The highly specialized hotel clerk admits that it is not reasonable,
that nothing is reasonable, that he has spoken to the Giantess a dozen
times about her irregular habits; but what can he do? "I would gladly
charge you one hundred dollars a day, Mr. O'Cleave, if I had the consent
of the Interior Department. It isn't my fault."
I wish I had a movie of the Y. M. C. A. hotel clerk when he is off duty
at the desk. I wonder if his faith upholds him when he recalls the
threat of Benjamin D. O'Cleave to go to Europe next year. Ah, well, even
if he does, Maw will remain.
I know that next year I shall again see Maw leaning against a big pine,
as she sits upon the ground drinking real handmade coffee of her own
from a tin cup with the handle cut so it will nest down in the box.
Maw's meals do not cost her four bits a throw, because they brought
things along. Paw catches a trout sometimes on the cane pole that hangs
alongside the car; not always, but sometimes, he catches one. And Maw,
once she had conquered the notion that you ought to skin a trout the way
you do a bullhead back in Ioway, took to cooking trout naturally; and
her trout, with pancakes and sirup, to my notion beat anything the hotel
chef in the best hotel can do. Maw does not worry about a room with
bath, though sometimes when the rain comes through the old wall tent she
gets both. The pink and green war paint which you sometimes see beneath
Maw's specs when you meet her on the road represents only the mark of
the bedquilts, where the colors were not too proud to run.
Maw finds it wonderful in these mountains. I know she does, because she
has never yet told me so. Maw throws no fits. But many a time I have
seen her sitting, in the late afternoon, her hands, in the first
idleness they have known in all her life, lying in her ample lap, her
faded eyes quietly gazing through her steel-bowed far-lookers at the
vast pictures across some valley she has found. It is her first valley
of dreams, her first valley of rest and peace and quiet. The lights on
these hills are such as she did not see in Ioway, or even in Nebraska,
when she went there once, time Mary's baby was born. The clouds are so
strange to Maw, their upturned edges so very white against the black
body of their over-color. And the rains that come, with hail--but here
you don't need worry, for there are no crops for the hail to spoil. And
sometimes in the afternoon, never during the splendor of the mellow
morning such as Maw never before has seen, comes the lightning and rips
the counterpane of clouds to let the sun shine through.
I know Maw loves it all, because she never has told me so. She is very
shy about her new world in this new day. She wouldn't like to talk
about it. We never do like to talk about it, once we really have looked
out across our valley of dreams.
You can't fail to like Hattie and Rowena and Cynthy. Often I walk with
Cynthy and her Vassarrority on the Angel Terrace, when the moon is up,
when it is all white, and Cynthy is almost the only angel left there.
Such a moon as the Interior Department does provide for the summer here!
I defy any Secretary of any other Department--War, Navy, Commerce, Labor
or anything--to produce any such moon as this at six dollars and fifty
cents a day with bath; or four dollars and fifty cents a day with two
towels; or four bits a day at Maw's camp on the Madison. So though I
know Cynthy would prefer the young park ranger--who really is the son of
a leading banker in Indianapolis--to explain the algae and the Algys, I
do the best I can at my age of life with Cynthy.
Rowena, the younger, seventeen now, who wears hers with spirals, tells
me that Cynthy keeps a diary, because she herself found it in the tool
box. "And once," says Rowena to me, "Cynthy, after coming into camp from
a walk through the moonlit pines, wrote in her diary: 'August 12,
11 p. m. Trout for supper. Walked with ---- toward the Hymen Terrace, just
beyond Jupiter Hill, I think it is called. The moon wonderful what woman
is there who has not at some time in her life longed to be swept off her
feet by some Strong Man!'"
I copy this as Rowena did, punctuation and all. Rowena has not yet gone
to Vassar.
Cynthy is the one who thinks the family ought to have a six-cylinder car
next year, with seats that lie back, and air mattresses. Maw does not
agree with her, and says that four cylinders are plenty hard enough for
Paw to keep clean. By what marvel Cynthy is always so stunning; and
Hattie so nurselike in denim and white; and Rowena always so neat in
hers with spirals, which she bought ready made at the store for seven
dollars and fifty-two cents--I cannot say; but when I see these marvels
I renew my faith in my country and its people, even though I do wish
that Paw would pause at some geyser and have a Sunday shave. He says he
forgot his razor and left it home.