with enforced attention to the speeches and the music, there were
present with her foreboding and unrest. For usually the Dauntless
pursued no vigorous labor in summer, but merely kept the water out of
its slope and "took up" and sold to various smelters such "slack" as it
had made during the winter. There would be no royalties coming in to
Jane, since no coal would be mined; and presently it would be
September, and no money for Lola's school.
So Jane's cares were thickening. Not only did the mine soon enter on
its summer inactivity, but worse befell. The mine boss came one day to
tell Jane that, because of a certain "roll" in the east entries, it was
deemed inadvisable farther to work these levels.
"The coal over there makes too much slack, anyhow," said the mine boss,
"so we intend hereafter to stick to the west." Whereupon, unaware of
leaving doom behind him, he went cheerfully away.
Jane's horizons had always lain close about her. She had never been
one to scent trouble afar off. To be content in the present, to be
trustful in the future, was her unformulated creed. And now, as she
mused, it came to her swiftly that she need not despair so long as she
had over her head a substantial dwelling. This abode, in its mere
cubhood, had afforded her financial succor. It would be queer if such
an office were beyond it now. Only this time the doctor must not be
approached; his reasoning before had been too searching.
Jane therefore wrote to a lawyer in Trinidad, authorizing him to obtain
for her a certain amount of money. She felt assured of the outcome of
this letter, but presently there came a reply which stupefied her. The
lawyer wrote that there happened to be in court a suit concerning the
boundaries of an old Spanish land grant, which, it was claimed,
extended north of the Purgatory River, and touched upon her own and
other neighboring property. The lawyer wrote that matters would
probably be settled in favor of the present landholders, but that, so
long as litigation pended, all titles were so clouded as to make any
questions of loans untenable.
Jane felt as if a ruthless destiny were pressing her home. She looked
at Lola, and her heart sank at the girl's air of springlike happiness
and hope. Must these sweet hours be broken upon with a tale of
impending penury?
Lola of late had seemed gentler, and the silent, stony moods were
leaving her, together with her childish impulse toward sudden anger. So
much Jane saw. Lola herself was sensible of a changing sway of feeling
which she did not seek to understand. To read of a noble deed brought
swift tears to her eyes in these days of mutation, and stirred her to
emulative dreams.
She did not know what power of action lay in her; but there seemed to
be some vital promise in the eager essence of spirit which spread
before her such visions of beautiful enterprise. Lola did not realize
how favorable to ripening character was the atmosphere in which she
lived. She could not yet know how she had been impressed by the simple
page of plain, undramatic kindness and generosity which Jane's life
opened daily to her eyes.
One day Jane spoke to her sadly.
"Lola," she said, "I'm afraid there won't be enough money to send you
away to school this year."
"But papa never denies me anything, _tia_."
"I know, dear."
"How funny you say that! Is--has he--lost his money, _tia_? You're
keeping something from me!"
"Lola," said Jane, in a moved voice, "I don't know a great deal about
your father's means. I can't say they're less than they were; but
there's reasons--why I'm afraid you can't--go to Pueblo this coming
fall. No, Lola--don't ask me any questions--I can't speak out! I've
done wrong! I can't say any more!" and to Lola's surprise she hurried
out of the room.
Never before had Lola witnessed in Jane such confusion and distress.
The sight bewildered and troubled her so sorely as for the moment to
exclude from mind the bearing upon her own future of Jane's ambiguous,
faltering words. Something was surely amiss; but the girl as yet fully
realized only one fact--that tia, always so steadfast and strong and
cheerful, had gone hastily from the room in the agitation of one who
struggled with unaccustomed tears. Lola hesitated to follow Jane. Some
inward prompting withheld her.
"She is like me," mused the girl. "She would rather be alone when
anything troubles her. I will wait. Maybe she will come back soon and
tell me everything."
Outside it was as dry and bright as ever. The Peaks stood bald and
pink against the flawless sky. Over in the Vigil yard Lola saw the
smaller Vigil boys lassoing one another with a piece of clothes-line,
while, dozing over her sewing, Señora Vigil herself squatted in the
doorway. Propped against the house-wall, Diego Vigil sat munching a
corn-cake and frugally dispersing crumbs to the magpies which hovered
about him in short, blue-glancing flights.
Diego was two years old--quite old enough to doff his ragged frock for
the "pantalones" which his mother was still working upon, after weeks
of listless endeavor. The señora's thread was long enough to reach
half-way across the yard, and it took time and patience to set a
stitch. For very weariness the señora nodded over her labor, and made
many little appeals to the saints that they might guide aright the
tortuous course of her double cotton.
"Life is hard!" sighed the señora, pausing over a knot in her endless
thread. "Ten children keep the needle hot. Ay, but this knot is a hard
one! There are evil spirits about."
She laid down her work to wipe her eyes, and, observing two of her sons
grappling in fraternal war at the house corner, she arose to cuff each
one impartially, exclaiming, "_Ea, muchachos!_ You fight before my very
eyes, eh? Take that! and that!" Waddling reluctantly back to her
sewing, she saw Lola standing in the white-pillared porch of the big
adobe house beyond, and a gleam of inspiration crossed the señora's
dark, fat face.
"She shall take out this knot," thought Señora Vigil. "Señorita!" she
called. "Come here, I pray you! There is a tangle in my thread and all
my girls are away!"
And, as Lola came across the field, she added, "I am dead of
loneliness, Lolita. Ana and Benita and Ines and Marina and Alejandro
are gone up the Trujillo to the wedding-party of their cousin, Judita
Vasquez. To-morrow she marries the son of Juan Montoya. _Hola!_ She
does well to get so rich a one! He has twenty goats, a cow and six
dogs. His house has two rooms and a shed. They will live splendid! It
is to be hoped these earthly grandeurs will not turn Judita's thoughts
from heaven!" The señora shook her head cheerfully. "My Ana told Judita
she ought to be thankful so plain a face as hers should find favor with
José Montoya. My Ana is full of loving thoughts! She never lets her
friends forget what poor, sinning mortals they are!"
"Indeed, no!" agreed Lola, feelingly, while she smoothed out the
thread.
"Take a stitch or two that I may be sure the cotton is really all
right!" implored the señora. "Yes, truly Ana is a maid of rare charms.
When she marries I shall be desolate!"
"Is there talk of that?" asked Lola, with interest. Ana was now
sixteen, and was nearly as heavy as her mother, and much more sedate.
In true Mexican fashion the look of youth had left her betimes, and her
swarthy plumpness had early hardened and settled to a look of maturity
to which future years could add little.
"There is Juan Suarez," said the señora, in a mysterious whisper, "and
if I would I could mention others; for, as you know, Lolita, my Ana is
very beautiful."
Lola maintained a judicious silence, and the señora continued placidly,
"Though she is my child, I am bound to admit it. Her nature is a rare
one, too. And when suitors throng about her she only shakes her head.
She is lofty. She will not listen. 'No, _caballeros_,' she says, 'I
have regarded your corral. It is too empty.' And one by one they go
away weeping, the poor caballeros! She is cruel, my Ana, being so
beautiful! Me, I own it--though my heart aches to see the caballeros
shedding tears!"
Lola, finding her own face expanding irresistibly, bent lower over
Diego's small trousers. The picture of Ana, standing disdainful among
the sorrowing caballeros and waving off their pleas with an imperious
hand, was one to bring a smile to lips of deadliest gravity. Ana, with
her hands on her broad hips, short and thick as a squat brown jug with
its handles akimbo,--Ana, with her great clay-colored face and tiny,
glittering eyes, with her thick, pale lips and coarse, black
hair,--surely none but a mother could view in Ana such charms as
bedewed Señora Vigil's eyes only to think of!
"To see unhappiness is a very blade in my heart!" sighed Señora Vigil,
recovering herself. "Do not make the thread short, Lolita! No, no! I
shall have to thread the needle again before the week is out, if you
do. Ah, yes! I wept much the day when you were lost, and Bev Gribble,
the vaquero, brought you home on his horse. 'Twas long ago. And now you
are grown tall and can play the piano. Shall you go on fretting your
poor head with more schooling, _chiquita_?"
[Illustration: "'DO NOT MAKE THE THREAD SHORT LOLITA!'"]
At this question Lola's mind sharply reverted to the distressing scene
which had by a moment preceded her neighbor's summons. There had been
in Jane's words a broken, yet oddly definite, assertion of impending
poverty. She had spoken of the unlikelihood of another year in Pueblo
for Lola, and the girl for the first time began to realize this fact
with a sinking of the heart. Her voice had a tremor as she said
hesitatingly, "I'm afraid I can't go back to Pueblo this fall."
"Not go back? The Jonas señorita goes back! Why not you? Has thy father
lost money? I am thy friend, Lolita. Tell me!"
"I can't tell what I don't know, señora. I don't know if he has lost
money. _Tia_ only said that--that I mightn't go back to school. She
didn't say why, but she will, no doubt."
Señora Vigil's eyes narrowed. She recalled certain rumors long afloat
in town as to Jane's extravagance, and the inability of her means to
such luxuries as pianos. Also, although half-consciously, the señora's
inner memory dwelt upon that corner of her back yard which it had been
Jane's sad fortune to take away.
The señora was not unkind or vindictive, but she had a mouse-trap sort
of mind which only occasionally was open to the admittance of ideas,
but which snapped fast forever upon such few notions as wandered into
it. Having once accepted the belief that Jane was not averse to snatch
at any good in her way, even if it belonged to another, the señora
found herself still under the sway of this opinion.
"The big house of Mees Combs has cost too much!" she asserted. "Where
has the money come from? From the coal? Some, perhaps, yes; but for all
of the great house, ah, it cannot be! Every one has been saying there
was not enough coal in her tract to pay for what she has done; and new
debts press, doubtless. What could be easier than to take the money of
thy father? I tell you, Lolita, that you cannot go to school because
Mees Combs has had to use your money to pay them! Eh, but your father
will be mad! He is not working himself to a bone that strangers should
build themselves fine houses! My Pablo said a little time ago that
people said your father's riches were going astray. Me, I did not
listen. Now I know he spoke true." The señora's tongue wagged on in a
diatribe of accusation and pity.
Lola let the sewing fall. Against her stoutest effort there prevailed a
vivid remembrance of Jane's manner and statements, of Jane's
self-impeachment and agitation, and, try as hard as she could to
forget them, the words which Jane had used kept coming to mind. "I have
done wrong!" Had not Jane said this? Had she not covered her
face--could it be _guiltily_--and gone away?
"No," said Lola, hoarsely, half to herself, half to her hearer, "it
isn't true! You make mistakes, Señora Vigil! Do you hear? You make
mistakes!"
"Alas, for thy soft heart!" moaned the señora. "Thou art changed much!
Me, I would not be hard on Mees Combs, though her sin is clear. Who am
I to judge? Nay, even I try to forget that me she has also despoiled;
that she took a corner of our back yard, and plants corn in it to this
day! I am all for forgiving. But the saints are not so easy!" said the
señora, unconscious of any disparagement to the saints, and referring
merely to a judicial quality in them.
Lola was not listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the soft
buzzing of the señora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm,
whirred around her bee-like, seeking hive and home.
"Don't think I believe anything against _tia_!" she heard herself
saying sternly, as the gate slipped from her impetuous hand and she
rushed away, the quarry of emotions which no speed, however swift,
could outdistance.
BEWILDERING SATISFACTION
CHAPTER SIX
BEWILDERING SATISFACTION
Lola found herself walking up the cañon, between the rocky hills beside
the dry _arroyo_. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her tread
in alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Colorado
sun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that was
half anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more and
more convincing in its ugliness.
It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong of
which Señora Vigil accused her--although Jane's own word, and no word
of the señora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had
faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with
the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her
delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant.
Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school.
"It isn't that I care for that!" throbbed Lola. It was not the stoppage
of her own course, indeed, although this was a misery, but the loss of
trust in all humanity which distrust of Jane seemed to the girl to
inflict upon her. If Jane were not true, none could be; and the
suspicion and unrest rioted back again to the bosom which belief in
Jane and the world had softened and calmed.
There was nothing to do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane's
shortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of the
case. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain and
indignation, Lola never made a question of this.
"Suppose it is true!" thought the girl, suddenly overcome by a new tide
of feeling. "What am I blaming her for? She would never have fixed the
house or bought things for herself! She did it all for me. And although
I would rather have gone to school than have the piano, am I to blame
_tia_ for not knowing this? She never thought where she was coming out.
She just went on and on. And now that there is no more money, she is
frightened and sorry and ashamed. She has done everything for me--even
herself she has fairly made over to please me. Poor _tia_! Oh,
ungrateful that I am to have been thinking unkindly of her!"
Suddenly all the bitterness left her, like an evil thing exorcised by
the first word of pitying tenderness. Tears stole sweetly to her eyes.
Peace came upon her shaken spirit. The day had been full of strange
revelations; and now it showed her how good for the human heart it is
to be able to pity weakness, to love, to forbear and to forgive.
In the strange peacefulness which brooded over her she walked home
between the piñon-sprinkled hills, where doves were crooning and the
far bleating of an upland herd echoed among the barren ridges. She
reflected quietly upon meeting Jane without a hint of any shadow in her
face, but in such sunniness of humor as should gladden and reassure.
And Jane would never dream of the dark hour which had visited her
child. She would never know that any slightest thought, unnurtured in
affection, had risen to cast between them the least passing shadow;
although from Lola's heart might never pass away that little,
inevitable sense of loss which those know whose love survives a
revelation of weakness in one believed to be strong.
As she came in sight of the hollow roof of the Dauntless she saw the
doctor riding toward her.
"Hello!" he said. "What have you been doing up the cañon? Building
Spanish castles?"
"Watching Spanish castles fall," said Lola, smiling. "What would you
do," she went on lightly, "if you had planned something worth while,
and it became impossible?"
The doctor looked down at her young, questioning face. It was grave,
although she spoke gaily, and looked so mere a slip of girlhood with
her brown throat and cheek and lifted black-lashed eyes.
Unexpectedly the doctor remembered when he, too, had meant to do things
that should be "worth while." He thought of Berlin and Vienna and
Paris, and the clinics where he had meant to acquire such skill as,
aiding his zeal, should write him among the first physicians of his
day. And here he was, practising among a few Mexicans and miners,
tending their bruises, doling them out quinine, and taking pay of a
dollar a month from every man, sick or well, enrolled on the mine
books, and frequently getting nothing at all from such as were not
therein enrolled. Never a volume of his had startled the world of
science. Surgery was bare of his exploits. Medical annals knew him not.
All he had thought to do was undone by him; and yet here he was,
contented, happy and healthy in a realm of little duties. In so
unpretentious a life as this he had found satisfaction; and for the
first time it came upon him that thus simply and calmly satisfaction
comes to the great mass of men who have nothing to do with glory or
hope of glory.
"When great things become impossible, what would you do?" said Lola,
tossing back her long, braided hair.
"I would do little things," said the doctor, with whimsical soberness.
An unusual equipage was turning in from the Trinidad road--an equipage
on which leather and varnish shone, and harness brasses flashed, while
the dust rolled pompously after it in a freakish fantasy of postilions
and outriders. The driver made a great business of his long whip. The
horses were sleek and brown. Altogether the vehicle had a lordly air,
easily matching that of the individual sitting alone on the purple
cushions--a man whose features were not very clear at the distance,
although the yellowness of his beard, the glitter of his studded
shirt-front, and whole consequential, expansive effect recalled to the
doctor's mind an image of the past, less ornate, indeed, and affluent,
but of similar aspect. He narrowed his eyes, staring townward over
Lola's head, and wondering if yonder princely personage might not in
very truth be Lola's father.
But the girl's eyes were bent upon the ground. She did not see the
equipage or the man on the purple cushions.
"You do little things?" she said, raising her eyes gravely to the
doctor's. He had always seemed to her the man who did great things. "I
will try," she added, seriously.
While she talked with the doctor the world seemed to Lola a pleasant
place, with a golden light on its long levels and a purple glamour on
its hills. And after he had left her, she went with a light heart down
the unpaved street that she had lately traversed in unseeing
bitterness. The very hum of the mine cars was full of good cheer;
children splashed joyously in the ditch; magpies gossiped; the
blacksmith-shop rang with a merry din of steel.
Set emerald-like in the yellow circle of the prairies, the green young
cottonwood grove about Jane's house shone fresh and vivid. At the white
gate a carriage waited--a strange carriage which Lola scrutinized
wonderingly as she approached. With delighted eyes she noted the
purple cushions and the satin coats of the horses. Who could have
come? Whose voice was that which issued from the house in an unbroken
monologue, genial, laughing, breathless?
Suddenly, as she mounted the porch steps, a persuasion of familiarity
in those light accents overcame her. Could it be that her father had
come at last? That, after all her waiting, she was to see him and talk
with him and sob out on his breast her appreciation of his long labors
in her behalf, his kindness, unselfishness and goodness?
She forgot that she had sometimes been hurt at his silence and absence.
Her childhood swam before her; she recalled the sweetness of her
mother's face, and in that memory he who awaited her in Jane's
sitting-room gathered a graciousness which exalted him, as if he, too,
had been dead and was alive again.
The talk broke off at her impetuous entrance. Upon a chair sat a man
with a round and ruddy face, with bright blue eyes and a curling spread
of yellow beard. Lola hesitated. She doubted if this richly arrayed,
somewhat stout man could be the slim, boyish-looking father she
remembered. Then the unalterable joyousness of his glance reassured
her, and she rushed forward crying, "Oh, it's you! It's you!"
She had not noticed Jane, who sat opposite, mute and relaxed, like one
in whom hope and resolution flag and fail; but Jane's deep eyes
followed Lola's swift motion, and her look changed a little at the
girl's air of eager joy. As she saw Lola fling herself upon his breast
and cling there, she winced, and her heart yearned at the sight of a
love which she had somehow failed to win with all her efforts, and
which now she should never win, since Lola was about to leave her
forever.
The hour so long dreaded by Jane seemed surely to have come at
last--the hour of her child's departure. Forth to life's best and
brightest Lola would go, as was meet. Happiness illimitable awaited the
girl she had cherished. It was right that this should be so; yet, alas
for the vast void gray of the empty heart which Lola would leave
behind!
"Well, this is a kind of surprise!" said Mr. Keene, holding his
daughter away for a better sight of her radiant face. "You are taller
than I expected. She's got real Spanish eyes, aint she, Miss Combs?
Like her mother's. The Keenes are all sandy. I'm not sure I'd have
known you, Lola."
"Oh, papa, you've been away so long! You've been kind and good to
me--yet--"
"We'll have to let bygones be bygones," declared her father, gratified
to learn that she had thought him good and kind--for this point had
rather worried him. "I've felt at times as if I hadn't done you just
right."
"Don't say so, papa!"
"Well, I won't," agreed Mr. Keene, willingly. "Only I'm glad to find
you haven't cherished anything against me for leaving you like I did.
When I persuaded Miss Jane to take you, I couldn't foresee what hard
luck I was going to strike, could I?" As he paused he caught Jane's eye
upon him in a significance which he did not understand.
"She doesn't know," said Jane, in a sort of whisper, indicating Lola,
whose back was toward her.
"Doesn't know what?" asked Mr. Keene, unwitting and bewildered. "Of
course she doesn't know all I suffered, what with taking up one
worthless claim after another month in and out--if you mean that! Why,
I actually thought one time of giving up prospecting and settling down
to day's work! Yes'm! It was sure enough that grub-stake you gave me
last Fourth of July that brought me my first luck! I put it right into
Pony Gulch and my pick struck free-milling ore the first blow! Some of
the stuff runs ninety dollars to the ton and some higher. I've already
had good offers for my claim from an English syndicate, but I haven't
decided to sell. Seems queer it should be such a little while ago that
I called you out of that pavilion, Miss Jane, and told you what a fix I
was in! You remember you said you hadn't the money--and then afterward
you turned in, real friendly, and raised me what I needed."
Lola exclaimed, "You were here in town on the Fourth of July? O papa!
Why didn't I see you? Oh--what--"
"You came near enough to seeing me," laughed Mr. Keene, "and to going
away with me, too! I'm glad things happened like they did. That
boarding-house was no place for you, Lola. I realize it now! But I was
pushed to the wall. But for Miss Jane's helping me out, I'd have had to
take you away, sure enough! She told you, didn't she?"
"Told me? Told me what?"
"Why, about my idea of getting you that situation up in Cripple? They
needed help bad up in the boarding-house where I lived, and I'd made
'em a promise to fetch you. It was easy work in the dining-room, and
right good pay."
"And--and--_tia_ fixed it--so--you decided to leave me here?"