
playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my
child in your keeping."
Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon
being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet
golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long
distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind
the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him.
Looking up the canyon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could
see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far
distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a
hundred miles away," he told her.
Down the canyon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy
silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared
the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above,
lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to
the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses--of the room
and stuff for unbounded action.
"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a
foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I
don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these
altitudes."
"One _has_ to breathe more air here--there's less oxygen in it, and you
must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes
robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started.
There, now, there are your colours, see--"
Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A
little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the
mountain phlox, pink and red.
"There are your eyes and your cheeks."
"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!"
On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's
glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white
flowers.
"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much
nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work
harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may
become able to do more--more capable. I am thinking of your
grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and
strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or
Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either
of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he
is."
"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's
afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of
yours--social and moral."
"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here,
would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man
as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's
all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about
it."
"Ah, but think of what there is in the East--and you are there. To
think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of
you--such a funny little lot as they were--to think that this morning I
awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think
that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and
there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should
burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't
predicted.
"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of
me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something
about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's
going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell
you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want
things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly--because they've
proved it so often--that if you want a thing hard enough and keep
wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you."
A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a
heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four
mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any
sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest
for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining
team.
"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road.
She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness.
"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly;
that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You
don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of
accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but
perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a _very_
Eastern person doesn't even accept herself--himself--very trustingly;
she--he--finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself."
The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning
men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them.
"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads
right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in
the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long
vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of
broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a
few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of
red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak.
"Stand so,"--she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step
nearer almost to touch her arm,--"and feel the round little earth
turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but
it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn.
See--you can actually _see_ it move--whirling along like a child's ball
because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around
the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and
who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we
shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken
along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying;
and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown
motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are
moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how
many ways, or where they shall fetch us?"
"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses."
"No relation whatever; we're the same person--he was I."
"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as
by a setting star, by watching a sun rise--"
"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect
candour and friendliness.
They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk.
As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he
blended his voice with hers:
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
"With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped--'
I came like Water and like Wind I go.'"
"I shall look forward to seeing you--and your mother and sister?--in
New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more
to say when we're better known to each other."
"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than
the substance of any other to me,--you must know how it will be now,
when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream
to come true."
"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like
this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful."
From up the canyon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently
steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop
for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the
Shepler car.
The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival
helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been
chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying,
"'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and
be it good and hard. Get action early and often."
Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the
young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the
infirmities of neither."
The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the
canyon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched
her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away
narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the
last, but still looking steadily toward him--almost wistfully, it
seemed to him once.
"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter.
"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them
folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place
that turns 'em out. They rile me--that talk about 'people in the
humbler walks of life.' Of course I _am_ humble, but then, son, if you
come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so _damned_ humble!"