I am over fourteen now. There isn't much more for me to learn in this
school. Señor Juarez and Miss Belton both tell me I ought to go to
Pueblo. Edith May Jonas is going. I should like to study many
things--drawing, for instance. They say I ought to study that. My
mother always said she hoped I would have a chance to learn. And my
father used to say, 'Oh, yes!' that he would soon have money for
everything. And now he has! Will you ask him?"
Jane was dusting the mantel on which Tesuque still sat open-mouthed,
with his bowl. The room had lost its former barren aspect. There was
now a carpet, while muslin shades softened the glare of the Colorado
sun and the view of the sterile hills. Geraniums bloomed on the
window-sills, and some young cottonwoods grew greenly at the door. The
scarlet Navajo blanket, which had been Lola's inheritance from the
prairie-schooner, was spread across a couch, and gave a final note of
warmth and comfort to the low room, now plastered in adobe from ceiling
to floor. Everything that had been done was for Lola's sake, who loved
warmth and color, as do all Southrons.
Tesuque alone, divinely invariable amid so much change, now seemed to
wink the eye at Jane's uncertainty. For Jane knew that there was not
enough money in the bank to pay for a year's schooling at Pueblo. So
far she knew, yet she said simply, "I can ask him."
If Lola wanted to go to Pueblo, she must go. It would be a pity if
Edith May Jonas should have better schooling than Lola, thought Jane.
And as she pondered, it came forcibly to her that money need not be
lacking; she could mortgage her house. She shut her eyes to all future
difficulties which this must involve, and, upon a certain June day, set
resolutely out to see if the doctor were willing to make the loan.
The doctor, sitting in the little office which he had built in the
corner of his shady yard, scowled over his glasses as he listened.
"You're making a mistake," he said, having heard all, "to let Lola
believe that her father is providing for her. I know you began it all
with a view to charitable ends; but he who does evil that good may come
sets his foot in a crooked path, of which none can see the close."
"I didn't want to see her breaking her heart."
"I know, but I do not believe it's ever well to compound and treat with
wrong. If you'll be advised, you'll tell her the whole truth at once."
Jane sat bolt upright before him. Her arms were folded across her
butternut waist, and under the man's hat a grim resolution seemed to be
embodying itself.
"She wouldn't go to school at Pueblo if I told her--nor feel like she
had any home--or anything in the world. And I aint going to tell her!"
"Miss Jane, Miss Jane, don't you see you're doing the girl a real
injury in letting her regard you, her true benefactor, merely as the
agent of her father's generosity? You have simply sustained and
encouraged her worst traits. She wouldn't have been so exacting, so
resentful, so easily provoked if she had known all along that she was
only a poor little pensioner on your bounty. The lesson of humility
would have gone far with her. No, Miss Jane, it wouldn't have hurt her
to be humbled. It won't now!"
"I don't believe it ever does any one any good to be humbled!"
maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor,
frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best,
though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lie
aint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll see
if Henry Jonas'll be willing to take that mortgage!"
"I'm going to do it myself!" roared the doctor. "I don't want Jonas to
own all the property in Aguilar!" Generosity and anger swayed him
confusedly; but as he watched Jane trudging down under the Dauntless's
tipple he became clear enough to register with himself a vow. "Lola has
got to know the truth!" he declared. "Maybe it's none of my business,
but all the same she's going to know it, and know it now!" And he got
up, grimly resolute.
WISE IMPULSES
CHAPTER FOUR
WISE IMPULSES
The next day was the last of the school term, and it afforded the
doctor an opportunity for carrying out his resolve. There was a base of
sound reason in his purposed action. It might give the girl pain,
indeed, to hear what he felt impelled to tell her; it is not pleasant
to have a broken bone set, yet the end is a good one. The doctor felt
that Lola's mind held a smoldering distrust of Jane, which not even the
consciousness of Jane's love could dispel.
The girl, without directly formulating so strong a case against Jane,
obscurely held her accountable for that division from her father which
she deplored. Doubtless it was affection which had caused Jane to ask
Mr. Keene to leave his child behind. Affection also might have
jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent
letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's
thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter
the wholesome tides of life.
"I am right to put an end to Miss Combs's unwise benevolence," thought
the doctor, as he tied his horse outside the schoolhouse.
Throngs of white-frocked girls were chattering about the yard. Rows of
Mexican children squatted silent and stolid against the red walls,
unmoved by those excitements of closing day which stirred their
American mates to riotous glee. The wives of the miners and town
merchants were arriving in twos and threes. Gaunt Mexican women,
holding quiet babies in their looped _rebozos_, stood about, hardly
ever speaking.
Señora Vigil, more lavishly built than the rest of her countrywomen
and gayer of port than they, moved from group to group, talking
cheerfully. Jane also awaited the opening of the schoolhouse door,
watching the scene with interest and having no conception of herself as
an object of note, in her elderly black bonnet and short jean skirt.
Presently Señor Juarez, the Mexican master, appeared. The bell in the
slate dome rang loudly, and the throng filed indoors. There was the
usual array of ceremonies appropriate to occasions like this. Small
boys spoke "pieces," which they forgot, being audibly prompted, while
the audience experienced untold pangs of sympathy and foreboding.
Little beribboned girls exhibited their skill in dialogue, and read
essays and filed through some patriotic drill, to which a forest of
tiny flags gave splendid emphasis at impressive junctures.
Then Edith May Jonas, solemn with anxiety and importance, rose to
sing. She was a plain, flaxen-haired girl, with a Teutonic cast of
feature and a thin voice; but every one, benumbed with speechless
admiration of her blue silk dress, derived from her performance an
impression of surpassing beauty and unbounded talent.
"_Caramba!_ but she is like a vision!" sighed Señora Vigil in Jane's
ear. "Look at Señora Jonas, the mother! Well may she weep tears of
pride! She is a great lady--Señora Jonas. Just now she have
condescended to say to me, ''Ow-de-do?' and me, I bow low. _'A los pics
de V. señora!'_ I say. _Ay Dios!_ if I but had a child with yellow
hair, like the Señorita Edith May! _Que chula!_"
"Sh!" breathed Jane. "There's my Lola on the platform!"
Lola had grown tall in the past year. She was fairer than the Mexicans,
although not fair in the fashion of Edith May, but with a faint citron
hue which, better than pink and white, befitted the extreme darkness
of her hair and eyes. She wore a dress of thin white, and around her
slender neck was a curious old strand of turquoise beads which had been
found carefully hidden away in the Mexican trunk. There was an air of
simple reserve about her which touched the doctor. She was only a child
for all her stately looks, and he began to hate his task.
Lola read a little address which had been assigned to her as a
representative of the highest class. She read the farewell lines almost
monotonously, without effect, without inflection, almost coldly. Yet as
he listened, the doctor had an impression of vital warmth underlying
the restraint of the girl's tone--an impression of feeling that lay far
below the surface, latent and half-suspected.
"There is something there to be reckoned with," he decided. "But what?
Is it a noble impulse which will spring to life in rich gratitude when
I tell her my story? Or will a mere hurt, passionate vanity rise to
overwhelm us all in its acrid swell? I shall soon know."
In the buzz of gaiety and gossip which succeeded the final reading, he
approached Lola and beckoned her away from the crowd. She came running
to him smiling, saying, "Señor!"
"I want to say something to you, my dear. Come here where it's quiet."
The doctor was finding the simplicity and trustfulness of her gaze very
trying. "Lola," he continued, desperately, "I--you must listen to me."
Just at this point something struck against his arm, and turning
irritably, he saw Jane.
"What's all this?" said she, placidly. "What are you saying to make my
little girl so wide-eyed? Remember, she has a fierce old guardian--one
that expects every one to 'tend to his own affairs!" Jane spoke
jestingly, but the doctor knew he was worsted. Jane had been watching
him.
"But, _tia_!" interposed Lola, "the doctor was just going to tell me
something very important!"
"He was maybe going to tell you that you are going to Pueblo next fall!
Yes, honey, it's all fixed!" She turned a joyous, defiant face on the
doctor, who cast his hands abroad as if he washed them of the whole
affair; while Lola, beaming with pleasure, rushed off to tell the news
to Señor Juarez.
"You'll regret this!" said the doctor, somehow feeling glad of his own
failure.
"Well, _she_ won't!" cried Jane, watching Lola's flight with tender
eyes.
"Sometime she is going to find out all this deceit!" he added.
"I know," said Jane. "I know. And then she'll quit trusting me forever.
But if I'm willing to stand it, nobody else need to worry." With this
tacit rebuke she left him, and thereafter the doctor respected her
wishes.
A month or so after Lola's departure northward, Jane's solicitude was
enlivened by an event of startling importance. She was notified by the
Dauntless Company that two entries, the fourth and fifth east, had
entered her property, in which she had never suspected the presence of
coal, and that the owners were prepared to negotiate with her suitable
terms for the right of working the vein in question.
When the matter of royalties was settled and several hundred dollars
paid to Jane's account for coal already taken out, she had a sudden
rush of almost tearful joy. Every month would come to her, while the
coal lasted, a determinate sum of money. She regarded the fact in a
sort of ecstasy, and resolved upon many things.
First she banished from her house the shadow of the mortgage. Then,
glowing with enterprise, she proceeded to extend and embellish her
property in a way which speedily set the town by the ears, and aroused
every one to dark prophecies as to what must happen when her money
should all be gone, and nothing left her but to face poverty in the
palatial five-room dwelling now growing up around the pine homestead of
the past.
Lola liked adobe houses; and fortunately Enrique Diaz, the blacksmith,
had a fine lot of adobes which he had made before frost, and put under
cover against a possible extension of his shop, "to-morrow or some time
after a while." These Jane bought, and deftly the chocolate walls arose
in her _vega_, crowned finally with a crimson roof, which could be seen
two miles off at Lynn. There was a porch, too, with snow-white pillars,
and an open fireplace, all tiled with adobe, in which might blaze fires
of piñon wood, full of resin and burning as nothing else can burn save
driftwood, sodden with salt and oil and the mystery of old ocean.
Then, after a little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which the
dullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were heads
shaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived to
unpack the treasure and help to lift it up the porch steps.
"_Por Dios!_" gasped Ana Vigil. "It must have cost fifty dollars! And
for what good, señora?"
"Lola's taking music-lessons," said Jane. "Her and Edith May Jonas is
learning a duet. I want she should be able to go right on practising."
"Ah!" said Ana, innocently. "She will not say your house now is 'ugly,'
will she? And you, señora, shall you get a longer dress and do your
hair up, so she will not say of you like she did, 'How queer'?"
Jane looked at Ana. Surely she could not mean to be ill-tempered--Ana,
with a face as broad and placid as a standing pool? No, no, Ana was too
simple to wish to pain any one! Yet as Jane dwelt upon Ana's queries,
it came slowly to Jane that certain changes in herself might be well.
She obeyed this wise, if late, impulse, and when Lola came home in June
she had her reward. The girl cried out with surprise as she beheld on
the platform at Lynn that tall figure in a soft gray gown, fashioned
with some pretensions to the mode, but simple and dignified as befitted
Jane's stature and look. There was a bonnet to match, too elderly for
Jane's years, and of a Quakerish form. But this was less the cause for
the general difference in Jane's aspect than the fact that her brown
hair, parted smoothly on the broad, benignant brow, now had its ends
tucked up in a neat knot.
"_Tia! tia!_" exclaimed Lola, herself glowing like a prairie-rose, as
she dashed out of the train. "What have you done? You are good to look
at! Your hair--oh, _asombro!_"
But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming the
plains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned white
on her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm.
"_Tia_--our house! It is gone--gone!"
Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate
and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and
the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was
altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and
in one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome.
Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was to
Jane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also with
time, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, and
people strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deep
gratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs,
filling the air with a chorus of "_Caspitas!_" and "_Carambas!_" None
of them called Lola "_Infanta_" nowadays unless it were in a spirit of
friendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which had
brought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head.
"She is Mexican--yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple
satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of
racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make
tunes--actual tunes!--issue from those keys which responded to their
own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling
note?
"Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the
morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common
beyond the _arroyo_.
This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted
celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green
boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course
which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and
of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino
Cortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a
violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The
Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be
seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting
duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were
even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon
allotted them.
It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara and
Hastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexican
vehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In the
upper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry of
the town--the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, the
schoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown,
was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas.
"And did you think going away to school would make her different?"
inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Make
her white like Miss Jonas? _Vaya!_ Lola is only a Mexican!"
"She is not ashamed to be one, either!" cried Alejandro, accepting
Ana's tacit imputation of some inferiority in their race. "And she is
white enough," he added, regarding Lola as she sat smiling and talking,
with the boughy eaves making little shadows across the rim of her
broad straw hat.
"Who said she was ashamed?" asked Ana, with suspicious suavity. "You
hear words that have not been spoken. I tell you of your faults,
_hermano mio_, because I love you!"
Alejandro turned off in a sulk, and, leaving Ana to her own resources,
went toward the place where the ponies and burros were tethered. It was
comparatively lonely here, and Alejandro began to make friends with a
disconsolate burro who was bewailing his fate in a series of lamentable
sounds.
"Ha, _bribon!_" he said, pinching the burro's ears. "What is the use of
wasting breath? _Sus, sus, amigo!_" The burro began to buck and
Alejandro stepped back. As he did so he saw approaching him from behind
the wagons a man in tattered garments, with a hat dragged over his
eyes, and a great mass of furzy yellow beard.
"Here, you!" said this person. "Oh, you're Mexican! _Ya lo veo_--"
[Illustration: "'I HOPED YOU'D BE ABLE TO LEND ME A HAND.'"]
"Me, I spik English all ri'!" retorted Alejandro, with dignity. "Spik
English if you want. I it onnerstan'."
"I see. Well, look here!" He withdrew a folded paper from his pocket.
"I want you to take this note over to that lady in the gray dress in
the pavilion. _Sabe_ 'pavilion'? All right! Don't let any one else see
it. Just hand it to her quietly and tell her the gentleman's waiting."
Alejandro took the note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at the
behest of this _vagabundo_ who impeached his English? The man, however,
had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling.
He decided to take the note to the lady in gray.
Jane, as Alejandro smuggled the paper into her hand, caught a glimpse
of the writing and felt her heart sink. Lola and Edith May Jonas were
whispering together. They had not noticed Alejandro.
"The man is waiting," said the boy, in her ear.
Jane touched Lola. "Keep my seat, dear," she said. "Some one wants to
speak to me." And she followed Alejandro across the field.
Alejandro's _vagabundo_ came forward to meet her with an air of light
cordiality. His voice was the voice which had greeted her first from
the steps of the prairie-schooner in which Lola's mother lay dead.
"It's me!" conceded Mr. Keene, pleasantly. "In rather poor shape, as
you see. It's always darkest before dawn! You're considerable changed,
ma'am--and to the better. I would hardly have known you. Is that girl
in the big white hat Lola? Well, well! Now, ma'am I'll tell you why I'm
here."
He proceeded to speak of an opportunity of immediate fortune which was
open to him, after prolonged disaster, if only the sum of five hundred
dollars might be forthcoming. A friend of his in Pony Gulch had sent
him glowing reports of the region. "All I want is a grub-stake," said
Mr. Keene, "and I'm sure to win!"
"I haven't that much money in the world!" said Jane.
Keene sighed. "Well, I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand, but if
you can't, you can't! There seems to be nothing for me but to go back
North, and try to earn something to start on. I guess it'd be well for
me to take Lola along. She's nearly grown now, and they need help the
worst kind in the miners' boarding-house where I stay up in Cripple. I
told the folks that keep it--I owe 'em considerable--that I'd bring
back my daughter with me to assist 'em in the dining-room, and they
said all right, that'd suit 'em. Wages up there are about the highest
thing in sight. Equal to the altitude. And it'll give me a chance to
look round."
Jane was staring at him. "You would do that?" she breathed. "You'd take
that delicate girl up there to wait on a lot of rough miners? I've
worked for her and loved her and sheltered her from everything! She's
not fit for any such life! She sha'n't go!"
Keene had been touched at first. At Jane's last assertion, however, he
began to look sulky.
"Well, I guess it's for me to say what she shall do!" he signified. "I
guess it's not against the law or the prophets for a daughter to assist
her father when he's in difficulties. And Lola'll recognize her duty.
I'll just go over yonder to the pavilion, ma'am, and see what she
says."
DESTINY PRESSES
CHAPTER FIVE
DESTINY PRESSES
Jane stood confounded. Her aghast mind, following Mr. Keene's project,
seemed to see him rakishly ascending the pavilion steps, among a
wondering throng, and making way to Lola as she sat, happy and honored,
with her friends. Jane had a sharp prevision of Lola's face when her
father should appear before her, so different from the tender ideal of
him which she had cherished, so intent upon himself, so bent upon
shattering with his first word to his child all those visions of
unselfish kindness and generosity which had made her thoughts of him
beautiful.
Lola would go with him. She would rise and leave her home, friends and
happy prospects to follow him to whatever life he might judge best,
however rough, however wild. In ordinary circumstances Jane could not
deny to herself that this course would be the right course for a
daughter; that such an one would do well to succor a father's failings,
to add hope to his despondency and love to the mitigation of his
trials. But Mr. Keene was not despondent, nor were his trials of a sort
which might not easily be tempered by something like industry on his
own part. He was frankly idle. He loved better than simple work the
precarious excitement of prospecting--an occupation which, except in
isolated and accidental instances, cannot be pursued to any good save
with the aid of science and capital.
Camp life might not be bad for Mr. Keene; but that it would be good for
a girl so young and sensitive to every impression as Lola, Jane
doubted.
"I got to consider what's best for her," thought Jane, while Keene
himself was beginning once more to sympathize with the silent misery in
her face.
"I never had no idea you thought so much of Lola!" he exclaimed. "She
wasn't the kind of child a stranger'd be apt to get attached to. I hope
you don't think I'd do anything mean? That isn't my style! All is, I'm
her father, and a father ought to have some say-so. Now aint that true,
Miss Combs?"
Jane was thinking. "Would three hundred dollars help you out?" she
demanded. "I've got that much. I've been saving it toward Lola's
schooling next year."
"What, have you been sending her to pay-school?" Keene looked
surprised, and unexpectedly his eyes began to dim. "I'd have been a
better man if I'd had any luck," he said, with apparent irrelevance.
Jane made no moral observations. She did not point out that a man's
virtue ought not to depend altogether on his income. She said simply,
"Will that much do?"
Mr. Keene, controlling his emotion, said it would, and they parted upon
the understanding that they should meet at Lynn two days later, for the
transference of the fund.
Then Jane plodded wearily back to the pavilion, and mutely watched the
cow-ponies rush and buck around the course. She beheld Valentino
Cortés, a meteoric vision in white cotton trousers, girdled in crimson,
flash by to victory amid the wild "_Vivas!_" of his compatriots. She
saw the burros trot past in their little dog-trot of a race.