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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories
+by Mary Hallock Foote
+
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+Title: A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories
+
+Author: Mary Hallock Foote
+
+Release Date: July, 2005  [EBook #8538]
+[This file was first posted on July 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A TOUCH OF SUN AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+A Touch of Sun and Other Stories
+
+by
+
+Mary Hallock Foote
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A TOUCH OF SUN
+
+THE MAID'S PROGRESS
+
+PILGRIMS TO MECCA
+
+THE HARSHAW BRIDE
+
+
+
+
+A TOUCH OF SUN
+
+
+I
+
+The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequential
+chest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of the
+Asgard group, a famous mining property of northern California.
+
+The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric titles on the
+western slope of the foot-hills,--land enough for the preservation of a
+natural park within its own boundaries where fire-lines were cleared,
+forest-trees respected, and roads kept up. Wherever the company erected a
+board fence, gate, or building, the same was methodically painted a color
+known as "monopoly brown." The most conspicuous of these objects cropped
+out on the sunset dip of the property where the woods for twenty years
+had been cut, and the Sacramento valley surges up in heat and glare, with
+yearly visitations of malaria.
+
+Higher than the buildings in brown, a gray-shingled bungalow ranged itself
+on the lap of its broad lawns against a slope of orchard tops climbing to
+the dark environment of the forest. Not the original forest: of that only
+three stark pines were left, which rose one hundred feet out of a gulch
+below the house and lent their ancient majesty to the modern uses of
+electric wires and telephone lines. Their dreaming tops were in the sky;
+their feet were in the sluicings of the stamp-mill that reared its long
+brown back in a semi-recumbent posture, resting one elbow on the hill; and
+beneath the valley smouldered, a pale mirage by day, by night a vision of
+color transcendent and rich as the gates of the Eternal City.
+
+At half past five the night watchman, on his way from town, stopped at
+the superintendent's gate, ran up the blazing path, and thrust a newspaper
+between the dark blue canvas curtains that shaded the entrance of the
+porch. For hours the house had slept behind its heat defenses, every
+shutter closed, yards of piazza blind and canvas awning fastened down. The
+sun, a ball of fire, went slowly down the west. Rose-vines drooped against
+the hanging lattices, printing their watery lines of split bamboo with
+a shadow-pattern of leaf and flower. The whole house-front was decked
+with dead roses, or roses blasted in full bloom, as if to celebrate with
+appropriate insignia the passing of the hottest day of the year.
+
+Half-way down the steps the watchman stopped, surprised by a voice from
+behind the curtains. He came back in answer to his name.
+
+A thin white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker
+of a fan held against the light.
+
+"Oh, Hughson, will you tell Mr. Thorne that I am here? He doesn't know I
+have come."
+
+"Tell him that Mrs. Thorne is home?" the man translated slowly.
+
+"Yes. He does not expect me. You will tell him at once, please?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+The curtain was fastened again from inside. A woman's step went restlessly
+up and down, up and down the long piazza floors, now muffled on a rug, now
+light on a matting, or distinct on the bare boards.
+
+Later a soft Oriental voice inquired, "Wha' time Missa Tho'ne wanta dinna?"
+
+"The usual time, Ito," came the answer; "make no difference for me."
+
+"Lika tea--coffee--after dinna?"
+
+"Tea--iced. Have you some now? Oh, bring it, please!"
+
+After an interval: "Has Mr. Thorne been pretty well?"
+
+"I think."
+
+"It is very hot. How is your kitchen--any better than it was?"
+
+"Missa Tho'ne fixa more screen; all open now, thank you."
+
+"Take these things into my dressing-room. No; there will be no trunk. I
+shall go back in a few days."
+
+The gate clashed to. A stout man in a blaze of white duck came up the
+path, lifting his cork helmet slightly to air the top of his head. As he
+approached it could be seen that his duck was of a modified whiteness, and
+that his beard, even in that forcing weather, could not be less than a two
+days' growth. He threw his entire weight on the steps one by one, as he
+mounted them slowly. The curtains were parted for him from within.
+
+"Well, Margaret?"
+
+"Well, dear old man! How hot you look! _Why_ do you not carry an umbrella?"
+
+"Because I haven't got you here to make me. What brought you back in such
+weather? Where is your telegram?"
+
+"I did not telegraph. There was no need. I simply had to speak to you at
+once--about something that could not be written."
+
+"Well, it's good to have a look at you again. But you are going straight
+back, you know. Can't take any chances on such weather as this."
+
+Mr. Thorne sank copiously into a piazza chair, and pulled forward another
+for his wife.
+
+She sat on the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Her
+profile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powdered
+with gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back from
+a small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She had
+taken off her high, close neckwear, and the wanness of her throat showed
+above a collarless shirt-waist.
+
+"Don't look at me; I am a wreck!" she implored, with a little exhausted
+laugh. "I wonder where my keys are? I must get on something cool before
+dinner."
+
+"Ito has all the keys somewhere. Ito's a gentleman. He takes beautiful care
+of me, only he won't let me drink as much _shasta_ as I want. What is that?
+Iced tea? Bad, bad before dinner! I'm going to watch _you_ now. You are not
+looking a bit well. Is there any of that decoction left? Well, it is bad;
+gets on the nerves, too much of it. The problem of existence here is, What
+shall we drink, and how much of it _can_ we drink?"
+
+Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. But
+we will talk when it is cooler. Don't you--don't you shave but twice a week
+when I am away, Henry?"
+
+"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don't
+have anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do to
+live and be up to his work."
+
+"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! It
+starts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now it
+roars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"
+
+"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazza
+floor. It will be the grass if this keeps on."
+
+"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's careless
+speeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiar
+way of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioning
+looks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, who
+realize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing.
+
+"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"
+
+"Why didn't you write _me_ that you were not well?"
+
+"I am well."
+
+"You don't look it--anything but."
+
+"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health that
+brought me. But--never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys."
+
+At dinner she looked ten years younger, sitting opposite him in her summery
+lawns and laces. She tasted the cold wine soup, but ate nothing, watching
+her husband's appetite with the mixed wonder and concern that thirty
+years' knowledge of its capacities had not diminished. He studied her face
+meanwhile; he was accustomed to reading faces, and hers he knew by line and
+precept. He listened to her choked little laughs and hurried speeches. All
+her talk was mere postponement; she was fighting for time. Hence he argued
+that the trouble which had sent her flying home to him from the mountains
+was not fancy-bred. Of her imaginary troubles she was ready enough to
+speak.
+
+The moon had risen, a red, dry-weather moon, when they walked out into
+the garden and climbed the slope under low orchard boughs. The trees were
+young, too quickly grown; like child mothers, they had lost their natural
+symmetry, overburdened with hasty fruition. Each slender parent trunk was
+the centre of a host of artificial props, which saved the sinking boughs
+from breaking. Under one of these low green tents they stopped and handled
+the great fruit that fell at a touch.
+
+"How everything rushes to maturity here! The roses blossom and wither
+the same hour. The peaches burst before they ripen. Don't you think it
+oppresses one, all this waste fertility, such an excess of life and good
+living, one season crowding upon another? How shall we get rid of all these
+kindly fruits of the earth?"
+
+She did not wait for an answer to her morbid questions. They moved on up
+a path between hedges of sweet peas going to seed, and blackberry-vines
+covered with knots of fruit dried in their own juices. A wall of gigantic
+Southern cane hid the boundary fence, and above it the night-black pines of
+the forest towered, their breezy monotone answering the roar of the hundred
+stamps below the hill.
+
+A few young pines stood apart on a knoll, a later extension of the garden,
+ungraded and covered with pine-needles. In the hollow places native shrubs,
+surprised by irrigation, had made an unwonted summer's growth.
+
+Here, in the blanching moon, stood a tent with both flaps thrown back. A
+wind of coolness drew across the hill; it lifted one of the tent-curtains
+mysteriously; its touch was sad and searching.
+
+Mrs. Thorne put back the canvas and stepped inside. She saw a folding
+camp-cot stripped of bedding, a dresser with half-open drawers that
+disclosed emptiness, a dusty book-rack standing on the floor. The little
+mirror on the tent-pole, hung too high for her own reflection, held a
+darkling picture of a pine-bough against a patch of stars. She sat on the
+edge of the cot and picked up a discarded necktie, sawing it across her
+knee mechanically to free it from the dust. Her husband placed himself
+beside her. His weight brought down the mattress and rocked her against his
+shoulder; he put his arm around her, and she gave way to a little sob.
+
+"When has he written to you?" she asked. "Since he went down?"
+
+"I think so. Let me see! When did you hear last?"
+
+"I have brought his last letter with me. I wondered if he had told you."
+
+"I have heard nothing--nothing in particular. What is it?"
+
+"The inevitable woman."
+
+"She has come at last, has she? Come to stay?"
+
+"He is engaged to her."
+
+Mr. Thorne breathed his astonishment in a low whistle. "You don't like it?"
+he surmised at once.
+
+"Like it! If it were merely a question of liking! She is impossible. She
+knows it, her people know it, and they have not told him. It remains"--
+
+"What is the girl's name?"
+
+"Henry, she is not a girl! That is, she is a girl forced into premature
+womanhood, like all the fruits of this hotbed climate. She is that Miss
+Benedet whom you helped, whom you saved--how many years ago? When Willy was
+a schoolboy."
+
+"Well, she _was_ saved, presumably."
+
+"Saved from what, and by a total stranger!"
+
+"She made no mistake in selecting the stranger. I can testify to that; and
+she was as young as he, my dear."
+
+"A girl is never as young as a boy of the same age. She is a woman now, and
+she has taken his all--everything a man can give to his first--and told him
+nothing!"
+
+"Are you sure it's the same girl? There are other Benedets."
+
+"She is the one. His letter fixes it beyond a question--so innocently he
+fastens her past upon her! And he says, 'She is "a woman like a dewdrop."'
+I wonder if he knows what he is quoting, and what had happened to _that_
+woman!"
+
+"Dewdrops don't linger long in the sun of California. But she was
+undeniably the most beautiful creature this or any other sun ever shone
+on."
+
+"And he is the sweetest, sanest, cleanest-hearted boy, and the most
+innocent of what a woman may go through and still be fair outside!"
+
+"Why, that is why she likes him. It speaks well for her, I think, that she
+hankers after that kind of a boy."
+
+"It speaks volumes for what she lacks herself! Don't misunderstand me.
+I hope I am not without charity for what is done and never can be
+undone,--though charity is hardly the virtue one would hope to need in
+welcoming a son's wife. It is her ghastly silence now that condemns her."
+
+Mr. Thorne heaved a sigh, and changed his feet on the gritty tent floor.
+He stooped and picked up some small object on which he had stepped, a
+collar-stud trodden flat. He rolled it in his fingers musingly.
+
+"She may be getting up her courage to tell him in her own time and way."
+
+"The time has gone by when she could have told him honorably. She should
+have stopped the very first word on his lips."
+
+"She couldn't do that, you know, and be human. She couldn't be expected to
+spare him at such a cost as that. Mighty few men would be worth it."
+
+"If he wasn't worth it she could have let him go. And the family! Think of
+their accepting his proposal in silence. Why, can they even be married,
+Henry, without some process of law?"
+
+"Heaven knows! I don't know how far the other thing had gone--far enough to
+make questions awkward."
+
+Husband and wife remained seated side by side on the son's deserted bed.
+The shape of each was disconsolately outlined to the other against the
+tent's illumined walls. Now a wind-swayed branch of manzanita rasped the
+canvas, and cast upon it shadows of its moving leaves.
+
+"It's pretty rough on quiet old folks like us, with no money to get us into
+trouble," said Mr. Thorne. "The boy is not a beauty, he's not a swell. He
+is just a plain, honest boy with a good working education. If you judge a
+woman, as some say you can, by her choice of men, she shouldn't be very far
+out of the way."
+
+"It is very certain you cannot judge a man by his choice of women."
+
+"You cannot judge a boy by the women that get hold of him. But Willy is
+not such a babe as you think. He's a deuced quiet sort, but he's not
+been knocking around by himself these ten years, at school and college
+and vacations, without picking up an idea or two--possibly about women.
+Experience, I grant, be probably lacks; but he has the true-bred instinct.
+We always have trusted him so far; I'm willing to trust him now. If there
+are things he ought to know about this woman, leave him to find them out
+for himself."
+
+"After he has married her! And you don't even know whether a marriage is
+possible without some sort of shuffling or concealment; do you?"
+
+"I don't, but they probably do. Her family aren't going to get themselves
+into that kind of a scrape."
+
+"I have no opinion whatever of the family. I think they would accept any
+kind of a compromise that money can buy."
+
+"Very likely, and so would we if we had a daughter"--
+
+"Why, we _have_ a daughter! It is our daughter, all the daughter we shall
+ever call ours, that you are talking about. And to think of the girls and
+girls he might have had! Lovely girls, without a flaw--a flaw! She will
+fall to pieces in his hand. She is like a broken vase put together and set
+on the shelf to look at."
+
+"Now we are losing our sense of proportion. We must sleep on this, or it
+will blot out the whole universe for us."
+
+"It has already for me. I haven't a shadow of faith in anything left."
+
+"And I haven't read the paper. Suppose the boy were in Cuba now!"
+
+"I wish he were! It is a judgment on me for wanting to save him up, for
+insisting that the call was not for him."
+
+"That's just it, you see. You have to trust a man to know his own call.
+Whether it's love or war, he is the one who has got to answer."
+
+"But you will write to him to-morrow, Henry? He must be saved, if the truth
+can save him. Think of the awakening!"
+
+"My dear, if he loves her there will be no awakening. If there is, he will
+have to take his dose like other men. There is nothing in the truth that
+can save him, though I agree with you that he ought to know it--from her."
+
+"If you had only told her your name, Henry! Then she would have had a
+fingerpost to warn her off our ground. To think what you did for her, and
+how you are repaid!"
+
+"It was a very foolish thing I did for her; I wasn't proud of it. That was
+one reason why I did not tell her my name."
+
+Mr. Thorne removed his weight from the cot. The warped wires twanged back
+into place.
+
+"Come, Maggie, we are too old not to trust in the Lord--or something.
+Anyhow, it's cooler. I believe we shall sleep to-night."
+
+"And haven't I murdered sleep for you, you poor old man? What a thing it
+is to have nerve and no nerves! I know you feel just as wrecked as I do. I
+wish you would say so. I want it said to the uttermost. If I could but--our
+only boy--our boy of 'highest hopes'! You remember the dear old Latin words
+in his first 'testimonials'?"
+
+"They must have been badly disappointed in their girl, and I suppose they
+had their 'hopes,' too."
+
+"They should not drag another into the pit, one too innocent to have
+imagined such treachery."
+
+"I wouldn't make too much of his innocence. He is all right so far as we
+know; he's got precious little excuse for not being: but there is no such
+gulf between any two young humans; there can't be, especially when one is a
+man. Take my hand. There's a step there."
+
+Two shapes in white, with shadows preposterously lengthening, went down the
+hill. The long, dark house was open now to the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no night in the "stilly" sense at a mine.
+
+The mill glared through all its windows from the gulch. Sentinel lights
+kept watch on top. The hundred stamps pounded on. If they ceased a moment,
+there followed the sob of the pump, or the clang of a truck-load of drills
+dumped on the floor of the hoisting-works, or the thunder of rock in the
+iron-bound ore-bins. All was silence on the hill; but a wakeful figure
+wrapped in white went up and down the empty porches, light as a dead leaf
+on the wind. It was the mother, wasting her night in grievous thinking,
+sighing with weariness, pining for sleep, dreading the day. How should they
+presume to tell that woman's story, knowing her only through one morbid
+chapter of her earliest youth, which they had stumbled upon without the key
+to it, or any knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they might
+be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her
+heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him.
+If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why,
+then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence,
+even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence as well!
+
+The roar of the stamp-heads deadened her hearing of the night's subtler
+noises. Her thoughts went grinding on, crushing the hard rock of
+circumstance, but incapable of picking out the grains of gold therein.
+Later siftings might discover them, but she was reasoning now under too
+great human pressure for delicate analysis.
+
+She saw the planets set and the night-mist cloak the valley. By four
+o'clock daybreak had put out the stars. She went to her room then and
+fell asleep, awakening after the heat had begun, when the house was again
+darkened for the day's siege.
+
+She was still postponing, wandering through the darkened rooms, peering
+into closets and bureau drawers to see, from force of habit, how Ito
+discharged his trust.
+
+At luncheon she asked her husband if he had written. He made a gesture
+expressing his sense of the hopelessness of the situation in general.
+
+"You know how I came by my knowledge, and how little it amounts to as a
+question of facts."
+
+"Henry, how can you trifle so! You believe, just as I do, that such facts
+would wreck any marriage. And you are not the only one who knows them. I
+think your knowledge was providentially given you for the saving of your
+son."
+
+"My son is a man. _I_ can't save him. And take my word for it, he will go
+all lengths now before he will be saved."
+
+"Let him go, then, with his eyes open, not blindfold, in jeopardy of other
+men's tongues."
+
+Mr. Thorne rose uneasily.
+
+"Do as you think you must; but it rather seems to me that I am bound to
+respect that woman's secret."
+
+"You wish that you had not told me."
+
+"Well, I have, and I suppose that was part of the providence. It is in your
+hands now; be as easy on her as you can."
+
+With a view to being "easy," Mrs. Thorne resolved not to expatiate, but to
+give the story on plain lines. The result was hardly as merciful as might
+have been expected.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"DEAR WILLY," she wrote: "Prepare yourself for a most unhappy letter [what
+woman can forego her preface?]--unhappy mother that I am, to have such a
+message laid upon me. But you will understand when you have read why the
+cup may not pass from us. If ever again a father or a mother can help you,
+my son, you have us always here, poor in comfort though we are. It seems
+that the comforters of our childhood have little power over those hurts
+that come with strength of years.
+
+"Seven years ago this summer your father went to the city on one of his
+usual trips. Everything was usual, except that at Colfax he noticed a pair
+of beautiful thoroughbred horses being worked over by the stablemen, and a
+young fellow standing by giving directions. The horses had been overridden
+in the heat. It was such weather as we are having now. The young man, who
+appeared to have everything to say about them, was of the country sporting
+type, distinctly not the gentleman. In a cattle country he would have been
+a cowboy simply. Your father thought he might have been employed on some
+of the horse-breeding ranches below Auburn as a trainer of young stock. He
+even wondered if he could have stolen the animals.
+
+"But as the train moved out it appeared he had appropriated something of
+greater value--a young girl, also a thoroughbred.
+
+"It did not need the gossip of the train-hands to suggest that this was an
+elopement of a highly sensational kind. Father was indignant at the jokes.
+You know it is a saying with the common sort of people that in California
+elopements become epidemic at certain seasons of the year--like earthquake
+shocks or malaria. The man was handsome in a primitive way--worlds beneath
+the girl, who was simply and tragically a lady. Father sat in the same car
+with them, opposite their section. It grew upon him by degrees that she was
+slowly awakening, as one who has been drugged, to a stupefied consciousness
+of her situation. He thought there might still be room for help at the
+crisis of her return to reason (I mean all this in a spiritual sense), and
+so he kept near them. They talked but little together. The girl seemed
+stunned, as I say, by physical exhaustion or that dawning comprehension
+in which your father fancied he recognized the tragic element of the
+situation.
+
+"The young man was outwardly self-possessed, as horsemen are, but he seemed
+constrained with the girl. They had no conversation, no topics in common.
+He kept his place beside her, often watching her in silence, but he did not
+obtrude himself. She appeared to have a certain power over him, even in her
+helplessness, but it was slipping from her. In her eyes, as they rested
+upon him in the hot daylight, your father believed that he saw a wild and
+gathering repulsion. So he kept near them.
+
+"The train was late, having waited at Colfax two hours for the Eastern
+Overland, else they would have been left, those two, and your father--but
+such is fate!
+
+"It was ten o'clock when they reached Oakland. He lost the pair for a
+moment in the crowd going aboard the boat, but saw the girl again far
+forward, standing alone by the rail. He strolled across the deck, not
+appearing to have seen her. She moved a trifle nearer; with her eyes on the
+water, speaking low as if to herself, she said:--
+
+"'I am in great danger. Will you help me? If you will, listen, but do
+not speak or come any nearer. Be first, if you can, to go ashore; have
+a carriage ready, and wait until you see me. There will be a moment,
+perhaps--only a moment. Do not lose it. You understand? _He_, too, will
+have to get a carriage. When he comes for me I shall be gone. Tell the
+driver to take me to--' she gave the number of a well-known residence on
+Van Ness Avenue.
+
+"He looked at her then, and said quietly, 'The Benedet house is closed for
+the summer.'
+
+"She hung her head at the name. 'Promise me your silence!' she implored in
+the same low, careful voice.
+
+"'I will protect you in every way consistent with common sense,' your
+father answered, 'but I make no promises.'
+
+"'I am at your mercy,' she said, and added, 'but not more than at his.'
+
+"'Is this a case of conspiracy or violence?' your father asked.
+
+"She shook her head. 'I cannot accuse him. I came of my own free will. That
+is why I am helpless now.'
+
+"'I do not see how I can help you,' said father.
+
+"'You can help me to gain time. One hour is all I ask. Will you or not?'
+she said. 'Be quick! He is coming.'
+
+"'I must go with you, then,' your father answered, 'I will take you to this
+address, but I need not tell you the house is empty.'
+
+"'There are people in the coachman's lodge,' she answered. Then her
+companion approached, and no more was said.
+
+"But the counter-elopement was accomplished as only your father could
+manage such a matter on the spur of the moment--consequences accepted with
+his usual philosophy and bonhomie. If he could have foreseen _all_ the
+consequences, he would not, I think, have refused to give her his name.
+
+"He left her at the side entrance, where she rang and was admitted by an
+oldish, respectable looking man, who recognized her evidently with the
+greatest surprise. Then your father carried out her final order to wire
+Norwood Benedet, Jr., at Burlingame, to come home that night to the house
+address and save--she did not say whom or what; there she broke off,
+demanding that your father compose a message that should bring him as sure
+as life and death, but tell no tales. I do not know how she may have put
+it--these are my own words.
+
+"There was a paragraph in one newspaper, next morning, which gave the
+girl's full name, and a fancy sketch of her elopement with the famous
+range-rider Dick Malaby. This was just after the close of the cattlemen's
+war in Wyoming. Malaby had fought for one of the ruined English companies.
+(The big owners lost everything, as you know. The country was up in arms
+against them; they could not protect their own men.) Malaby's employers
+were friends of the Benedets, and had asked a place with them for their
+liegeman. He was a desperado with a dozen lives upon his head, but men like
+Norwood Benedet and his set would have been sure to make a pet of him. One
+could see how it all had come about, and what a terrible publicity such a
+name associated with hers would give a girl for the rest of her life.
+
+"But money can do a great deal. Society was out of town; the newspapers
+that society reads were silent.
+
+"It was announced a few days later that Mrs. Benedet and her daughter Helen
+had gone East on their way to Europe. As Mr. Benedet's health was very
+bad,--this was only six months before he died,--society wondered; but it
+has been accustomed to wondering about the Benedets.
+
+"Mrs. Benedet came home at the time of her husband's death and remained for
+a few months, but Helen was kept away. You know they have continually been
+abroad for the last seven years, and Helen has never been seen in society
+here. When you spoke of 'Miss Benedet' I no more thought of her than if
+she had not been living. Aunt Frances met them last winter at Cannes, and
+Mrs. Benedet said positively that they had no intention of coming back to
+California ever to live. Aunt Frances wondered why, with their beautiful
+homes empty and going to destruction. I have told you the probable reason.
+Whether it still exists, God knows--or what they have done with that man
+and his dreadful knowledge.
+
+"Helen Benedet may have changed her spiritual identity since she made that
+fatal journey, but she can hardly have forgotten what she did. She must
+know there is a man who, if he lives, holds her reputation at the mercy of
+his silence. Money can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything.
+
+"I am tempted to wish that we--your father and I--could share your
+ignorance, could trust as you do. Better a common awakening for us all,
+than that I should be the one necessity has chosen to apply the torture to
+my son.
+
+"The misery of this will make you hate my handwriting forever. But why do I
+babble? You do not hear me. God help you, my dear!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These words, descriptive of her own emotions, Mrs. Thorne on re-reading
+scored out, and copied the last page.
+
+She did not weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled
+away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out
+at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow.
+But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an attitude
+befitting her years.
+
+The letter was absently sealed and addressed; there was no reason why the
+shaft should not go home. Yet she hesitated. It were better that she should
+read it to her husband first.
+
+The sun dropped below the piazza roof and pierced the bamboo lattices with
+lines and slits of fervid light.
+
+  "From heat to heat the day declined."
+
+The gardener came with wet sacking and swathed the black-glazed
+jardinieres, in which the earth was steaming. The mine whistle blared, and
+a rattle of miners' carts followed, as the day-shift dispersed to town. The
+mine did not board its proletariate. At his usual hour the watchman braved
+the blinding path, and left the evening paper on the piazza floor. There it
+lay unopened. Mrs. Thorne fanned herself and looked at it. There must be
+fighting in Cuba; she did not move to see. Other mothers' sons were dying;
+what was death to such squalor as hers? Sorrow is a queen, as the poet
+says, and sits enthroned; but Trouble is a slave. Mothers with griefs like
+hers must suffer in the fetters of silence.
+
+When dinner was over, Ito made his nightly pilgrimage through the house,
+opening bedroom shutters, fastening curtains back. He drew up the
+piazza-blinds, and like a stage-scene, framed in post and balustrade, and
+bordered with a tracery of rose-vines, the valley burst upon the view.
+Its cool twilight colors, its river-bed of mist, added to the depth of
+distance. Against it the white roses looked whiter, and the pink ones
+caught fire from the intense, great afterglow.
+
+The silent couple, drinking their coffee outside, drew a long mutual sigh.
+
+"Every day," said Mrs. Thorne, "we wonder why we stay in such a place, and
+every evening we are cajoled into thinking there never can be such
+another day. And the beauty is just as fresh every night as the heat is
+preposterous by day."
+
+"It's a great strain on the men," said Mr. Thorne. "We lost two of our best
+hands this week--threw down their tools and quit, for some tomfoolery they
+wouldn't have noticed a month ago. The bosses irritate the men, and the
+men get fighting mad in a minute. Not one of them will bear the weight of
+a word, and I don't blame them. The work is hard enough in decent weather;
+they are dropping off sick every day. The night-shift boys can't sleep in
+their hot little houses---they look as if they'd all been on a two weeks'
+tear. The next improvement we make I shall build a rest-house where the
+night-shift can turn in and sleep inside of stone walls, without crying
+babies and scolding wives clattering around. This heat every summer
+costs us thousands of dollars in delays, from wear and tear and extra
+strain--tempers and nerves giving out, men getting frantic and jerking
+things. I believe it breeds a form of acute mania when it keeps on like
+this."
+
+"Yes, the point of view changes the instant the sun goes down," said Mrs.
+Thorne. "I am glad I did not send my letter. Will you let me read it to
+you, Henry?"
+
+"Not now; let us enjoy the peace of God while it lasts." He stretched
+himself on his back on the rattan lounge, and folded his hands on that
+part of his person which illustrated, geographically speaking, the great
+Continental Divide. The locked hands rose softly up and down. His wife
+fanned him in silence.
+
+He turned his head and looked at her; her tired eyes, the dragged lines
+about her mouth, disturbed his sense of rest. He took the fan from her and
+returned her attention vigorously. "Please don't!" she said with a little
+teased laugh. She rearranged the lock he had blown across her forehead. His
+larger help she needed, but he had seldom known how to pet her in little
+ways.
+
+"I think you ought to let me read it to you," she said. "There is nothing
+so difficult as telling the truth, even about one's self, and when it's
+another person"--
+
+"That's what I claim; she is the only one who can tell it."
+
+"This is a case of first aid to the injured," she sighed. "I may not be a
+surgeon, but I must do what I can for my son."
+
+Then there was silence; the valley grew dimmer, the sky nearer and more
+intense.
+
+"Yes, the night forgives the day," after a while she said; "it even
+forgets. And we forget what we were, and what we did, when we were young.
+What is the use of growing old if we can't learn to forgive?" she vaguely
+pleaded; and suddenly she began to weep.
+
+The rattle of a miner's cart broke in upon them; it stopped at the gate.
+Mr. Thorne half rose and looked out; a man was hurrying up the walk. He
+waved with his cane for him to stop where he was. Messengers at this hour
+were usually bearers of bad news, and he did not choose that his wife
+should know all the troubles of the mines.
+
+The two men conversed together at the gate; then Mr. Thorne returned to
+explain.
+
+"I must go over to the office a moment, and I may have to go to the
+power-house."
+
+"Is anybody hurt?"
+
+"Only a pump. Don't think of things, dear. Just keep cool while you can."
+
+"For pity's sake, there is a carriage!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed. "We are
+going to have a visitor. Fancy making calls after such a day as this!"
+
+Mr. Thorne hurried away with manlike promptitude in the face of a social
+obligation. The mistress stepped inside and gave an order to Ito.
+
+As she returned, a lady was coming up the walk. She was young and tall, and
+had a distant effect of great elegance. She held herself very erect, and
+moved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed to
+the eyes of critical assemblages. Her thin black dress was too elaborate
+for a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permitted
+the wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings that
+started up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thorne
+chiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers.
+She retreated a little from what she felt to be a crisis of some sort, and
+her heart beat hard with acute agitation.
+
+"Mrs. Thorne?" said the visitor. "Do I need to tell you who I am? Has any
+one forewarned you of such a person as Helen Benedet?"
+
+The two women clasped hands hurriedly. The worn eyes of the elder, strained
+by night-watchings, drooped under the young, dark ones, reinforced by their
+splendor of brows and lashes.
+
+"It was very sweet of you to come," she said in a lifeless voice.
+
+"Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet as
+that?"
+
+Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she asked
+gently.
+
+"I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But you
+will not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hot
+night, I know."
+
+"You must not think of going back to-night." Mrs. Thorne glanced at the
+hired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather,
+my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself."
+
+"Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, that
+you were at the mine. I came--by main strength. But I should have come
+somehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with your
+lights--you look like a whole community."
+
+"We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talking
+of you only just now," Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously.
+
+The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengths
+of empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above the
+trees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to the
+pillars motionless.
+
+"What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"
+
+"No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you."
+
+"I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. I
+shall tire you to death."
+
+Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage.
+
+"May he bring me a glass of water? Just water, please." The tall girl, in
+her long black dress, moved to and fro, making a pretense of the view to
+escape observation.
+
+"What is that sloping house that roars so? It sounds like a house of
+beasts. Oh, the stamps, of course! There goes one on the bare metal. Did
+anything break then?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mrs. Thorne; "things do not break so easily as that in a
+stamp-mill. Only the rock gets broken."
+
+Ito returned with a tray of iced soda, and was spoken to aside by his
+mistress.
+
+"It's quite a farce," she said, "preparing beds for our friends in this
+weather. No one sleeps until after two, and then it is morning; and though
+we shut out the heat, it beats on the walls and burns up the air inside,
+and we wake more tired than ever."
+
+"Let us not think of sleep! I need all the night to talk in. I have to tell
+you impossible things."
+
+"Is Willy's father to be included in this talk?" Mrs. Thorne inquired;
+"because he is coming--he is there, at the gate."
+
+She rose uneasily. Her visitor rose, too, and together they watched the
+man's unconscious figure approaching. An electric lamp above the gate threw
+long shadows, like spokes of a wheel, across the grass. Mr. Thorne's face
+was invisible till he had reached the steps.
+
+"Henry," said his wife, "you do not see we have a visitor."
+
+He took off his hat, and perceiving a young lady, waved her a gallant and
+playful greeting, assuming her to be a neighbor. Miss Benedet stepped back
+without speaking.
+
+"God bless me!" said Thorne simply, when his wife had named their guest,
+and so left the matter, for Miss Benedet to acknowledge or deny their
+earlier meeting.
+
+Mrs. Thorne gave her little coughing laugh.
+
+"Well, you two!" she said with ghastly gayety. "Must I repeat, Henry, that
+this is"--
+
+"He is trying to think where he has seen me before," said Helen Benedet.
+There was a ring in her voice like that of the stamp-heads on the bare
+steel.
+
+"I am wondering if you remember where you saw me before," Thorne
+retorted. He did not like the young lady's presence there. He thought it
+extraordinary and rather brazen. And he liked still less to be drawn into a
+woman's parlance.
+
+Mrs. Thorne sat still, trembling. "Henry, tell her! Speak to her!"
+
+Miss Benedet turned from husband to wife. Her face was very pale. "Ah," she
+said, "you knew about me all the time! He has told you everything--and you
+called me 'my dear'! Is it easy for you to say such things?"
+
+"Never mind, never mind! What did you wish to say to me? What was it?"
+
+"Give me a moment, please! This alters everything. I must get accustomed to
+this before we go any further."
+
+She reached out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and
+helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and
+distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness,
+as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could
+never be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard,
+whether of grief or shame, her own or of any belonging to her.
+
+"You are the very man," she said, "the one who would not promise. And you
+kept your word and told your wife. And how long have you known of--of this
+engagement?"
+
+Mr. Thorne looked at his wife.
+
+"Only a few days," she said.
+
+"Still, there has been time," the girl reflected. She let her voice fall
+from its high society pitch. "I did not dream there was so much mercy in
+the world--among parents! You both knew, and you have not told him. You
+deserve to have Willy for your son!"
+
+Mrs. Thorne leaned forward to speak. Her husband, guessing what trouble her
+conscience would be making her, forestalled the effort with a warning look.
+"There was no mercy in the case," he bluntly said; "we do not know your
+story."
+
+Miss Benedet continued, as if thinking aloud: "Yet you gave me that supreme
+trust, that I would tell him myself! I have not, and now it is too late.
+Now I can never know how he would have taken it had he known in time. I
+do not want his forgiveness, you may be sure, or his toleration. I must
+be what I was to him or nothing. You will tell him, and then he will
+understand the letter I wrote him last night, breaking the engagement.
+We may be honest with each other now; there is no peace of the family to
+provide for. This night's talk, and I leave myself, my whole self, with
+you, to do with as you think best for him. If you think better to have it
+over at one blow, tell him the worst. The facts are enough if you leave
+out the excuses. But if you want to soften it for the sake of his faith
+in general,--isn't there some such idea, that men lose their faith in all
+women through the fault of one?--why, soften it all you like. Make me the
+victim of circumstances. I can show you how. I had forgiven myself, you
+know. I thought I was as good as new. I had forgotten I had a flaw. And I
+was so tired of being on the defensive. Now at last, I said, I shall have a
+friend! You know--_do_ you know what a restful, impersonal manner your son
+has? What quiet eyes! We rode and talked together like two young men. It
+seems a pleasure common enough with some girls, but I never had it; lads of
+my own age were debarred when I was a girl. I had neither girls nor boys to
+play with. Girl friends were dealt out to me to fit my supposed needs, but
+taken that way as medicine I didn't find them very interesting. If I clung
+to one more than another, that one was not asked soon again for fear of
+inordinate affections and unbalanced enthusiasms. I was to be an all-around
+young woman; so they built a wall all around me. It fitted tight at last,
+and then I broke through one night and emptied my heart on the ground. My
+plea, you see, is always ready. Could I have lived and kept on scorning
+myself as I did that night? Do you remember?" She bent her imperative,
+clears gaze upon Thorne. "I told you the truth when you gave me a chance
+to lie. Heaven knows what it cost to say, 'I came with him of my own free
+will!'"
+
+Mrs. Thorne put her hand in her husband's. He pressed it absently, with his
+eyes on the ground.
+
+"It is such a mercy that I need not begin at the beginning. You know the
+worst already, and your divine hesitation before judgment almost demands
+that I should try to justify it. I _may_ excuse myself to you. I will not
+be too proud to meet you half-way; but remember, when you tell the story to
+him, everything is to be sacrificed to his cure."
+
+"When we really love them," Mrs. Thorne unexpectedly argued, "do we want
+them to be cured?"
+
+The defendant looked at her in astonishment, "Do I understand you?" she
+asked. "You must be careful. I have not told you my story. Of course I want
+to influence you, but nothing can alter the facts."
+
+There was no reply, and she took up her theme again with visible and
+painful effort. A sickening familiarity, a weariness of it all before she
+had begun, showed in her voice and in her pale, reluctant smile.
+
+"Seven years is a long time," she said, looking at Thorne. "Are you sure
+you have forgotten nothing? You saw what the man was?" she demanded. "He
+was precisely what he looked to be--one of the men about the stables. I was
+not supposed to know one from another.
+
+"It is a mistake to talk of a girl having fallen. She has crawled down in
+her thoughts, a step at a time--unless she fell in the dark; and I declare
+that before this happened it was almost dark with me!
+
+"My mother is a very clever woman; she has had the means to carry out her
+theories, and I am her only child (Norwood Benedet is my half-brother). I
+was not allowed to play with ordinary children; they might have spoiled my
+accent or told me stories that would have made me afraid of the dark; and
+while the perfect child was waited for, I had only my nurses. I was not
+allowed to go to school, of course. Schools are for ordinary children. When
+I was past the governess age I had tutors, exceptional beings, imported
+like my frocks. They were too clever for the work of teaching one ignorant,
+spoiled child. They wore me out with their dissertations, their excess of
+personality, their overflow of acquirements, all bearing upon poor, stupid
+me, who could absorb so little. And mama would not allow me to be pushed,
+so I never actually worked or played. These persons were in the house,
+holidays and all, and there was a perpetual little dribble of instruction
+going on. Oh, how I wearied of the deadly deliberation of it all!
+
+"As a family we have always been in a way notorious; I am aware of that:
+but my mother's ideals are far different from those that held in father's
+young days, when he made his money and a highly ineligible circle of
+acquaintances. Nordy inherited all the fun and the friends, and he spent
+the money like a prince. Once or twice a year he would come down to the
+ranch, and the place would be filled with his company, and their horses and
+jockeys and servants. Then mama would fly with me till the reign of sport
+was over. It was a terrible grief to have to go at the only time when the
+ranch was not a prison. I grew up nursing a crop of smothered rebellions
+and longings which I was ashamed to confess. At sixteen mama was to take me
+abroad for two years; I was to be presented and brought home in triumph,
+unless Europe refused to part with a pearl of such price. All pearls have
+their price. I was not left in absolute ignorance of my own. Of all who
+suffered through that night's madness of mine, poor mama is most to be
+pitied. There was no limit to her pride in me, and she has never made the
+least pretense that religion or philosophy could comfort her.
+
+"Now, before I really begin, shall we not speak of something else for a
+while? I do not want to be quite without mercy."
+
+"I think you had better go on," said Mrs. Thorne gently; "but take off your
+bonnet, my dear."
+
+"Still 'my dear'?" sighed the girl. "Is so much kindness quite consistent
+with your duty? Will you leave _all_ the plain speaking to me?"
+
+"Forgive me," said the mother humbly; "but I cannot call you 'Miss
+Benedet.' We seem to have got beyond that."
+
+"Oh, we have got beyond everything! There is no precedent for us in the
+past"--she felt for her hat pins--"and no hope in the future." She put off
+the winged circlet that crowned her hair, and Mrs. Thorne took it from her.
+Almost shyly the middle-aged woman, who had never herself been even pretty,
+looked at the sad young beauty, sitting uncovered in the moonlight.
+
+"You should never wear anything on your head. It is desecration."
+
+"Is it? I always conform, you know. I wear anything, do anything, that is
+demanded."
+
+"Ah, but the head--such hair! I wonder that I do not hate you when I think
+of my poor Willy."
+
+"You will hate me when I am gone," said the beautiful one wearily; "you
+may count on the same revulsion in him. I know it. I have been through it.
+There is nothing so loathsome in the bitter end as mere good looks."
+
+"Ah, but why"--the mother checked herself. Was she groveling already for
+Willy's sake? She had stifled the truth, and accepted thanks not her due,
+and listened to praise of her own magnanimity. Where were the night's
+surprises to leave her?
+
+
+II
+
+Mr. Thorne had changed his seat, and the sound of a fresh chair creaking
+under his comfortable weight was a touch of commonplace welcomed by his
+wife with her usual laugh, half amused and half apologetic.
+
+"Why do you go off there, Henry? Do you expect us to follow you?"
+
+"There's a breeze around the corner of the house!" he ejaculated fervently.
+
+"Go and find it, then; we do not need you. Do we?"
+
+"_I_ need him," said the girl in her sweetest tones. "He helped me once,
+without a word. It helps me now to have him sitting there"--
+
+"Without a word!" Mrs. Thorne irrepressibly supplied.
+
+"Why can't we let her finish?" Thorne demanded, hitching his chair into an
+attitude of attention.
+
+It was impossible for Miss Benedet to take up her story in the key in which
+she had left off. She began again rather flatly, allowing for the chill of
+interruptions:--
+
+"To go back to that summer; I was in my sixteenth year, and the policy
+of expansion was to have begun. But father's health broke, and mama was
+traveling with him and a cortege of nurses, trying one change after
+another. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at table
+in a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fraeulein Henschel,
+and myself. Fraeulein was the resident governess. She was a great,
+soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, but
+she had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weather
+as we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I had
+dreamed of a breath of freedom, but instead of the open door I was in
+straiter bonds than ever.
+
+"I revolted first against keeping hours. I would not get up to breakfast,
+I refused to study, it was too hot to practice. I took my own head about
+books, and had my first great orgy of the Russians. I used to lie beside
+a chink of light in the darkened library and read while Fraeulein in the
+music-room held orgies of her own. She had just missed being a great
+singer; but she was a master of her instrument, and her accompaniments were
+divine. What voice she had was managed with feeling and a pure method, and
+where voice failed her the piano thrilled and sobbed, and broke in chords
+like the sea.
+
+"I can give you no idea of the effect that Tolstoi, combined with
+Fraeulein's music, had upon me. My heart hung upon the pauses in her
+song; it beat, as I read, as if I had been running. I would forget to
+breathe between the pages. One day Fraeulein came in and found me in the
+back chapters of 'Anna Karenina.' She had been playing one of Lizst's
+rhapsodies--the twelfth. Waves of storm and passion had been thundering
+through the house, with keen little rifts of melody between, too sweet
+almost to be endured. She was very negligee, as the weather obliged us to
+be. Her great white arms were bare above the elbow, and as wet as if she
+had been over the wash-tub.
+
+"'That is not a book for a _jeune fille_,' she said.
+
+"I was in a rapture of excitement; the interruption made me wild. 'All the
+books are for me,' I told her. 'I will read what I please.'
+
+"'You will go mad!'
+
+"I went on reading.
+
+"'You have no way to work it off. You will not study, you cannot sing, you
+write no letters, the mother does not believe'--
+
+"'Do go away!' I cried.
+
+"'--in the duty to the neighbor. Ach! what will you do with the whole of
+Tolstoi and Turgenieff shut up within you?'
+
+"'I can ride,' I said. 'If you don't want me to go mad, leave me in the
+evenings to myself. Take my place in the carriage with Aunt Isabel, and let
+me ride alone.'
+
+"Fraeulein had lived in bonds herself, and she had the soul of an artist.
+She knew what it is, for days together, to have barely an hour to one's own
+thoughts; never to step out alone of a summer night, after a long, hot,
+feverish day. She let me go with old Manuel, the head groom, as my escort.
+He was no more hindrance to solitude than a pine-tree or a post.
+
+"The reading and the music and the heat went on. I was in a fever of
+emotion such as I had never known. Fraeulein perceived it. She recommended
+'My Religion' as an antidote to the romances. I did not want his religion.
+I wanted his men and women, his reading of the human soul, the largeness of
+incident, the sense of time and space, the intricacy of family life, the
+problems of race, the march of nations across the great world-canvas.
+
+"I rode--not alone, but with the high-strung beings that lived between the
+pages of my books: men and women who knew no curb, who stopped at nothing,
+and who paid the price of their passionate mistakes. Old Manuel, standing
+by the horses, looked strange to me. I spoke to him dramatically, as the
+women I read of would have spoken. Nothing could have added to or detracted
+from his own manner. He was of the old Spanish stock, but for the first
+time I saw his picturesqueness. I liked him to call me 'the Nina,' and
+address me in the third person with his eyes upon the ground.
+
+"All this was preparatory. It is part of my defense; but do not forget the
+heat, the imprisonment, the sense of relief when the sun went down, the
+wild, bounding rapture of those night rides.
+
+"One evening it was not Manuel who stood by the horses in the white track
+between the laurels. It was a figure as statuesque as his, but younger, and
+the pose was not that of a servant. It was the stand-at-ease of a soldier,
+or of an Indian wrapped in his blanket in the city square. This man was
+conscious of being looked at, but his training, of whatever sort, would not
+permit him to show it. Plainly the training had not been that of a groom.
+I was obliged to send him to the stables for his coat, and remind him that
+his place was behind. He took the hint good-humoredly, with the nonchalance
+of a big boy condescending to be taught the rules of some childish game. As
+we were riding through the woods later, I caught the scent of tobacco. It
+was my groom smoking. I told him he could not smoke and ride with me. He
+threw away his cigarette and straightened himself in the saddle with such
+a smile as he might have bestowed on the whims of a child. He obeyed me
+exactly in everything, with an exaggerated ironical precision, and seemed
+to find amusement in it. I questioned him about Manuel. He had gone to one
+of the lower ranches, would not be back for weeks. By whose orders was he
+attending me? By Manuel's, he said. He must then have had qualifications.
+
+"'What is one to call you?' I asked him.
+
+"He hesitated an instant. 'Jim is what I answer to around here,' said he.
+
+"'What is your _name_?' I repeated.
+
+"'The lady can call me anything she likes,'--he spoke in a low, lazy
+voice,--'but Dick Malaby is my name.'
+
+"We have better heroes now than the Cheyenne cowboys, but I felt as a girl
+to-day would feel if she discovered she had been telling one of the men of
+the Merrimac to ride behind!"
+
+"They would not need to be told," Mrs. Thorne interjected.
+
+"No, that is the difference; but discipline did not appeal to me then;
+recklessness did. Every man on the place had taken sides on the Wyoming
+question; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives among
+the victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with,
+not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, and
+all in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set,' as
+he would have called us.
+
+"I signed to him one evening to ride up. 'I want you to talk to me,' I
+said. 'Tell me about the cattle war.'
+
+"'Miss Benedet forgets--my place is behind.' He touched his hat and fell
+back again. Lesson for lesson--we were quits. I made no further attempt to
+corrupt my own pupil.
+
+"We rode in silence after that, but I was never without the sense of his
+ironical presence. I was conscious of showing off before him. I wished him
+to see that I could ride. Fences and ditches, rough or smooth, he never
+interfered with my wildest pace. I could not extract from him a look of
+surprise, far less the admiration that I wanted. What was a girl's riding
+to him? He knew a pace--all the paces--that I could never follow. I felt
+the absurdity of our mutual position, its utter artificiality, and how it
+must strike him.
+
+"In the absence of words between us, externals spoke with greater force.
+He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with a
+dare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physical
+mastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my silly
+freaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! That
+was the beginning. It lasted through a week of starlight and a week of
+moonlight--lyric nights with the hot, close days between; and each night
+an increasing interest attached to the moment when he was to put me on my
+horse. I make no apology for myself after that.
+
+"One evening we approached a gate at the farther end of our longest course,
+and the gate stood open. He rode on to close it. I stopped him. 'I am going
+out,' I said. It was a resolution taken that moment. He held up his watch
+to the light, which made me angry.
+
+"'Go back to the stables,' I said, 'if you are due there. _I_ don't want to
+know the time.'
+
+"He brought his horse alongside. 'Where is Miss Benedet going, please?'
+
+"'Anywhere,' I said, 'where it will be cool in the morning.'
+
+"'Miss Benedet will have a long ride. Does she wish for company?'
+
+"I did not answer. Something drove me forward, though I was afraid.
+
+"'Outside that gate,' he went on quietly, '_I_ shall set the pace, and I do
+not ride behind.' Still I did not answer. 'Is that the understanding?'
+
+"'Ride where you please,' I said.
+
+"After that he took command, not roughly or familiarly, but he no longer
+used the third person, as I had instructed him, in speaking to me. The
+first time he said 'you' it sent the blood to my face. We were far up the
+mountain then, and morning was upon us.
+
+"I wish to be definite here. From the moment I saw him plainly face to face
+the illusion was gone. Before, I had seen him by every light but daylight,
+and generally in profile. The profile is not the man. It is the plan in
+outline, but the eyes, the mouth, tell what he has made of himself. So
+attitude is not speech. As a shape in the moonlight he had been eloquent,
+but once at my side, talking with me naturally--I need not go on! From that
+moment our journey was to me a dream of horror, a series of frantic plans
+for escape.
+
+"All fugitives on the coast must put to sea. The Oakland ferry would
+have answered my purpose. I would never have been seen with him in the
+city--alive.
+
+"But at Colfax we met your husband. He knows--you know--the rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In thinking of the one who had first pitied her, pity for herself overcame
+her, and the proud penitent broke down.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Thorne sat in the shy silence of older persons who are past
+the age of demonstrative sympathy. The girl rose, and as she passed her
+hostess she put out her hand. Mrs. Thorne took it quickly and followed her.
+They found a seat by themselves in a dark corner of the porch.
+
+"Your poor, good husband--how tired he is! How patiently you have listened,
+and what does it all come to?"
+
+"Think of yourself, not of us," said Mrs. Thorne.
+
+"Oh, it's all over for me. I have had my fight. But you have _him_ to
+grieve for."
+
+"Shall you not grieve for him yourself a little?"
+
+The girl sat up quickly.
+
+"If you mean do I give him up without a struggle--I do not. But you need
+not say that to him. I told him that it was all a mistake; I did not--do
+not love him."
+
+"How could you say that"--
+
+"It was necessary. Without that I should have been leaving it to his
+generosity. Now it remains only to show him how little he has lost."
+
+"But could you not have done that without belying yourself? You do--surely
+you still care for him a little?"
+
+"Insatiate mother! Is there any other proof I can give?"
+
+"Your hand is icy cold."
+
+"And my face is burning hot. Good-night. May I say, 'Now let thy servant
+depart in peace'?"
+
+"I shall not know how to let you go to-morrow, and I do not see, myself,
+why you should go."
+
+"You will--after I am gone."
+
+"My dear, are you crying? I cannot see you. How cruel we have been, to sit
+and let you turn your life out for our inspection!"
+
+"It was a free exhibition! No one asked me, and I did not even come
+prepared, more than seven years' study of my own case has prepared me.
+
+"I was a child; but the fault was mine. I should have been allowed to
+suffer for it in the natural way. No good ever comes of skulking. But they
+hurried me off to Europe, and began a cowardly system of concealment. They
+made me almost forget my own misconduct in shame for the things they did by
+way of covering it up. My mother never took me in her arms and cried over
+my disgrace. She would not speak of it, or allow me to speak. Not a word
+nor an admission; the thing must be as though it had never been!
+
+"They ruined Dick Malaby with their hush-money. They might better have
+shot him, but that would have made talk. My father died with only servants
+around him. Mama could not go to him. She was too busy covering my retreat.
+Oh, she kept a gallant front! I admired her, I pitied her, but I loathed
+her policy. Does not every girl know when she has been dedicated to the
+great god Success, and what the end of success must be?
+
+"I told mama at last that if she would bring men to propose to me I should
+tell them the truth. Does Lord So-and-so wish to marry a girl who ran away
+with her father's groom? That was the breach between us. She has thrown
+herself into it. She is going to marry a title herself, not to let it go
+out of the family. Have you not heard of the engagement? She is to be a
+countess, and the property is controlled by her, so now I have an excuse
+for doing something."
+
+"My dear!" Mrs. Thorne took the girl's cold hands in hers. "Do you mean
+that you are not your father's heiress?"
+
+"Only by mama's last will and testament. We know what that would be if she
+made it now!"
+
+"It was _then_ you came home?"
+
+"It was then, when I learned that one of my rejected suitors was to become
+my father. He might be my grandfather. But let us not be vulgar!"
+
+"Aren't you girls going to bed to-night?" Mr. Thorne inquired, with his
+usual leaning toward peace and quietness. "You can't settle everything at
+one sitting."
+
+"Everything is settled, Mr. Thorne, and I am going to bed," said Miss
+Benedet.
+
+Mrs. Thorne did not release her hands. "I want to ask you one more
+question."
+
+"I know exactly what it is, and I will tell you to-morrow."
+
+"Tell me now; it is perfectly useless going to your room; the temperature
+over your bed is ninety-nine."
+
+"The question, then! Why did I allow your son to commit himself in
+ignorance?"
+
+"No, _no_!" Mrs. Thorne protested.
+
+"Yes, yes! You have asked that question, you must have. You are an angel,
+but you are a mother, too."
+
+"I have asked no questions since you began to tell your story; but I have
+wondered how Willy could have found courage, in one week, to offer himself
+to such gifts and possessions as yours."
+
+"A mother, and a worldly mother!" Miss Benedet apostrophized. "I did not
+look for such considerations from you. And you are troubled for the modesty
+of your son?"
+
+"My dear, he has nothing, and he is--of course we think him everything he
+should be--but he is not a handsome boy."
+
+"Thank Heaven he is not."
+
+"And he does not talk"--
+
+"About himself. No."
+
+"Ah, you do care for him! You understand him. You would"--
+
+Miss Benedet rose to her feet with decision.
+
+"You have not answered my question," the unconscionable mother pursued.
+"Does he know--is it known that you are not the great heiress your name
+would imply?"
+
+"Everything is known," said the girl. "You do not read your society column,
+I see. Six weeks ago you might have learned the fate of my father's
+millions."
+
+She stood by the balustrade and leaned out under the stars, taking a deep
+breath of the night's growing coolness. A rose-spray touched her face. She
+put it back, and a shower of dry, scented petals fell upon her breast and
+sleeve.
+
+"There is always one point in every true story," she said in a tired voice,
+"where explanations cease to explain. The mysteries claim their share in
+us, deny them as we will. I don't know why it was, but from the time I
+threw off all that bondage to society and struck out for myself, I felt
+made over. Life began again with life's realities. I came home to earn my
+bread, and on that footing I felt sane and clean and honest. The question
+became not what I am or was, but what could I do? I discussed the question
+with your son."
+
+"You discussed!"
+
+"We did, indeed. We went over the whole field. East and west we tested
+my accomplishments by the standards of those who want teachers for their
+children. I have gone rather further in music than anything else. Even
+Fraeulein would hardly say now I lacked an outlet. I was working things off
+one evening on the piano--many things beyond the power of speech--the help
+of prayer, I might say. There were whispers about me already in the house."
+
+"What _do_ you mean?"
+
+"People talking--my mother's old friends. It was rather serious, as I had
+been thinking of their daughters for pupils. I thought I was alone, but
+your son--the 'boy' as you call him--was listening. He came and stood
+beside me. For a person who does not talk, he can make himself quite well
+understood. I tried to go on playing. My blinded eyes, the wrong notes,
+told him all. I lay and thought all night, and asked myself, why might I
+not be happy and give happiness, like other women of my age. I denied to
+my conscience that I was bound to tell him, since I was not, never had
+been, what that story in words would report me. Why should I affect a lie
+in order literally, vainly to be honest? So a day passed, and another
+sleepless night. And now I had his image of me to battle with. Then it
+became impossible, and yet more necessary, and each day's silence buried
+me deeper beyond the hope of speech. So I gave it up. Why should he have
+in his wife less than I would ask for in my husband? I want none of your
+experienced men. Such a record as his, such a look in the eyes, the
+expression unawares of a life of sustained effort--always in one
+direction"--
+
+A white arm in a black sleeve pointed upward in silence.
+
+"And you would rob him of his reward?" said the mother, in a choked voice.
+
+"Mrs. Thorne! Do you not understand me? I am not talking for effect. But
+this is what happens if one begins to explain. I did not come here to talk
+to you for the rest of my life! It was your sweetness that undid me. I will
+never again say what I think of parents in general."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Maggie, do you know what time it is?" a suppressed voice issued an hour
+later from that part of the house supposed to be dedicated to sleep. "Are
+you going to sit up till morning?"
+
+"I am looking for my letter," came the answer, in a tragic whisper.
+
+"What letter?"
+
+"My letter to Willy, that you wouldn't let me read to you last night."
+
+"You don't want to read it to me now, do you?"
+
+There was no reply. A careful step kept moving about the inner rooms,
+newspapers rustled, and small objects were lifted and set down.
+
+"Maggie, do come to bed! You can't mail your letter to-night."
+
+"I don't want to mail it. I want to burn it. I will not have it on my
+conscience a moment longer"--
+
+"I wish you'd have me on your conscience! It's after one o'clock." The
+voices were close together now, only an open door between the speakers.
+
+"Won't you put something on and come out here, Henry? There is a light in
+Ito's house. I suppose you wouldn't let me go out and ask him?"
+
+"I suppose not!"
+
+"Then won't you go and ask if he saw a letter on my desk, sealed and
+addressed?"
+
+Mr. Thorne sat up in bed disgustedly. "What is Ito doing with a light this
+time of night?"
+
+"Hush, dear; don't speak so loud. He's studying. He's preparing himself to
+go into the Japanese navy."
+
+"He is, is he! And that's why he can't get us our breakfast before
+half-past eight. I'll see about that light!"
+
+"The letter, the letter!" Mrs. Thorne prompted in a ghostly--whisper. "Ask
+him if he saw it on my desk--a square blue envelope, thin paper."
+
+The studious little cook was seated by a hot kerosene-lamp, at a table
+covered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. He
+was in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appeared
+to have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stood
+all ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked under Mr. Thorne's
+brusque examination.
+
+"I care fo' everything," he repeated, eliminating the consonants as he slid
+along. "Missa Tho'ne letta--all a-ready fo' mail--I putta pos'age-stamp,
+gifa to shif'-boss. I think Sa' F'a'cisco in a mo'ning. I care fo'
+everything!"
+
+"Ito cares for everything," Mr. Thorne quoted, in answer to his wife's
+haggard inquiries. "He stamped your letter and sent it to town yesterday by
+one of the day-shift men."
+
+"Now what shall be done!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed tragically.
+
+"I know what _I_ shall do!" Mr. Thorne wrapped his toga around him with
+an air of duty done. But a husband cannot escape so easily as that. His
+ministering angel sat beside his bed for half an hour longer, brooding
+aloud over the day's disaster, with a rigid eye upon the question of
+personal accountability.
+
+"If you had not stopped me, Henry, when I tried to confess about my letter!
+There's no time for the truth like the present."
+
+"My dear, when a person is telling a story you don't want to interrupt with
+quibbles of conscience; if it made it any easier for her to think us a
+little better than we are, why rob her of the delusion?"
+
+"I shall have to rob her of it to-morrow. To think of my sitting there, a
+whited sepulchre, and being called generous and forbearing and merciful,
+with that letter lying on my desk all the time!"
+
+"It would be lying there still except for an accident. She will see how you
+feel about it. Give her something to forgive in you. Depend upon it, she'll
+rise to the occasion."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the mother passed her guest's room next morning she paused and looked
+remorsefully at the closed door.
+
+"I ought to have told her that we never shut our doors. She must be
+smothered. I wonder if she can be asleep."
+
+Mr. Thorne went on into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisper
+as it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draft
+of air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. The
+sleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed,
+and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all the
+room there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted memory of the night's
+despairing heat. Mrs. Thorne stepped across the matting, and noiselessly
+bowed the shutters. A dash of spray from the lawn-sprinkler was spattering
+the sill, threatening to dampen a pile of dainty clothing laid upon a
+chair. She moved the chair, looked once more at the lovely dark-lashed
+sleeper, and left her again in peace.
+
+Beside her plate at the breakfast-table there was a great heap of roses,
+gathered that morning, her husband's usual greeting. She praised them as
+she always did, and then began to finger them over, choosing the finest to
+save for her guest. Rare as they were in kind, and opened that morning,
+there was not a perfect rose among them. Each one showed the touch of
+blight in bloom. Every petal, just unclosed and dewy at the core, was
+curled along the edges, scorched in the bud. It was not mildew or canker or
+disease, only "a touch of sun."
+
+"I won't give them to her," said the mother; "they are too like herself."
+
+She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself,
+according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing
+him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed
+at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's
+actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's loose
+outside."
+
+Everything was "loose" apparently. Something about a "hoist" had broken
+in the night, and the men were still at work without breakfast, an
+eighteen-hour shift. The order came for Ito to send out coffee and bread
+and fruit to the famished gang. Ito was in the lowest of spirits; had just
+given his mistress warning that he could not stay. The affair of the letter
+had wounded his susceptibilities; he must go where he would be better
+understood. All this in a soft, respectful undertone, his mistress trying
+to comfort him, and incidentally hasten his response to the requisition
+from outside. At eleven o'clock Mr. Thorne sent in a pencil message on a
+card: "I shall not be home to lunch. Does she want to get the 12:30 train?"
+Mrs. Thorne replied in the same manner, by bearer: "She did, but she is
+asleep. I don't like to wake her."
+
+The darkened house preserved its silence, a restless endurance of the
+growing heat. Mrs. Thorne, in the thinnest of morning gowns, her damp hair
+brushed back from her powdered temples, sat alone at luncheon. Ito had put
+a melancholy perfection into his last salad. It was his valedictory.
+
+She was about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with
+her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang,
+and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt
+at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of
+expression to meet again in the same emotional key.
+
+Miss Benedet looked at the clock, lifting her eyebrows wearily. "I have
+lost my train," she remarked, but added no reproaches. "Is there an evening
+train to the city?"
+
+"Not from here," Mrs. Thorne replied; "but we could send you over to Colfax
+to catch the night train from there. I hoped we could have you another
+day."
+
+"That would be impossible," said Miss Benedet; "but I shall be giving you a
+great deal of trouble."
+
+"Oh, no; it is only ten miles. Mr. Thorne will take you; we will both take
+you. It is a beautiful drive by moonlight through the woods. Was I wrong
+not to call you?"
+
+"If you were, you will be punished by having me on your hands this long,
+hot afternoon. I ought to have gone last night. When one has parted with
+the very last bit of one's self, one should make haste to remove the
+shell."
+
+"Then you would have left me with something remaining on my mind, something
+I must get rid of at once. Come, let us go where we cannot see each other's
+faces. I am deeply in the wrong concerning you."
+
+Mrs. Thorne went on incriminating herself so darkly in her preface that
+when she came to the actual offense her confessor smiled. "I am so
+relieved!" she exclaimed. "This is much more like real life. I felt you
+must be keeping something back, or, if not, I could never live up to such a
+pitch of generosity. I am glad you did not reach it all at once."
+
+"But what becomes of the truth--the story as it should have been told to
+Willy? Oh, I have sinned, for want of patience, of faith--not against you,
+dear, but my son!"
+
+After a silence Miss Benedet said, "Now for the heart of my own weakness.
+Suppose that I did have a hope. Suppose that I had laid the responsibility
+upon you, the parents, hoping that you would decide for happiness, mere
+happiness, without question of desert or blame. And suppose you had
+defended me to him. Would that have been best? Where then would be his
+cure? Now let us put away all cowardice, for him as well as for ourselves.
+Happiness for him could have but one foundation. You have told him the
+facts; if he cannot bear them as all the world knows them, that is his
+cure. I thank you. You knew where to put the knife."
+
+"Oh, but this is cruel!" said the mother. "I don't want to be your judge.
+You have had your punishment, and you took it like a queen. Now let us
+think of Willy!"
+
+"Please!" said the girl. "I cannot talk of this any more. We must stop
+sometime."
+
+The time of twilight came; the gasping house flung open doors and windows
+to the night. Mr. Thorne pursued his evening walk alone among the fruits
+and vegetables, counting his egg-plants, and marking the track of gophers
+in his rows of artichokes. The women were strolling toward the hill. Miss
+Benedet had put on a cloth skirt and stiff shirt-waist for her journey,
+and suffered from the change, but did not show it. Her beauty was not of
+the florid or melting order. Mrs. Thorne regarded her inconsolably, noting
+with distinct and separate pangs each item of her loveliness, as she
+moved serene and pale against the dark, resonant green of the pines. They
+followed a foot-path back among the trees to a small gate or door in the
+high boundary fence. Mrs. Thorne tried it to see if it were locked.
+
+"Willy used to live, almost, on this hill when he came out for his
+vacations." She spoke dreamily, as if thinking aloud. "He slept in that
+tent. It looks like a little ghost to me these nights in the moonlight, the
+curtains flap in such a lonely way. That gate was his back door through the
+woods to town. His wheel used to lean against this tree. I miss his fair
+head in the sun, and his white trousers springing up the hill. But one
+cannot keep one's boy forever. You have made him a man, my dear."
+
+The mother put out her hand timidly. She had ventured on forbidden ground
+once more. But she was not rebuffed. The girl's hand clasped hers and
+drew it around a slender waist, and they walked like two school friends
+together.
+
+"I cannot support the idea that you will never come again," mourned the
+elder. "It is years since I have known a girl like you--a girl who can say
+things. I can make no headway with girls in general. They are so big and
+silent and athletic. They wear pins and badges, and belong to more _things_
+than I have ever heard of!"
+
+Miss Benedet laughed. "I am silent, too, sometimes," she said.
+
+"But you are not dense!"
+
+"I'm afraid you go very much to extremes in your likes and dislikes, dear
+lady, and you are much younger than I, you know."
+
+"I am quite aware of that," said Mrs. Thorne. "You have had seven years of
+Europe to my twenty of Cathay."
+
+"Dear Cathay!" the girl murmured, with moist eyes; "I could live in this
+place forever."
+
+"Where have you lived? Tell me in how many cities of the world."
+
+"Oh, we never lived. We stayed in places for one reason or another. We were
+two years in Vienna. I worked there. I was a pupil of Leschetizky."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Did I not tell you? I can play a little."
+
+"A little! What does that exactly mean?"
+
+"It means too much for drawing-room music, and not enough for the stage."
+
+"You are not thinking of that, are you?"
+
+"Why that voice of scorn? Have I hit upon one of your prejudices?"
+
+"I am dreadfully old-fashioned about some things--publicity, for instance."
+
+"It depends upon the kind, doesn't it? But you will never hear of me on
+the concert stage. Leschetizky says I have not the poise I might have had.
+He is very clever. There was a shock, he says, to the nerve centres. They
+will never again be quite under control. It is true. At this moment I am
+shivering within me because I must say good-by to one I might have had all
+my life for a friend. Is it so?"
+
+"My dear, if you mean me, I love you!"
+
+"Call me Helen, then. You said 'my dear' before you knew me."
+
+"Before I meant it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder who can be arriving. That is the carriage I came out in last
+night."
+
+A light surrey with two seats passed below the hill, and was visible an
+instant against a belt of sky.
+
+"It is going to stop," said Mrs. Thorne. "Suppose we step back a little. I
+shall not see visitors to-night. Very likely it is only some one for Mr.
+Thorne."
+
+A tall young man in traveling clothes stepped out upon the horse-block,
+left his luggage there, and made ten strides up the walk. They heard his
+step exploring the empty piazzas.
+
+"It is Willy!" said Mrs. Thorne in a staccato whisper.
+
+"Then good-by!" said Miss Benedet. "I will find Mr. Thorne in the garden.
+Dearest Mrs. Thorne, you must let me go!"
+
+"You will not see him? Not see Willy!"
+
+"Not for worlds. He must not know that I am here. I trust you." She tore
+herself away.
+
+Mrs. Thorne stood paralyzed between the two--her advancing son, and her
+fleeing guest.
+
+"Willy!" she cried.
+
+Her tall boy was bending over her--once more the high, fair head, the
+smooth arch of the neck, which she could barely reach to put her arms about
+it.
+
+"Mother!" The word in his grave man's voice thrilled her as once had the
+touch of his baby hands.
+
+"I am afraid to look at you, my son. How is it with you?"
+
+"I am all right, mother. How are things here?"
+
+"Oh, don't speak of us! Did you get my letter?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"And you read it, Willy?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+There was a silence. Mrs. Thorne clasped her son's arm and leaned her head
+against it.
+
+"I am sorry you worried so, mother."
+
+"What does it matter about me?"
+
+"I am sorry you took it so hard--because--I knew it all the time."
+
+"You knew it! What do you mean?"
+
+"A nice old lady told me. She was staying in the house. She cornered me and
+told me a long story--the day after I met Miss Benedet."
+
+"What an infamous old woman!"
+
+"She called herself a friend of yours--warned me for your sake, she said,
+and because she has sons of her own."
+
+"Oh! Has she daughters?"
+
+"Two--staying in the house."
+
+"I see. She told it brutally, I suppose?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Worse than I did, Willy?"
+
+William the Silent held his peace.
+
+"You did not believe it? How much of it did you believe?"
+
+"Mother," he said, "do you think a man can't see what a girl is?"
+
+"But what do you know about girls?"
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Where is Helen? The man from Lord's said he brought her out here last
+night."
+
+"Did you not get her letter?" Mrs. Thorne evaded.
+
+"Where shall I find her?"
+
+"Willy, I am a perjured woman! I have been making mischief steadily for two
+days."
+
+"You might as well go on, mater." Willy beamed gravely upon his mother's
+career of dissimulation.
+
+"Don't, for pity's sake, be hopeful! She said she would not see you for
+worlds."
+
+"Then she hasn't gone."
+
+Willy took a quick survey of the premises. He had long gray eyes and a set
+mouth. He saw most things that he looked at, and when he aimed for a thing
+he usually got somewhere near the mark.
+
+"She is not in the house," he decided; "she is not on the hill--remains the
+garden."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Thorne stood alone, meditating on Miss Benedet's trust in her. She saw
+her husband, her stool of repentance and her mercy-seat in one, plodding
+toward her contentedly across the soft garden ground, stepping between the
+lettuces and avoiding the parsley bed. He knocked off a huge fat kitchen
+weed with his cane.
+
+"Where is that girl?" he said. "It's time you got your things on. We ought
+to be starting in ten minutes."
+
+"If you can find Willy you'll probably find 'that girl'!" Mrs. Thorne
+explained, and then proceeded to explain further, as she walked with her
+husband back to the house.
+
+"Well," he summed up, "what is your opinion of the universe up to date? Got
+any faith in anything left?"
+
+
+
+
+THE MAID'S PROGRESS
+
+
+From the great plateau of the Snake River, at a point that is far from any
+main station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might have
+scooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot.
+Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheel
+tracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaring
+and troubling above.
+
+One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, with
+camp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into this
+hollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand.
+The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place.
+
+"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man beside
+him. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on the
+back seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and a
+veiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision of
+their fellow travelers.
+
+"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it," the teamster urged on the
+point in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would have
+made a clean-up of them."
+
+"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim
+Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front,
+who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face
+and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,--eyes that saw
+everything and told nothing.
+
+"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney about
+it," he said.
+
+Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with the
+road, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country;
+but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowance
+the testimony of any one man of merely local information.
+
+"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself,
+since the stage was pulled off. What was here then wouldn't be here
+now--not if it could be eat up or burnt up."
+
+"So you think this is the place?" the old gentleman repeated. His face was
+quite pale; he looked about him shrinkingly, with a latent, apprehensive
+excitement strangely out of keeping with the void stillness of the
+hollow,--a spot which seemed to claim as little on the score of human
+interest or association as any they had passed on their long road hither.
+
+"Well, it's just this way, Mr. Withers: here's the holler, and here's the
+stomped place where the sheep have camped, and the cattle trails getherin'
+from everywheres to the water, and the young rabbit brush that's sprung up
+since the plains was burnt over. If this ain't Pilgrim Station, we're lost
+pilgrims ourselves, I guess. We hain't passed it; it's time we come to it,
+and there ain't no road but this. As I put it up, this here has got to be
+the place."
+
+"I believe you, Mr. Kinney," the old man solemnly confirmed him. "Something
+tells me that this is the spot. I might almost say," he added in a lower
+tone to his companion, while a slight shiver passed over him in the hot
+sunlight, "that a voice cries to us from the ground!"
+
+Those in front had not heard him. After a pause Mr. Thane looked round
+again, smiled tentatively, and said, "Well?"
+
+"Well, Daphne, my dear, hadn't we better get out?" Mr. Withers conjoined.
+
+She who answered to this pretty pagan name did so mutely by rising in
+her place. The wind had moulded her light-colored veil close to her
+half-defined features, to the outline of her cheeks and low-knotted hair;
+her form, which was youthful and slender, was swathed in a clinging
+raw-silk dust-cloak. As she stood, hesitating before summoning her cramped
+limbs to her service, she might have suggested some half-evolved conception
+of doubting young womanhood emerging from the sculptor's clay. Personality,
+as yet, she had none; but all that could be seen of her was pure feminine.
+
+Thane reached the side of the wagon before the veiled young woman could
+attempt to jump. She freed her skirts, stepped on the brake bar, and
+stooping, with his support made a successful spring to the ground. Mr.
+Withers climbed out more cautiously, keeping his hand on Thane's arm for
+a few steps through the heavy sand. Thane left his fellow pilgrims to
+themselves apart, and returned to help the teamster take out the horses.
+
+"It looks queer to me," Mr. Kinney remarked, "that folks should want to
+come so far on purpose to harrer up their feelin's all over again. It ain't
+as if the young man was buried here, nor as if they was goin' to mark the
+spot with one of them Catholic crosses like you see down in Mexico, where
+blood's been spilt by the roadside. But just to set here and think about
+it, and chaw on a mis'able thing that happened two years and more ago!
+Lord! I wouldn't want to, and I ain't his father nor yet his girl. Would
+you?"
+
+"Hardly," said Thane. "Still, if you felt about it as Mr. Withers does,
+you'd put yourself in the place of the dead, not the living; and he has a
+reason for coming, besides. I haven't spoken of it, because I doubt if the
+thing is feasible. He wants to see whether the water, of the spring can be
+brought into the hollow here--piped, to feed a permanent drinking trough
+and fountain. Good for evil, you see--the soft answer."
+
+"Well, that's business! That gits down where a man lives. His cattle kin
+come in on that, too. There's more in that, to my mind, than in a bare
+wooden cross. Pity there won't be more teamin' on this road. Now the stage
+has hauled off, I don't expect as many as three outfits a year will water
+at that fountain, excusin' the sheep, and they'll walk over it and into it,
+and gorm up the whole place."
+
+"Well, the idea has been a great comfort to Mr. Withers, but it's not
+likely anything more will ever come of it. From all we hear, the spring
+would have to run up hill to reach this hollow; but you won't speak of it,
+will you, till we know?"
+
+"Gosh, no! But water might be struck higher up the gulch--might sink a
+trench and cut off the spring."
+
+"That would depend on the source," said Thane, "and on how much the old
+gentleman is willing to stand; the fountain alone, by the time you haul the
+stone here, will foot up pretty well into the thousands. But we'll see."
+
+"Hadn't you better stay round here with them till I git back?" Kinney
+suggested; for Thane had taken the empty canteens from the wagon, and
+was preparing to go with him to the spring. "You kin do your prospectin'
+later."
+
+"They would rather be by themselves, I think," said Thane. But seeing Mr.
+Withers coming towards him, as if to speak, he turned back to meet him.
+
+"You are going now to look for the spring, are you not?" the old gentleman
+asked, in his courteous, dependent manner.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Withers. Is there anything I can do for you first?"
+
+"Nothing, I thank you." The old gentleman looked at him half expectantly,
+but Thane was not equal, in words, to the occasion. "This is the place, Mr.
+Thane," he cadenced, in his measured, clerical tones. "This is the spot
+that last saw my dear boy alive,--that witnessed his agony and death."
+He extended a white, thin, and now shaking hand, which Thane grasped,
+uncovering his head. Mr. Withers raised his left hand; his pale eyes
+blinked in the sunlight; they were dim with tears.
+
+"In memory of John Withers," he pronounced, "foully robbed of life in this
+lonely spot, we three are gathered here,--his friend, his father, and his
+bride that should have been." Thane's eyes were on the ground, but he
+silently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guide
+as we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgive
+as we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thou
+knowest it is hard."
+
+"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, each
+leading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by its
+strap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers the
+first rising ground to riverward of the hollow. "Thought he seemed to be
+makin' a prayer or askin' a blessin' or somethin', when he had holt of you
+there by the flipper; kind of embarrassin', wa'n't it?"
+
+"That's as one looks at it," said Thane. "Mr. Withers is a clergyman; his
+manner may be partly professional, but he strikes one as always sincere.
+And he hasn't a particle of self-consciousness where his grief for his
+son is concerned. I don't know that he has about anything. He calls on
+his Maker just as naturally as you and I, perhaps, might take his name in
+vain."
+
+"No, sir! I've quit that," Mr. Kinney objected. "I drawed the line there
+some years ago, on account of my wife, the way she felt about it, and the
+children growin' up. I quit when I was workin' round home, and now I don't
+seem to miss it none. I git along jest as well. Course I have to cuss
+a little sometimes. But I liked the way you listened to the old man's
+warblin'. Because talkin' is a man's trade, it ain't to say he hasn't got
+his feelin's."
+
+As the hill cut off sounds of retreating voices and horseshoes clinking
+on the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon the
+hollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil,
+and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteady
+hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled
+suggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as he
+had hopes; afterwards--but even then it was a matter of temperament. There
+were those who remembered it all the more keenly for its daring deviations
+and provoking shortcomings.
+
+It could not have been said of Daphne that her grief was without
+self-consciousness. Still, much of her constraint and unevenness of manner
+might have been set down to the circumstances of her present position. Why
+she should have placed herself, or have allowed her friends to place her,
+in an attitude of such unhappy publicity Thane had asked himself many
+times, and the question angered him as often as it came up. He could only
+refer it to the singularly unprogressive ideas of the Far West peculiar to
+Far Eastern people. Apparently they had thought that, barring a friend or
+two of Jack's, they would be as much alone with their tragic memories in
+the capital city of Idaho as at this abandoned stage-station in the desert
+where their pilgrimage had ended. They had not found it quite the same.
+Daphne could, and probably did, read of herself in the "Silver Standard,"
+Sunday edition, which treats of social events, heralded among the prominent
+arrivals as "Jack Withers's maiden widow." This was a poetical flight of
+the city reporter. Thane had smiled at the phrase, but that was before he
+had seen Daphne; since then, whenever he thought of it, he pined for a
+suitable occasion for punching the reporter's head. There had been more of
+his language; the paper had given liberally of its space to celebrate this
+interesting advent of the maiden widow with her uncle, "the Rev. Withers,"
+as the reporter styled him, "father of the lamented young man whose
+shocking murder, two years ago, at Pilgrim Station, on the eve of his
+return to home and happiness, cast such a gloom over our community, in
+which the victim of the barbarous deed had none but devoted friends and
+admirers. It is to be hoped that the reverend gentleman and the bereaved
+young lady, his companion on this sad journey, will meet with every mark of
+attention and respect which it is in the power of our citizens to bestow,
+during their stay among us."
+
+Now, in the dead, hot stillness, they two alone at last, Daphne sat beside
+her uncle in the place of their solemn tryst; and more than ever her
+excitement and unrest were manifest, in contrast to his mild and chastened
+melancholy. She started violently as his voice broke the silence in a
+measured, musing monotone:
+
+  "'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray
+  For the poor soul of Sibyl Grey,
+  Who built this cross and well.'
+
+"These lines," he continued in his ordinary prose accent, "gave me my first
+suggestion of a cross and well at Pilgrim Station, aided, perhaps, by the
+name itself, so singularly appropriate; not at all consistent, Mr. Thane
+tells me, with the usual haphazard nomenclature of this region. However,
+this is the old Oregon emigrant trail, and in the early forties men of
+education and Christian sentiment were pioneers on this road. But now that
+I see the place and the country round it, I find the Middle Ages are not
+old enough to borrow from. We must go back, away back of chivalry and
+monkish superstition, to the life-giving pools of that country where the
+story of man began; where water, in the language of its people, was justly
+made the symbol of their highest spiritual as well as physical needs and
+cravings. 'And David longed, and said, Oh, that one would give me drink
+of the water of the well of Beth-lehem, that is at the gate!' It is a far
+cry here to any gate but the gate of sunset, which we have been traveling
+against from morning to evening since our journey began, yet never
+approaching any nearer. But this, nevertheless, is the country of David's
+well,--a dry, elevated plain, surrounded by mountains strangely gashed
+and riven and written all over in Nature's characters, but except for the
+speech of a wandering, unlettered people, dumb as to the deeds of man. Mr.
+Thane tells me that if the wells on this road were as many as the deaths
+by violence have been, we might be pasturing our horses in green fields at
+night, instead of increasing their load with the weight of their food as
+well as our own. Yes, it is a 'desolate land and lone;' and if we build our
+fountain, according to my first intention, in the form of a cross, blessing
+and shadowing the water, it must be a rude and massive one, such as humble
+shepherds or herdsmen might accidentally have fashioned in the dark days
+before its power and significance were known. It will be all the more
+enduring, and the text shall be"--
+
+"Uncle," cried Daphne in a smothered voice, "never mind the text! _I_ am
+your text! Listen to me! If your cross stood there now, here is the one
+who should be in the dust before it!" She pressed her open hand upon her
+breast.
+
+The gesture, her emphasis, the extreme figure of speech she had used, were
+repellent to Mr. Withers over and above his amazement at her words. As he
+had not been observing her, he was totally unprepared for such an outburst.
+
+"Daphne, my dear! Do I understand you? I cannot conceive"--
+
+But Daphne could not wait for her meaning to sink in. "Uncle John," she
+interrupted, taking a quick breath of resolution, "I have read somewhere
+that if a woman is dishonest, deep down, deliberately a hypocrite, she
+ought to be gently and mercifully killed; a woman not honest had better not
+be alive. Uncle, I have something to say to you about myself. Gently and
+mercifully listen to me, for it ought to kill me to say it!"
+
+Mr. Withers turned apprehensively, and was startled by the expression of
+Daphne's face. She was undoubtedly in earnest. He grew quite pale. "Not
+here, my dear," he entreated; "not now. Let our thoughts be single for
+this one hour that we shall be alone together. Let it wait for a little,
+this woeful confession. I think you probably exaggerate your need of
+it, as young souls are apt to who have not learned to bear the pain
+of self-knowledge, or self-reproach without knowledge. Let us forget
+ourselves, and think of our beloved dead."
+
+"Uncle, it must be here and now. I cannot go away from this place a liar,
+as I came. Let me leave it here,--my cowardly, contemptible falsehood,--in
+this place of your cross. I am longing, like David, for that water they
+have gone to find, but I will not drink at Pilgrim Station, except with
+clean lips that have confessed and told you all."
+
+Mr. Withers shrank from these unrestrained and to him indecorous statements
+of feeling; they shocked him almost as much as would the spectacle of
+Daphne mutilating her beautiful hair, casting dust upon her head, and
+rending her garments before him. He believed that her trouble of soul was
+genuine, but his Puritan reserve in matters of conscience, his scholarly
+taste, his jealousy for the occasion which had brought them to that spot,
+all combined to make this unrestrained expression of it offensive to him.
+However, he no longer tried to repress her.
+
+"Uncle, you don't believe me," she said; "but you must. I am quite myself."
+
+"Except for the prolonged nervous strain you have been suffering; and I
+am afraid I have not known how to spare you as I might the fatigue, the
+altitude perhaps, the long journey face to face with these cruel memories.
+But I will not press it, I will not press it," he concluded hastily, seeing
+that his words distressed her.
+
+"Press it all you can," she said. "I wish you could press it hard enough
+for me to feel it; but I feel nothing--I am a stone. At this moment," she
+reiterated, "I have no feeling of any kind but shame for myself that I
+should be here at all. Oh, if you only knew what I am!"
+
+"It is not what you are, it is who you are, that brings you here, Daphne."
+
+"Yes, who I am! Who am I? What right had I to come here? I never loved him.
+I never was engaged to him, but I let you think so. When you wrote me that
+sweet letter and called me your daughter, why didn't I tell you the truth?
+Because in that same letter you offered me his money--and--and I wanted the
+money. I lied to you then, when you were in the first of your grief, to
+get his money! I have been trying to live up to that He ever since. It has
+almost killed me; it has killed every bit of truth and decent womanly pride
+in me. I want you to save me from it before I grow any worse. You must take
+back the money. It did one good thing: it paid those selfish debts of mine,
+and it made mother well. What has been spent I will work for and pay back
+as I can. But I love _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there."
+
+"This is the language of sheer insanity, Daphne, of mental excitement that
+passes reason." Mr. Withers spoke in a carefully controlled but quivering
+voice--as a man who has been struck an unexpected and staggering blow,
+but considering the quarter it came from, is prepared to treat it as an
+accident. "The facts, John's own words in his last letter to me, cannot be
+gainsaid. 'I am coming home to you, dad, and to whom else I need not say.
+You know that I have never changed, but she has changed, God bless her!
+How well He made them, to be our thorn, our spur, our punishment, our
+prevention, and sometimes our cure! I am coming home to be cured,' he said.
+You have not forgotten the words of that letter, dear? I sent it to you,
+but first--I thought you would not mind--I copied those, his last words.
+They were words of such happiness; and they implied a thought, at least, of
+his Creator, if not that grounded faith"--
+
+"They were hopes, only hopes!" the girl remorsefully disclaimed. "I allowed
+him to have them because I wanted time to make up my wretched, selfish
+mind. I had never made him a single promise, never said one word that could
+give me the right to pose as I did afterwards, to let myself be grieved
+over as if I had lost my last hope on earth. I had his money all safe
+enough."
+
+"Daphne, I forbid you to speak in that tone! There are bounds even to
+confession. If you think well to degrade yourself by such allusions, do not
+degrade me by forcing me to listen to you. This is a subject too sacred to
+be discussed in its mercenary bearings; settle that question with yourself
+as you will, but let me hear no more of it."
+
+Daphne was silenced; for the first time in her remembrance of him she had
+seen her uncle driven to positive severity, to anger even, in opposition to
+the truth which his heart refused to accept. When he was calmer he began to
+reason with her, to uphold her in the true faith, against her seeming self,
+in these profane and ruthless disclosures.
+
+"You are morbid," he declared, "oversensitive, from dwelling too long on
+this painful chapter of your life. No one knows better than myself what
+disorders of the imagination may result from a mood of the soul, a passing
+mood,--the pains of growth, perhaps. You are a woman now; but let the
+woman not be too hard upon the girl that she was. After what you have been
+through quite lately, and for two years past, I pronounce you mentally
+unfit to cope with your own condition. Say that you did not promise him in
+words; the promise was given no less in spirit. How else could he have been
+so exaltedly sure? He never was before. You had never before, I think,
+given him any grounds for hope?"
+
+"No; I was always honest before," said Daphne humbly. "When I first refused
+him, when we were both such children, and he went away, I promised to
+answer his letters if he would let _that_ subject rest. And so I did. But
+every now and then he would try me again, to see if I had changed, and that
+letter I would not answer; and presently he would write again, in his usual
+way. As often as he brought up the old question, just so often I stopped
+writing; silence was always my answer, till that last winter, when I made
+my final attempt to do something with my painting and failed so miserably.
+You don't know, uncle, how hard I have worked, or what it cost me to
+fail,--to have to own that all had been wasted: my three expensive winters
+in Boston, my cutting loose from all the little home duties, in the hope of
+doing something great that would pay for all. And that last winter I did
+not make my expenses, even. After borrowing every cent that mother could
+spare (more than she ought to have spared; it was doing without a girl
+that broke her down) and denying myself, or denying her, my home visit at
+Christmas; and setting up in a studio of my own, and taking pains to have
+all the surroundings that are said to bring success,--and then, after all,
+to fail, and fail, and fail! And spring came, and mother looked so ill, and
+the doctor said she must have rest, total rest and change; and he looked at
+me as if he would like to say, 'You did it!' Well, the 'rest' I brought her
+was my debts and my failure and remorse; and I wasn't even in good health,
+I was so used up with my winter's struggle. It was then, in the midst of
+all that trouble and shame and horror at myself, his sweet letter came. No,
+not sweet, but manly and generous,--utterly generous, as he always was. I
+ought to have loved him, uncle dear; I always knew it, and I did try very
+hard! He did not feel his way this time, but just poured out his whole
+heart once for all; I knew he would never ask me again. And then the fatal
+word; he said he had grown rich. He could give me the opportunities my
+nature demanded. You know how he would talk. He believed in me, if nobody
+else ever did; I could not have convinced him that I was a failure.
+
+"It was very soothing to my wounds. I was absolutely shaken by the
+temptation. It meant so much; such a refuge from self-contempt and poverty
+and blame, and such rest and comfort it would bring to mother! I hope that
+had something to do with it. You see I am looking for a loophole to crawl
+out of; I haven't strength of mind to face it without some excuse. Well, I
+answered that letter; and I think the evil one himself must have helped me,
+for I wrote it, my first careful, deliberate piece of double-dealing, just
+as easily as if I had been practicing for it all my life. It was such a
+letter as any man would have thought meant everything; yet if I had wanted,
+I could have proved by the words themselves that it meant nothing that
+couldn't be taken back.
+
+"I said to myself, If I can stand it, if I can hold out as I feel now, I
+will marry him; then let come what may. I knew that some things would come,
+some things that I wanted very much.
+
+"Then came the strange delay, the silence, the wretched telegrams and
+letters back and forth. Ah, dear, do I make you cry? Don't cry for him; you
+have not lost him. Cry for me, the girl you thought was good and pure and
+true! You know what I did then, when your dear letter came, giving me all
+he had, calling me your daughter, all that was left you of John! I deceived
+you in your grief, hating myself and loving you all the time. And here I
+am, in this place! Do you wonder I had to speak?"
+
+"Your words are literally as blows to me, Daphne," Mr. Withers groaned,
+covering his face. After a while he said, "All I have in the world would
+have been yours and your mother's had you come to me, or had I suspected
+the trouble you were in. I ought to have been more observant. My
+prepossessions must be very strong; doubtless some of the readier faculties
+have been left out in my mental constitution. I hear you say these words,
+but even now they are losing their meaning for me. I can see that your
+distress is genuine, and I must suppose that you have referred it to its
+proper cause; but I cannot master the fact itself. You must give me time to
+realize it. This takes much out of life for me."
+
+"Not my love for _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there."
+
+"You could not have spared yourself and me this confession?" the old man
+queried. "But no, God forgive me! You must have suffered grievous things in
+your young conscience, my dear; this was an ugly spot to hide. But now you
+have fought your fight and won it, at the foot of the cross. To say that
+I forgive you, that we both, the living and the dead, forgive you, is the
+very least that can be said. Come here! Come and be my daughter as before!
+My daughter!" he repeated. And Daphne, on her knees, put her arms about his
+neck and hid her face against him.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" he murmured brokenly, "it cannot hurt him now. He has found
+his 'cure.' As a candle-flame in this broad sunlight, so all those earthly
+longings"--The old gentleman could not finish his sentence, though a
+sentence was dear to him almost as the truth from which, even in his love
+of verbiage, his speech never deviated. "So we leave it here," he said at
+last. "It is between us and our blessed dead. No one else need know what
+you have had the courage to tell me. Your confession concerns no other
+living soul, unless it be your mother, and I see no reason why her heart
+should be perturbed. As for the money, what need have I for more than
+my present sufficiency, which is far beyond the measure of my efforts
+or deserts? I beg you never to recur to the subject, unless you would
+purposely wish to wound me. This is a question of conscience purely, and
+you have made yours clean. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"Yes," said Daphne faintly.
+
+"What is the residue? Or is it only the troubled waters still heaving?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps so."
+
+"Well, the peace will come. Promise me, dear, that you will let it come. Do
+not give yourself the pain and humiliation of repeating to any other person
+this miserable story of your fault."
+
+"It was more than a fault; you know that, uncle. Your conscience could not
+have borne it for an hour."
+
+"Your sin, then. A habit of confession is debilitating and dangerous. God
+has heard you, and I, who alone in this world could have the right to
+reproach you, have said to you, Go in peace. Peace let it be, and silence,
+which is the safest seal of a true confession."
+
+"Do you mean that I am never to let myself be known as I am?" asked Daphne.
+Her face had changed; it wore a look of fright and resistance. "Why,
+that would mean that I am never to unmask; to go about all my life in my
+trappings of false widowhood. You read what that paper called me! I cannot
+play the part any longer."
+
+"Are you speaking with reference to these strangers? But this will soon be
+over, dear. We shall soon be at home, where no one thinks of us except as
+they have known us all their lives. It will be painful for a little while,
+this conspicuousness; but these good people will soon pass out of our
+lives, and we out of theirs. Idle speculation will have little to do with
+us, after this."
+
+"There will be always speculation," implored the girl. "It will follow me
+wherever I go, and all my life I shall be in bondage to this wretched
+lie. Take back the money, uncle, and give me the price I paid for it,--my
+freedom, myself as I was before I was tempted!"
+
+"Ah, if that could be!" said the old gentleman. "Is it my poor boy's memory
+that burdens you so? Is it that which you would be freed from?"
+
+"From doing false homage to his memory," Daphne pleaded. "I could have
+grieved for him, if I could have been honest; as it is, I am in danger
+almost of hating him. Forgive me, uncle, but I am! How do you suppose I
+feel when voices are lowered and eyes cast down, not to intrude upon my
+'peculiar, privileged grief? 'Here I and Sorrow sit!' Isn't it awful,
+uncle? Isn't it ghastly, indecent? I am afraid some day I shall break out
+and do some dreadful thing,--laugh or say something shocking, when they try
+to spare my feelings. Feelings! when my heart is as hard, this moment, to
+everything but myself, myself! I am so sick of myself! But how can I help
+thinking about myself when I can never for one moment _be_ myself?"
+
+"This is something that goes deeper," said Mr. Withers. "I confess it is
+difficult for me to follow you here; to understand how a love as meek as
+that of the dead, who ask nothing, could lay such deadly weights upon a
+young girl's life."
+
+"Not his love--mine, mine! Is it truly in his grave? If it is not, why do I
+dare to profess daily that it is, to go on lying every day? I want back
+my word, that I never gave to any man. Can't one repent and confess a
+falsehood? And do you call it confessing, when all but one person in the
+world are still deceived?"
+
+"It is not easy for me to advise you, Daphne," said Mr. Withers wearily.
+"Your struggle has discovered to me a weakness of my own: verily, an old
+man's fond jealousy for the memory of his son. Almost I could stoop to
+entreat you. I do entreat you! So long as we defraud no one else, so long
+as there is no living person who might justly claim to know your heart, why
+rob my poor boy's grave of the grace your love bestows, even the semblance
+that it was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute,
+we will say," the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rude
+hand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessary
+harshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresisting
+dead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Fling
+away even his memory, that casts so thin a shade upon your life, a faint
+morning shadow that will shrink as your sun climbs higher. By degrees you
+will be free. And, speaking less selfishly, would there not be a certain
+indelicacy in reopening now the question of your past relations to one
+whose name is very seldom spoken? Others may not be thinking so much
+of your loss--your supposed loss," the old gentleman conscientiously
+supplied--"as your sensitiveness leads you to imagine. But you will give
+occasion for thinking and for talking if you tear open now your girlhood's
+secrets. Whom does it concern, my dear, to know where or how your heart is
+bestowed?"
+
+Daphne's cheeks and brow were burning hot; even her little ears were
+scarlet. Her eyes filled and drooped. "It is only right," she owned. "It is
+my natural punishment."
+
+"No, no; I would not punish nor judge you. I love you too well. But I know
+better than you can what a safeguard this will be,--this disguise which is
+no longer a deception, since the one it was meant to deceive knows all and
+forgives it. It will rebuke the bold and hasty pretenders to a treasure you
+cannot safely part with, even by your own gift, as yet. You are still very
+young in some ways, my dear."
+
+"I am old enough," said Daphne, "to have learned one fearful lesson."
+
+"Do I oppress you with my view? Do I insist too much?"
+
+Perhaps nothing could have lowered the girl in her own eyes more than
+this humility of the gentle old man in the face of his own self-exposed
+weakness, his pathetic jealousy for that self above self,---the child
+one can do no more than grieve for this side the grave. She had come to
+herself only to face the consciousness of a secret motive which robbed
+her confession of all moral value. Repentance, that would annul her base
+bargain now that the costs began to outweigh the advantages, was gilt
+edged, was a luxury; she was ashamed to buy back her freedom on such terms.
+
+"Let it be as you say," she assented; "but only because you ask it. It will
+not be wrong, will it, if I do it for you?"
+
+"I hope not," returned Mr. Withers. "The motive, in a silence of this kind
+that can harm no one, must make a difference, I should say."
+
+So it was settled; and Daphne felt the weight of her promise, which the
+irony of justice had fastened upon her, as a millstone round her neck
+for life; she was still young enough to think that whatever is must
+last forever. They sat in silence, but neither felt that the other was
+satisfied. Mr. Withers knew that Daphne was not lightened of her trouble,
+nor was he in his heart content with the point he had gained. The unwonted
+touch of self-assertion it had called for rested uneasily on him; and he
+could not but own that he had made himself Daphne's apologist, which no
+confessor ought to be, in this disguise by which he named the deception he
+was now helping her to maintain.
+
+After a time, when Daphne had called his attention to the fact, he agreed
+that it was indeed strange their companions did not return; they had been
+gone an hour or more to find a spring said to be not half a mile away.
+
+Daphne proposed to climb the grade and see if they were yet in sight, Mr.
+Withers consenting. Indeed, under the stress of his thoughts, her absence
+was a sensible relief.
+
+From the hilltop looking down she could see the way they had gone; the
+crooked gulch, a garment's crease in the great lap of the table-land,
+sinking to the river. She saw no one, heard no sound but the senseless
+hurry and bluster of the winds,--coming from no one knew where, going none
+cared whither. It blew a gale in the bright sunlight, mocking her efforts
+to listen. She waved her hand to her uncle's lone figure in the hollow, to
+signify that she was going down on the other side. He assented, supposing
+she had seen their fellow travelers returning.
+
+She had been out of sight some moments, long enough for Mr. Withers to have
+lapsed into his habit of absent musing, when Thane came rattling down the
+slope of the opposite hill, surprised to see the old gentleman alone. His
+long, black eyes went searching everywhere while he reported a fruitless
+quest for the spring. Kinney and he had followed the gulch, which showed
+nowhere a vestige of water, save in the path of the spring freshets, until
+they had come in sight of the river; and Kinney had taken the horses on
+down to drink, riding one and leading the other. It would be nearly three
+miles to the river from where Thane had left him, but that was where all
+the deceptive cattle trails were tending. Thane, returning, had made a loop
+of his track around the hollow, but had failed to round up any spring.
+Hence, as he informed Mr. Withers, this could not be Pilgrim Station. He
+made no attempt to express his chagrin at this cruel and unseemly blunder.
+The old gentleman accepted it with his usual uncomplaining deference to
+circumstances; still, it was jarring to nerves overstrained and bruised
+by the home thrust of Daphne's defection. He fell silent and drew within
+himself, not reproachfully, but sensitively. Thane rightly surmised that
+no second invocation would be offered when they should come to the true
+Pilgrim Station; the old gentleman would keep his threnodies to himself
+after this.
+
+It would have been noticeable to any less celestial-minded observer than
+Mr. Withers the diffidence with which Thane, in asking after Miss Daphne
+Lewis, pronounced that young person's name. He did not wait for the old
+gentleman to finish his explanation of her absence, but having learned the
+way she had gone, dropped himself at a great pace down the gulch and came
+upon her unawares, where she had been sitting, overcome by nameless fears
+and a creeping horror of the place. She started to her feet, for Thane's
+was no furtive tread that crashed through the thorny greasewood and planted
+itself, a yard at a bound, amongst the stones. The horror vanished and a
+flush of life, a light of joy, returned to her speaking face. He had never
+seen her so completely off her guard. He checked himself suddenly and
+caught his hat from his head; and without thinking, before he replaced it,
+he drew the back of his soft leather glove across his dripping forehead.
+The unconventional action touched her keenly. She was sensitively subject
+to outward impressions, and "the plastic" had long been her delight, her
+ambition, and her despair.
+
+"Oh, if I could only have done something simple like that!" the defeated,
+unsatisfied artist soul within her cried. "That free, arrested stride, how
+splendid! and the hat crumpled in his hand, and his bare head and strong
+brows in the sunlight, and the damp points of hair clinging to his temples!
+No, he is _not_ bald,--that was only a tonsure of white light on the top
+of his head; still, he must be hard on forty. It is the end of summer with
+him, too; and here he comes for water, thirsting, to satisfy himself where
+water was plentiful in spring, and he finds a dry bed of stones. Call it
+The End of Summer; it is enough. Ah, if I could ever have thought out an
+action as simple and direct as that--and drawn it! But how can one draw
+what one has never seen!"
+
+Not all this, but something else, something more that Daphne could not have
+put into words, spoke in the look which Thane surprised. It was but a flash
+between long lashes that fell instantly and put it out; but no woman whose
+heart was in the grave ever looked at a living man in that way, and the
+living man could not help but know it. It took away his self-possession for
+a moment; he stood speechless, gazing into her face with a question in his
+eyes which five minutes before he would have declared an insult to her.
+
+Daphne struggled to regain her mask, but the secret had escaped: shameless
+Nature had seized her opportunity.
+
+"How did I miss you?" she asked with forced coolness, as they turned up the
+gulch together. For the moment she had forgotten about the spring.
+
+Thane briefly explained the mistake that had been made, adding, "You will
+have to put up with another day of us, now,--perhaps two."
+
+"And where do you leave us, then?" asked Daphne stupidly.
+
+"At the same place,--Decker's Ferry, you know." He smiled, indulgent to her
+crass ignorance of roads and localities. "Only we shall be a day longer
+getting there. We are still on the south side of the river, you remember?"
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Daphne, who remembered nothing of the kind.
+
+"It was a brutal fake, our springing this place on you for Pilgrim
+Station," he murmured.
+
+"It has all been a mistake,--our coming, I mean; at least I think so."
+
+It was some comfort to Thane to hear her say it,--he had been so forcibly
+of that opinion himself all along; but he allowed the admission to pass.
+
+"It must have been a hard journey for you," he exerted himself to say,
+speaking in a surface voice, while his thoughts were sinking test-pits
+through layers of crusted consciousness into depths of fiery nature
+underneath.
+
+She answered in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle
+has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything to
+him."
+
+He took her up with needless probity: "Whatever you do, don't thank me!
+It's bad enough to have Mr. Withers heaping coals of fire on my head. He
+gives me the place always, in regard to his son, of an intimate friend;
+which I never was, and God knows I never claimed to be! He took it for
+granted, somehow,--perhaps because of my letters at first, though any brute
+would have done as much at a time like that! Afterwards I would have set
+him right, but I was afraid of thrusting back the friendly imputation in
+his face. He credits me with having been this and that of a godsend to
+his son, when as a fact we parted, that last time, not even good friends.
+Perhaps you can forgive me for saying it? You see how I am placed!"
+
+This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed to
+command Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, then
+she said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable to
+feel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel." But her home
+application of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which he
+firmly corrected.
+
+"I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other know
+how we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that I
+knew a lot about him,--his thoughts and feelings; that we were immensely
+sympathetic. Perhaps we were, but we didn't know it. We knew nothing of
+each other intimately. He never spoke to me of his private affairs but
+once, the night before he started. It was at Wood River. Some of us gave
+him a little supper. Afterwards we had some business to settle and I was
+alone with him in his room. It was then I made my break; and--well, it
+ended as I say: we quarreled. It has hurt me since, especially as I was
+wrong."
+
+"What can men quarrel about when they don't know each other well? Politics,
+perhaps?" Daphne endeavored to give her words a general application.
+
+"It was not politics with us," Thane replied curtly. Changing the subject,
+he said, "I wish you could see the valley from that hogback over to the
+west." He pointed towards the spine of the main divide, which they would
+cross on their next day's journey. "Will you come up there this evening and
+take a look at the country? The wind will die down at sunset, I think."
+
+There was a studied commonplaceness in his manner; his eyes avoided hers.
+
+"Thanks; I should like to," she answered in the same defensive tone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"To go back to what we were saying," Daphne began, when they were seated,
+that evening, on the hilltop. All around them the view of the world rose
+to meet the sky, glowing in the west, purple in the east, while the pale
+planets shone, and below them the river glassed and gleamed in its crooked
+bed. "I ask you seriously," she said. "What was the trouble between you?"
+Doubtless she had a reason for asking, but it was not the one that she
+proceeded to give. "Had you--have you, perhaps--any claims in a business
+way against him? Because, if you had, it would be most unfair to his
+father"--The words gave her difficulty; but her meaning, as forced meanings
+are apt to be, was more than plain.
+
+Thane was not deceived: a woman who yields to curiosity, under however
+pious an excuse, is, to say the least, normal. Her thoughts are neither in
+the heavens above nor in the grave beneath. His black eyes flashed with the
+provocation of the moment. It was instinct that bade him not to spare her.
+
+"We quarreled," he said, "in the orthodox way,--about a woman."
+
+"Indeed!" said Daphne. "Then you must pardon me."
+
+"And her name," he continued calmly.
+
+"I did not ask you her name."
+
+"Still, since we have gone so far"--
+
+"There is no need of our going any farther."
+
+"We may as well,--a little farther. We quarreled, strangely enough, about
+you,--the first time he ever spoke of you. He would not have spoken then, I
+think, but he was a little excited, as well he might have been. Excuse me?"
+He waited.
+
+"Nothing!" said Daphne. She had made an involuntary protesting sound.
+
+"He said he hoped to bring you back with him. I asked how long since he had
+seen you; and when he told me five years, I remarked that he had better not
+be too sure. 'But you don't know her,' he said; 'she is truth itself, and
+courage. By as many times as she has refused to listen to me, I am sure of
+her now.' I did not gather somehow that you were--engaged to him, else I
+hope I should not have gone so far. As it was, I kept on persisting--like
+a cynic who has no one of his own to be sure of--that he had better
+not be too sure! He might have seen, I thought then, that it was half
+chaff and half envy with me; but it was a nervous time, and I was less
+than sympathetic, less than a friend to him. And now I am loaded with
+friendship's honors, and you have come yourself to prove me in the wrong.
+You punish me by converting me to the truth."
+
+"What truth?" asked Daphne, so low that Thane had to guess her question.
+
+"Have you not proved to me that some women do have memories?"
+
+Daphne could not meet his eyes; but she suspected him of something
+like sarcasm. She could not be sure, for his tone was agitating in its
+tenderness.
+
+"All things considered," she said slowly, "does it not strike you as rather
+a costly conversion?"
+
+"I don't say I was worth it, nor do I see just how it benefits me
+personally to have learned my lesson."
+
+He rose, and stood where he could look at her,--an unfair advantage,
+for his dark face, strong in its immobility, was in silhouette against
+the flush of twilight which illumined hers, so transparent in its
+sensitiveness.
+
+"Is it not a good thing to believe, on any terms?" she tried to answer
+lightly.
+
+"For some persons, perhaps. But my hopes, if I had any, would lie in the
+direction of disbelief."
+
+"Disbelief?" she repeated confusedly. His keen eyes beat hers down.
+
+"In woman's memory, constancy,--her constancy in youth, say? I am not
+talking of seasoned timber. I don't deserve to be happy, you see, and I
+look for no more than my deserts."
+
+If he were mocking her now, only to test her! And if she should answer
+with a humble, blissful disclaimer? But she answered nothing, disclaimed
+nothing; suffered his suspicion,--his contempt, perhaps, for she felt that
+he read her through and through.
+
+A widow is well, and a maid is well; but a maiden widow who trembles and
+looks down--in God's creation, what is she?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the north side of the Snake, after climbing out of the canon at Decker's
+Ferry, the cross-roads branch as per sign-post: "Thirty miles to Shoshone
+Falls, one mile to Decker's Ferry. Good road." This last assertion must
+be true, as we have it on no less authority than that of Decker himself.
+Nothing is said of the road to Bliss,--not even that there is such a Bliss
+only sixteen miles away. Being a station on the Oregon Short Line, Bliss
+can take care of itself.
+
+At these cross-roads, on a bright, windy September morning, our travelers
+had halted for reasons, the chief of which was to say good-by. They had
+slept over night at the ferry, parted their baggage in the morning, and now
+in separate wagons by divergent roads were setting forth on the last stage
+of their journey.
+
+Daphne had left some necessary of her toilet at the ferry, and the driver
+of Mr. Withers's team had gone back to ask the people at the ferry-house
+to find it. This was the cause of their waiting at the cross-roads. Mr.
+Withers and Daphne were on their devoted way like conscientious tourists,
+though both were deadly weary, to prostrate themselves before the
+stupendous beauty of the great lone falls at Shoshone. Thane, with Kinney's
+team, was prosaically bound down the river to examine and report on a
+placer-mine. But before his business would be finished Mr. Withers and his
+niece would have returned by railroad via Bliss to Boise, and have left
+that city for the East; so this was likely to be a long good-by.
+
+If anything could have come of Mr. Withers's project of a memorial fountain
+at Pilgrim Station, there might have been a future to the acquaintance, for
+Thane was to have had charge of the execution of the design; but nature had
+lightly frustrated that fond, beneficent dream.
+
+Mr. Kinney had offered the practical suggestion that the road should go to
+the fountain, since the fountain could not come to the road. Its course
+was a mere accident of the way the first wagon-wheels had gone. The wheels
+were few now, and with such an inducement might well afford to cross the
+gulch in a new place lower down. But Mr. Withers would have none of this
+dislocation of the unities. There was but one place--the dismal hollow
+itself, the scene of his heart's tragedy--where his acknowledgment to God
+should stand; his mute "Thy will be done!"
+
+Perhaps the whole conception had lost something of its hold on his mind
+by contact with such harsh realities as Daphne's disavowals and his own
+consequent struggle with a father's weakness. He had not in his inmost
+conscience quite done with that question yet.
+
+Thane was touched by the meekness with which the old gentleman resigned
+his dream. The journey, he suspected, had been a disappointment in other
+ways,--had failed in impressiveness, in personal significance; had fallen
+at times below the level of the occasion, at others had overpowered it and
+swept it out of sight. Thane could have told him that it must be so. There
+was room for too many mourners in that primeval waste. Whose small special
+grief could make itself heard in that vast arid silence, the voice of which
+was God? God in nature, awful, inscrutable, alone, had gained a new meaning
+for Mr. Withers. Miles of desert, days of desert, like waves of brute
+oblivion had swept over him. Never before had he felt the oppression of
+purely natural causes, the force of the physical in conflict with the
+spiritual law. And now he was to submit to a final illustration of it,
+perhaps the simplest and most natural one of all.
+
+Daphne was seated at a little distance on her camp-stool, making a drawing
+of the desert cross-roads with the twin sign-posts pointing separate
+ways, as an appropriate finish to her Snake River sketch-book. The sun
+was tremendous, the usual Snake River zephyr was blowing forty miles an
+hour, and the flinty ground refused to take the brass-shod point of her
+umbrella-staff. Mr. Kinney, therefore, sat beside her, gallantly steadying
+her heavy sketching-umbrella against the wind.
+
+Mr. Withers, while awaiting the return of his own team from the ferry, had
+accepted a seat in Thane's wagon. (It was a bag containing a curling-iron,
+lamp, and other implements appertaining to "wimples and crisping-pins,"
+that Daphne had forgotten, but she had not described its contents. One bag
+is as innocent as another, on the outside; it might have held her Prayer
+Book.)
+
+Thane was metaphorically "kicking himself" because time was passing and
+he could not find words delicate enough in which to clothe an indelicate
+request,--one outrageous in its present connection, yet from some points of
+view, definitively his own, a most urgent and natural one.
+
+  "For one shall grasp, and one resign,
+  And God shall make the balance good."
+
+To grasp is a simple act enough; but to do so delicately, reverently,
+without forcing one's preferences on those of another, may not always be so
+simple. Thane was not a Goth nor a Vandal; by choice he would have sought
+to preserve the amenities of life; but a meek man he was not, and the thing
+he now desired was, he considered, well worth the sacrifice of such small
+pretensions as his in the direction of unselfishness.
+
+The founding of a family in its earliest stages is essentially an egoistic
+and ungenerous proceeding. Even Mr. Withers must have been self-seeking
+once or twice in his life, else had he never had a son to mourn. So, since
+life in this world is for the living, and his own life was likely to go
+on many years after Mr. Withers had been gathered to the reward of the
+righteous, Thane worked himself up to the grasping-point at last.
+
+He was never able to reflect with any pride on the way in which he did it,
+and perhaps it is hardly fair to report him in a conversation that would
+have had its difficulties for almost any man; but his way of putting his
+case was something like the following,--Mr. Withers guilelessly opening the
+way by asking, "You will be coming East, I hope, before long, Mr. Thane?"
+
+"Possibly," said Thane, "I may run on to New York next winter."
+
+"If you should, I trust you will find time to come a little further East
+and visit me? I could add my niece's invitation to my own, but she and her
+mother will probably have gone South for her mother's health. However, I
+will welcome you for us both,--I and my books, which are all my household
+now."
+
+"Thanks, sir, I should be very glad to come; though your books, I'm afraid,
+are the sort that would not have much to say to me."
+
+"Come and see, come and see," Mr. Withers pressed him warmly. "A ripe
+farewell should always hold the seeds of a future meeting."
+
+"That is very kindly said," Thane responded quickly; "and if you don't
+mind, I will plant one of those seeds right now."
+
+"So do, so do," the old gentleman urged unsuspiciously.
+
+"Your niece"--Thane began, but could see his way no further in that
+direction without too much precipitancy. Then he backed down on a line of
+argument,--"I need not point out the fact," etc.,--and abandoned that as
+beset with too many pitfalls of logic, for one of his limited powers of
+analysis. Fewest words and simplest would serve him best. "It is hardly
+likely," then he said, "that your niece's present state of feeling will be
+respected as long as it lasts; there will be others with feelings of their
+own. Her loss will hardly protect her all her life from--she will have
+suitors, of course! Nature is a brute, and most men, young men, are natural
+in that respect,--in regard to women, I mean. I don't want to be the first
+fool who rushes in, but there will be a first. When he arrives, sir, will
+you let me know? If any man is to be heard, I claim the right to speak to
+her myself; the right, you understand, of one who loves her, who will make
+any sacrifice on earth to win her."
+
+Mr. Withers remained silent. He had a sense of suffocation, as of waves of
+heat and darkness going over him. The wind sang in his ears, shouted and
+hooted at him. He was stunned. Presently he gasped, "Mr. Thane! you have
+not surely profaned this solemn journey with such thoughts as these?"
+
+"A man cannot always help his thoughts, Mr. Withers. I have not profaned my
+thoughts by putting them into words, till now. I cannot do them justice,
+but I have made them plain. This is not a question of taste or propriety
+with me, or even decency. It is my life,--all of it I shall ever place at
+the disposal of any woman. I am not a boy; I know what I want and how much
+I want it. The secret of success is to be in the right place at the right
+time: here is where I ask your help."
+
+"I do not question that you know what you want," said Mr. Withers
+mildly,--"it is quite a characteristic of the men of this region, I
+infer,--nor do I deny that you may know the way of success in getting it;
+but that I should open the door to you--be your--I might say accomplice,
+in this design upon the affections of my niece--why, I don't know how it
+strikes you, but"--
+
+"It strikes me precisely as it does you,--my part of it," said Thane
+impatiently. "But her part is different, as I see it. If she were sick, you
+would not put off the day of her recovery because neither you nor yours
+could cure her? Whoever can make her forget this shipwreck of her youth,
+heal her unhappiness, let him do so. Isn't that right? Give him the chance
+to try. A man's power in these things does not lie in his deserts. All I
+ask is, when other men come forward I want the same privilege. But I shall
+not be on the ground. When that time comes, sir, will you remember me?"
+
+For once Mr. Withers seized the occasion for a retort; he advanced upon the
+enemy's exposed position. "Yes, Mr. Thane, I will remember you,--better
+than you remember your friends when they are gone."
+
+Thane accepted the reproach as meekly as if his friendship for John Withers
+had been of the indubitable stuff originally that Mr. Withers had credited
+him with. He rather welcomed than otherwise an unmerited rebuke from that
+long-suffering quarter.
+
+But though Thane was silenced as well as answered, there was conscience yet
+to deal with. Mr. Withers sat and meditated sorely, while the wind buffeted
+his gray hairs. Conscience demanded that he give up the secret of Daphne's
+false mourning, which he would have defended with his life. "A silence that
+can harm no one." "So long as we defraud no living person who might claim
+a right to know your heart." The condition was plain; it provided for just
+such cases as the present. Then how could he hesitate? But he was human,
+and he did.
+
+"I have gone too far, I see. Well, say no more about it," said Thane. "Your
+generosity tempted me. From those who give easily much shall be asked.
+Forget it, sir, please. I will look out for myself, or lose her."
+
+"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Mr. Withers. He turned to Thane, placing his hand
+above his faded eyes to shade them from the glare, and looked his companion
+earnestly in the face. Thane sought for an umbrella, and raised it over the
+old gentleman's head; it was not an easy thing to hold it steady in that
+wind.
+
+"Thanks, thanks! Now I can look at you. Yes, I can look you in the eye, in
+more senses than one. Listen to me, Mr. Thane, and don't mind if I am not
+very lucid. In speaking of the affairs of another, and a young woman, I can
+only deal in outlines. You will be able to surmise and hope the rest. I
+feel in duty bound to tell you that at the time of my son's death there was
+a misunderstanding on my part which forced Miss Lewis into a false position
+in respect to her relations to my son. Too much was assumed by me on
+insufficient evidence,--a case where the wish, perhaps, was father to the
+thought. She hesitated at that sore time to rob me of an illusion which she
+saw was precious to me; she allowed me to retain my erroneous belief that
+my son, had he lived, would have enjoyed the blessing of her affection. As
+a fact, she had not given it to him,--could not have given it,--though she
+owns that her mind, not her heart, was wavering. Had she married him, other
+motives than love would have influenced her choice. So death has saved my
+dear boy from a cruel disappointment or a worse mistake, and her from a
+great danger. Had he lived, he must have had many hours of wretchedness,
+either with or without that dearest wish of his heart fulfilled.
+
+"This she confessed to me not many days ago, after a long period of
+remorseful questioning; and I deem it my duty now, in view of what you have
+just told me, to acquaint you with the truth. I am the only one who knows
+that she was not engaged to my son, and never really loved him. The fact
+cut me so deeply, when I learned it first, that I persuaded her, most
+selfishly, to continue in the disguise she had permitted, sustained so
+long,--to rest in it, that my boy's memory might be honored through this
+sacrifice of the truth. Weak, fond old man that I was, and worse! But
+now you have my confession. As soon as I can speak with her alone I will
+release her from that promise. She was fain to be free before all the
+world,--our little part of it,--but I fastened it on her. I see now that I
+could not have invented a crueler punishment; but it was never my purpose
+to punish her. I will also tell her that I have opened the true state of
+the case to you."
+
+"Would you not stop just short of that, Mr. Withers? To know she is free to
+listen to him,--that is all any man could ask."
+
+"Perhaps you are right; yes, she need not know that I have possessed you
+with her secret,--all of it that has any bearing on your hopes. I only
+thought it might save you, in her mind, from any possible imputation of--of
+want of respect for her supposed condition, akin to widowhood; but no doubt
+you will wait a suitable time."
+
+"I will wait till we meet in Boise."
+
+"In Boise!" the old gentleman cried, aghast.
+
+"That will be three days from now," answered Thane innocently. Did Mr.
+Withers imagine that he would wait three years!
+
+"But what becomes of the--the placer-mine?"
+
+"The placer-mine be--the placer-mine will keep! She is shutting up her
+book; the sketch is finished. Will you hold the umbrella, sir, or shall I
+put it down?"
+
+Mr. Withers took hold of the umbrella handle; the wind shook it and nearly
+tugged it out of his grasp. "Put it down, if you please," he murmured
+resignedly. But by this time Thane was half across the road to where
+Daphne, with penknife and finger-tips, was trying to strip the top layer
+of blackened sandpaper from her pencil-scrubber; turning her face aside,
+because, woman-like, she would insist on casting her pencil-dust to
+windward.
+
+Thane smiled, and took the scrubber out of her hands, threw away the soiled
+sheet, sealed up the pad in a clean stamped envelope, which bore across
+the end the legend, "If not delivered within ten days, return to"--"Robert
+Henry Thane," he wrote, with his address, and gave her back her property.
+It was all very childish, yet his hand trembled as he wrote; and Daphne
+looked on with the solemnity of a child learning a new game.
+
+"May I see the sketch?" he asked.
+
+They bent together over her book, while Daphne endeavored to find the
+place; the wind fluttered the leaves, and she was so long in finding it
+that Mr. Kinney had time to pack up her stool and umbrella, and cross the
+road to say good-by to Mr. Withers.
+
+"Here it is," said Thane, catching sight of the drawing. He touched the
+book-holder lightly on the arm, to turn her away from the sun. Her shadow
+fell across the open page; their backs were to the wagon. So they stood
+a full half-minute,--Thane seeing nothing, hearing his heart beat
+preposterously in the silence.
+
+"Why don't you praise my sign-posts?" asked Daphne nervously. "See my
+beautiful distance,--one straight line!"
+
+"I have changed my plans a little," said Thane. Daphne closed the book. "I
+shall see you again in Boise. This is good-by--for three days. Take care of
+yourself." He held out his hand. "I shall meet your train at Bliss."
+
+"Bliss! Where is Bliss?"
+
+"You never could remember, could you?" he smiled. The tone of his voice was
+a flagrant caress. The color flew to Daphne's face. "Bliss," said he, "is
+where I shall meet you again: remember that, will you?"
+
+Daphne drew down her veil. The man returning from the ferry was in sight
+at the top of the hill. Mr. Withers was alighting from Thane's wagon. She
+turned her gray mask towards him, through which he could discern the soft
+outline of her face, the color of her lips and cheeks, the darkness of her
+eyes; their expression he could not see.
+
+"I shall meet you at Bliss," he repeated, his fingers closing upon hers.
+
+Daphne did not reply; she did not speak to him nor look at him again,
+though it was some moments before the wagon started.
+
+Kinney and Thane remained at the cross-roads, discussing with some heat the
+latter's unexpected change of plan. Mr. Kinney had a small interest in the
+placer-mine, himself, but it looked large to him just then. He put little
+faith in Thane's urgent business (that no one had heard of till that
+moment) calling him to Boise in three days. Of what use was it going down
+to the placers only to turn round and come back again? So Thane thought,
+and proposed they drive forward to Bliss.
+
+"Bliss be hanged!" said Mr. Kinney; which shows how many ways there are of
+looking at the same thing.
+
+Thane's way prevailed; they drove straight on to Bliss. And if the
+placer-mine was ever reported on by Thane, it must have been at a later
+time.
+
+
+
+
+PILGRIMS TO MECCA
+
+
+"Notice the girl on your right, Elsie. That is the thing! You have to see
+it to understand. Do you understand, dear? Do you see the difference?"
+
+A middle-aged little mother, with a sensitive, care-worn face, leaned
+across the Pullman section and laid a hand upon her daughter's by way of
+emphasis--needless, for her voice and manner conveyed all, and much more
+than the words could possibly carry. Volumes of argument, demonstration,
+expostulation were implied.
+
+"Can you see her? Do you see what I mean? What, dear?"
+
+The questions followed one another like beads running down a string.
+Elsie's silence was the knot at the end. She opened her eyes and turned
+them languidly as directed, but without raising her head from the back of
+the car-seat.
+
+"I will look presently, mother. I can't see much of anything now."
+
+"Oh, never mind. Forgive me, dear. How is your head? Lie still; don't try
+to talk."
+
+Elsie smiled, patted her mother's hand, and closed her narrow, sweet,
+sleepy blue eyes. Mrs. Valentin never looked at them, when her mind was at
+rest, without wishing they were a trifle larger--wider open, rather. The
+eyes were large enough, but the lazy lids shut them in. They saw a good
+deal, however. She also wished, in moments of contemplation, that she could
+have laid on a little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, and
+continued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, if
+anything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated little
+mouth it was,--reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, though
+the hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, the
+mother sighed, just a touch or two,--and she knew just where to put those
+touches,--and the girl had been a beauty. If nature would only consult the
+mothers at the proper time, instead of going on in her blindfold fashion!
+
+But, after all, did they want a beauty in the family? On theory, no: the
+few beauties Mrs. Valentin had known in her life had not been the happiest
+of women. What they did want was an Elsie--their own Elsie--perfectly
+trained without losing her naturalness, perfectly educated without losing
+her health, perfectly dressed without thinking of clothes, perfectly
+accomplished without wasting her time, and, finally, an Elsie perfectly
+happy. All that parents, situated on the wrong side of the continent for
+art and culture, and not over-burdened with money, could do to that end,
+Mrs. Valentin was resolved should be done. Needless to say, very little was
+to be left to God.
+
+Mrs. Valentin was born in the East, some forty-odd years before this
+educational pilgrimage began, of good Unitarian stock,--born with a great
+sense of personal accountability. She could not have thrown it off and been
+joyful in the words, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves."
+
+Elsie had got a headache from the early start and the suppressed agitation
+of parting from her home and her father. Suppression was as natural to her
+as expression was to her mother. The father and daughter had held each
+other silently a moment; both had smiled, and both were ill for hours
+afterward.
+
+But Mrs. Valentin thought that in Elsie's case it was because she had not
+sent the girl to bed earlier the night before, and insisted on her eating
+something at breakfast.
+
+Herself--she had lain sleepless for the greater part of that night and many
+nights previous. She had anticipated in its difficulties every stage of
+the getting off, the subsequent journey, the arrival, their reception by
+Eastern relatives not seen for years, the introduction of her grown-up
+daughter, the impression she would make, the beginning of life all over
+again in a strange city. (She had known her Boston once, but that was
+twenty years ago.) She foresaw the mistakes she would inevitably make in
+her choice of means to the desired ends--dressmakers, doctors, specialists
+of all sorts; the horrible way in which school expenses mount up; the
+trivial yet poignant comparisons of school life, from which, if Elsie
+suffered, she would be sure to suffer in silence.
+
+After this fatiguing mental rehearsal she had risen at six, while the
+electric lights were still burning and the city was cloaked in fog. It was
+San Francisco of a midsummer morning; fog whistles groaning, sidewalks
+slippery with wet, and the gray-green trees and tinted flower-beds of the
+city gardens emerging like the first broad washes of a water-color laid in
+with a full brush.
+
+She had taken a last survey of her dismantled home, given the last
+directions to the old Chinese servant left in charge, presided haggardly at
+the last home breakfast----what a ghastly little ceremony it was! Then Mr.
+Valentin had gone across the Oakland ferry with them and put them aboard
+the train, muffled up as for winter. They had looked into each other's
+pale faces and parted for two years, all for Elsie's sake. But what Elsie
+thought about it--whether she understood or cared for what this sacrifice
+of home and treasure was to purchase--it was impossible to learn. Still
+more what her father thought. What he had always said was, "You had better
+go."
+
+"But do you truly think it _is_ the best thing for the child?"
+
+"I think that, whatever we do, there will be times when we'll wish we had
+done something different; and there will be other times when we shall be
+glad we did not. All we can do is the best we know up to date."
+
+"But do you think it is the best?"
+
+"I think, Emmy, that you will never be satisfied until you have tried it,
+and it's worth the money to me to have you feel that you have done your
+best."
+
+Mrs. Valentin sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why we do cling to that old
+fetich of the East. Why can't we accept the fact that we are Western
+people? The question is, Shall we be the self-satisfied kind or the
+unsatisfied kind? Shall we be contented and limited, or discontented and
+grow?"
+
+"I guess we shall be limited enough, either way," Mr. Valentin retorted
+easily. He had no hankering for the East and no grudge against fate for
+making him a Western man _malgre lui_. "I've known kickers who didn't
+appear to grow much, except to grow cranky," he said.
+
+Up to the moment of actual departure, Mrs. Valentin had continued to review
+her decision and to agonize over its possibilities of disaster; but now
+that the journey had begun, she was experiencing the rest of change and
+movement. She was as responsive as a child to fresh outward impressions,
+and the hyperbolical imagination that caused her such torture when it
+wrought in the dark hours on the teased fabric of her own life, could
+give her compensating pleasures by daylight, on the open roads of the
+world. There was as yet nothing outside the car windows which they had
+not known of old,--the marsh-meadows of the Lower Sacramento, tide-rivers
+reflecting the sky, cattle and wild fowl, with an occasional windmill
+or a duck-hunter's lodge breaking the long sweeps of low-toned color.
+The morning sun was drinking up the fog, the temperature in the Pullman
+steadily rising. Jackets were coming off and shirt-waists blooming out in
+summer colors, giving the car a homelike appearance.
+
+It was a saying that summer, "By their belts ye shall know them."
+Shirt-waists no longer counted, since the ready-made ones for two dollars
+and a half were almost as chic as the tailor-made for ten. But the belts,
+the real belts, were inimitable. Sir Lancelot might have used them for his
+bridle--
+
+  "Like to some branch of stars we see
+  Hung in the golden galaxy."
+
+Mrs. Valentin had looked with distinct approval on a mother and daughter
+who occupied the section opposite. Their impedimenta and belongings were
+"all right," arguing persons with cultivated tastes, abroad for a summer
+spent in divers climates, who knew what they should have and where to
+get it. A similarity of judgment on questions of clothes and shops is no
+doubt a bond between strange women everywhere; but it was the daughter's
+belt-buckle before which Mrs. Valentin bowed down and humbled herself in
+silence. The like of that comes only by inheritance or travel. Antique,
+pale gold--Cellini might have designed it. There was probably not another
+buckle like that one in existence. An imitation? No more than its wearer, a
+girl as white as a white camellia, with gray eyes and thin black eyebrows,
+and thick black lashes that darkened the eyes all round. There was nothing
+noticeable in her dress except its freshness and a certain finish in lesser
+details, understood by the sophisticated. "Swell" was too common a word
+for her supreme and dainty elegance. Her resemblance to the ordinary
+full-fleshed type of Pacific coast belle was that of a portrait by
+Romney--possibly engraved by Cole--to a photograph of some _reina de la
+fiesta_. This was Mrs. Valentin's exaggerated way of putting it to herself.
+Such a passionate conservative as she was sure to be prejudiced.
+
+The mother had a more pronounced individuality, as mothers are apt to
+have, and looked quite fit for the ordinary uses of life. She was of
+the benignant Roman-nosed Eastern type, daughter of generations of
+philanthropists and workers in the public eye for the public good; a deep,
+rich voice, an air of command, plain features, abundant gray hair, imported
+clothes, wonderful, keen, dark eyes overlapped by a fold of the crumpled
+eyelid,--a personage, a character, a life, full of complex energies and
+domineering good sense. With gold eye-glasses astride her high-bridged
+nose, knees crossed, one large, well-shod foot extended, this mother in
+Israel sat absorbed like a man in the daily paper, and wroth like a man at
+its contents. Occasionally she would emit an impatient protest in the deep,
+maternal tones, and the graceful daughter would turn her head and read over
+her shoulder in silent assent.
+
+"How trivial, how self-centred we are!" Mrs. Valentin murmured, leaning
+across to claim a look from Elsie. "I realize it the moment we get outside
+our own little treadmill. We do nothing but take thought for what we shall
+eat and drink and wherewithal we shall be clothed. I haven't thought of
+the country once this morning. I've been wondering if all the good summer
+things are gone at Hollander's. It may be very hot in Boston the first few
+weeks. You will be wilted in your cloth suit."
+
+"Oh, mammy, mammy! what a mammy!" purred Elsie, her pretty upper lip
+curling in the smile her mother loved--with a reservation. Elsie had her
+father's sense of humor, and had caught his half-caressing way of indulging
+it at the "intense" little mother's expense.
+
+"Elsie," she observed, "you know _I_ don't mind your way of speaking to
+me,--as if I were the girl of sixteen and you the woman of forty,--but I
+hope you won't use it before the aunts and cousins. I shall be sure to
+lay myself open, but, dear, be careful. It isn't very good form to be too
+amused with one's mother. Of course there's as much difference in mothers
+as in girls," Mrs. Valentin acknowledged. "A certain sort of temperament
+interferes with the profit one ought to get out of one's experience. If
+you had my temperament I shouldn't waste this two years' experiment on
+you; I should know that nothing could change your--spots. But _you_ will
+learn--everything. How is your head, dear--what?"
+
+Elsie had said nothing; she had not had the opportunity.
+
+At a flag station where the train was halted (this overland train was a
+"local" as far as Sacramento) Mrs. Valentin looked out and saw a colored
+man in livery climb down from the back seat of a mail-cart and hasten
+across the platform with a huge paper box. It proved to be filled with
+magnificent roses, of which he was the bearer to the ladies opposite. A
+glance at a card was followed by gracious acknowledgments, and the footman
+retired beaming. He watched the train off, hat in hand, bowing to the
+ladies at their window as only a well-raised colored servant can bow.
+
+"The Coudert place lies over there," said Mrs. Valentin, pointing to a mass
+of dark trees toward which the trap was speeding. "They have been staying
+there," she whispered, "doing the west coast, I suppose, with invitations
+to all the swell houses."
+
+"Is your daughter not well?" the deep voice spoke across the car.
+
+As Elsie could not ride backward, her mother, to give her room, and for
+the pleasure of watching her, was seated with her own back to the engine,
+facing most of the ladies in the car.
+
+"She is a little train-sick; she could not eat this morning, and that
+always gives her a headache."
+
+Elsie raised her eyelashes in faint dissent.
+
+"She should eat something, surely. Have you tried malted milk? I have some
+of the lozenges; she can take one without raising her head."
+
+Search was made in a distinguished-looking bag, Mrs. Valentin protesting
+against the trouble, and beseeching Elsie with her eyes to accept one from
+the little silver box of pastils that was passed across the aisle.
+
+Elsie said she really could not--thanks very much.
+
+The keen, dark eyes surveyed her with the look of a general inspecting raw
+troops, and Mrs. Valentin felt as depressed as the company officer who has
+been "working up" the troops. "Won't you try one, Elsie?" she pleaded.
+
+"I'd rather not, mother," said Elsie.
+
+She did not repeat her thanks to the great authority, but left her mother
+to cover her retreat.
+
+"The young girls nowadays do pretty much as they please about eating or not
+eating," observed the Eastern matron, in her large, impersonal way. "They
+can match our theories with quite as good ones of their own." She smiled
+again at Elsie, and the overtures on that side ceased.
+
+"_I_ would have eaten any imaginable thing she offered me," sighed Mrs.
+Valentin, "but Elsie is so hard to impress. I cannot understand how a girl,
+a baby, who has never been anywhere or seen anything, can be so fearfully
+_posee_. It's the Valentin blood. It's the drop of Indian blood away, 'way
+back. It's their impassiveness, but it's awfully good form--when she grows
+up to it."
+
+After this, Mrs. Valentin sat silent for such an unnatural length of time
+that Elsie roused herself to say something encouraging.
+
+"I shall be all right, mother, after Sacramento. We will take a walk. The
+fresh air is all I need."
+
+She was as good as her word. The cup of tea and the twenty minutes' stroll
+made such a happy difference that Mrs. Valentin sent a telegram to her
+husband to say that Elsie's head was better and that she had forgotten her
+trunk keys, and would he express them to her at once.
+
+So much refreshed was Elsie that her mother handed her the letters which
+had come to her share of that morning's mail. There were four or five of
+them, addressed in large, girlish hands, and exhibiting the latest and
+most expensive fads in stationery. Over one of them Elsie gave a shriek of
+delight, an outburst so unexpected and out of character with her former
+self that their distinguished fellow travelers involuntarily looked
+up,--and Mrs. Valentin blushed for her child.
+
+"Oh, mammy, how rich! How just like Gladys! She kept it for a last
+surprise! Mother, Gladys is going to Mrs. Barrington's herself."
+
+The mother's face fell.
+
+"Indeed!" she said, forcing a tone of pleasure. "Well, it's a
+compliment--on both sides. Mrs. Barrington is very particular whom she
+takes, and the Castants are sparing nothing that money can do for Gladys."
+
+"Oh, what fun!" cried Elsie, her face transformed. "Poor Gladys! she'll
+have a perfectly awful time too, and we can sympathize."
+
+"Are you expecting to have an 'awful time,' Elsie,"--the mother looked
+aghast,--"and are you going to throw yourself into the arms of Gladys
+for sympathy? Then let me say, my daughter, that neither Mrs. Barrington
+nor any one else can do much for your improvement, and all the money we
+are spending will be thrown away. If you are going East to ally yourself
+exclusively with Californian girls, to talk California and think California
+and set yourself against everything that is not Californian, we might just
+as well take the first train west at Colfax."
+
+"But am I to be different to Gladys when we meet away from home?" Elsie's
+sensitive eyes clouded. Her brows went up.
+
+"Of course not. Gladys is a dear, delightful girl. I'm as fond of her as
+you are. But you can have Gladys all the rest of your life, I hope. I'm
+not a snob, dear, but I do think we should recognize the fact that some
+acquaintances are more improving than others."
+
+"And cultivate them for the sake of what they can do for us?"
+
+In Elsie's voice there was an edge of resistance, hearing which her mother,
+when she was wise, would let speech die and silence do its work. Her
+influence with the girl was strongest when least insisted upon. She was not
+wiser than usual that morning, but the noise of the train made niceties of
+statement impossible. She abandoned the argument perforce, and Elsie, left
+with her retort unanswered, acknowledged its cheapness in her own quick,
+strong, wordless way.
+
+The dining-car would not be attached to the train until they reached
+Ogden. At twilight they stopped "twenty minutes for refreshment," and the
+Valentins took the refreshment they needed most by pacing the platform up
+and down,--the tall daughter, in her severely cut clothes, shortening her
+boyish stride to match her mother's step; the mother, looking older than
+she need, in a light-gray traveling-cap, with Elsie's golf cape thrown over
+her silk waist.
+
+The Eastern travelers were walking too. They had their tea out of an
+English tea-basket, and bread and butter from the buffet, and were
+independent of supper stations. With the Valentins it was sheer
+improvidence and want of appetite.
+
+"Please notice that girl's step," said Mrs. Valentin, pressing Elsie's arm.
+"'Art is to conceal art.' It has taken years of the best of everything, and
+eternal vigilance besides, to create such a walk as that; but _c'est fait_.
+You don't see the entire sole of her foot every time she takes a step."
+
+"Having a certain other person's soles in view, mammy?"
+
+"I'm afraid I should have them in full view if you came to meet me. Not the
+heel quite so pronounced, dearest."
+
+"Oh, mother, please leave that to Mrs. Barrington! Let us be comrades for
+these few days."
+
+"Dearest, it would be the happiness of my life to be never anything but
+a comrade. But who is to nag a girl if not her mother? I very much doubt
+if Mrs. Barrington will condescend to speak of your boot-soles. She will
+expect all that to have been attended to long ago."
+
+"It has been--a thousand years ago. Sometimes I feel that I'm all
+boot-soles."
+
+"The moment I see some result, dear, I shall be satisfied. One doesn't
+speak of such things for their own sake."
+
+"Can't we get a paper?" asked Elsie. "What is that they are shouting?"
+
+"I don't think it can be anything new. We brought these papers with us on
+the train. But we can see. No; it's just what we had this morning. They are
+preparing for a general assault. There will be heavy fighting to-morrow.
+Why, that is to-day!" Mrs. Valentin held the newspaper at arm's length.
+
+"Is there anything more? I can read only the head-lines."
+
+The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance,
+narrowing her eyelids.
+
+"Mother, there was something else in Gladys's letter. Billy Castant has
+enlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, while
+we were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he--he
+didn't go home; he just enlisted."
+
+"The foolish fellow!" Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition told
+her there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon the
+presumptive cause. "The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But he
+won't work for it. It's easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider."
+
+"I don't think it was easy at Las Guasimas," Elsie said, with a strained
+little laugh. "You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle your
+volunteers?"
+
+Mrs. Valentin listened with a catch in her breath. What did this portend?
+So slight a sign as that in Elsie meant tears and confessions from another
+girl.
+
+"And did you hear of this only just now, from Gladys's letter?"
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"You extraordinary child--your father all over again! I might have known by
+the way you laughed over that letter that you had bad news to tell--or keep
+to yourself."
+
+"I don't call that bad news, do you, mother? He does need an education, but
+he will never get it out of books."
+
+"Well, it's a pretty severe sort of education for his parents--nineteen, an
+only son, and to go without seeing them again. He might at least have come
+home and enlisted from his own State."
+
+They were at the far end of the platform, facing the dark of the pine-clad
+ravines. Deep, odorous breaths of night wind came sighing up the slopes.
+
+"Mother, there was something happened last winter that I never told you,"
+Elsie began again, with pauses. "It was so silly, and there seemed no need
+to speak of it. But I can't bear not to speak now. I don't know if it has
+made any difference--with Billy's plans. It seems disloyal to tell you. But
+you must forget it: he's forgotten, I am sure. He said--those silly things,
+you know! I couldn't have told you then; it was too silly. And I said that
+I didn't think it was for him or for me to talk about such things. It was
+for men and women, not boys who couldn't even get their lessons."
+
+"Elsie!" Mrs. Valentin gave a little choked laugh. "Did you say that? The
+poor boy! Why, I thought you were such good friends!"
+
+"He wasn't talking friendship, mother, and I was furious with him for
+flunking his exams. He passed in only five out of seven. He ought to have
+done better than that. He's not stupid; it's that fatal popularity. He's
+captain of this and manager of that, and they give him such a lot of money.
+And they pet him, too; they make excuses for him all the time. I told him
+he must _do_ something before he began to have feelings. The only feeling
+he had any right to have was shame for his miserable record."
+
+"And that was all the encouragement you gave him?"
+
+"If you call that 'encouragement,'" said Elsie.
+
+"You did very well, my dear; but I suppose you know it was the most
+intimate thing you could have said to him, the greatest compliment you
+could pay him. If he ever does make any sort of a record, you have given
+him the right to come back to you with it."
+
+"He will never come back to me without it," said the girl. "But it was
+nothing--nothing! All idleness and nonsense, and the music after supper
+that went to his head."
+
+"I hope it was nothing more than"--Mrs. Valentin checked herself. There
+were things she said to her husband which sometimes threatened to slip out
+inadvertently when his youthful copy was near. "Well, I see nothing to be
+ashamed of, on your side. But such things are always a pity. They age a
+girl in spite of herself. And the boys--they simply forget. The rebuke does
+them good, but they forget to whom they owe it. It's just one of those
+things that make my girlie older. But oh, how fast life comes!"
+
+Elsie slipped her hand under her mother's cloak, and Mrs. Valentin pressed
+her own down hard upon it.
+
+"We must get aboard, dear. But I'm so glad you told me! And I didn't mean
+quite what I said about Billy's 'going off mad.' He has given all he had to
+give, poor boy; why he gave it is his own affair."
+
+"I hope--what I told you--has made no difference about his coming home.
+It's stupid of me to think it. But hard words come back, don't they,
+mother? Hard words--to an old friend!"
+
+"Billy is all right, dear; and it was so natural you should be tried with
+him! 'For to be wroth with one we'"--Mrs. Valentin had another of her
+narrow escapes. "Come, there is the porter waiting for us."
+
+"Mother," said Elsie sternly, "please don't misunderstand. I should never
+have spoken of this if I had been 'wroth' with him--in that way."
+
+"Of course not, dear; I understand. And it would never do, anyway, for
+father doesn't like the blood."
+
+"Father doesn't like the--what, mother?"
+
+Elsie asked the question half an hour later, as they sat in an adjoining
+section, waiting for their berths to be made up.
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"What did you say father doesn't like--in the Castants?"
+
+"Oh, the blood, the family. This generation is all right--apparently. But
+blood will tell. You are too young to know all the old histories that
+fathers and mothers read young people by."
+
+"I think we are what we are," said Elsie; "we are not our
+great-grandfathers."
+
+"In a measure we are, and it should teach us charity. Not as much can be
+expected of Billy Castant, coming of the stock he does, as you might expect
+of that ancestry," and Mrs. Valentin nodded toward the formidable Eastern
+contingent. (Elsie was consciously hating them already.) "The fountain can
+rise no higher than its source."
+
+"I thought there was supposed to be a source a little higher than the
+ground--unless we are no more than earth-born fountains."
+
+"'Out of the mouth of babes,'" said Mrs. Valentin, laughing gently. "I own
+it, dear. Middle age is suspicious and mean and unspiritual and troubled
+about many things. A middle-aged mother is like an old hen when hawks are
+sailing around; she can't see the sky."
+
+"Yes," said Elsie, settling cosily against her mother's shoulder. "I always
+know when mammy speaks as my official mother, and when she is talking
+'straight talk.' I shall be so happy when she believes I am old enough to
+hear only straight talk."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've got a surprise for you, Elsie," said Mrs. Valentin, a day and a night
+eastward of the Sierras. They were on the Great Plains, at that stage of
+an overland journey which suggests, in the words of a clever woman, the
+advisability of "taking a tuck in the continent."
+
+Elsie's eyebrows seemed to portend that surprises are not always pleasant.
+
+"I've been talking with our Eastern lady, and imagine! her daughter is one
+of Mrs. Barrington's girls too. This will be her second year. So there
+is"--
+
+"An offset to Gladys," Elsie interrupted.
+
+"So there is a chance for you to know one girl, at least, of the type I've
+always been holding up to you, always believed in, though the individuals
+are so rare."
+
+Elsie's sentiments, unexpressed, were that she wished they might be rarer.
+Not that the flower of Eastern culture was not all her mother protested
+she was; but there are crises of discouragement on the upward climb of
+trying to realize a mother's ambitions for one's self, when one is only a
+girl--the only girl, on whom the family experiments are all to be wreaked.
+Elsie suffered in silence many a pang that her mother never dreamed
+of--pangs of effort unavailing and unappreciated. She wished to conform to
+her mother's exigent standard, but she could not, all at once, and be a
+girl too--a girl of sixteen, a little off the key physically, not having
+come to a woman's repose of movement; a little stridulous mentally, but
+pulsing with life's dumb music of aspiration; as intense as her mother in
+feeling, without her mother's power to throw off the strain in words.
+
+"Well, mother?" she questioned.
+
+"She is older than you, and she will be at home. The advances, of course,
+must come from her, but I hope, dear, you will not be--you will try to be
+responsive?"
+
+"I never know, mother, when I am not responsive. It's like wrinkling my
+forehead; it does itself."
+
+Mrs. Valentin made a gesture expressive of the futility of argument under
+certain not unfamiliar conditions.
+
+"'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.' I am
+leading my Pegasus to the fountain of--what was the fountain?"
+
+Elsie laughed. "Your Pegasus is pretty heavy on the wing, mammy. But I will
+drink. I will gorge myself, truly I will. The money shall not be spent in
+vain."
+
+"Oh, the money! Who cares about the money?--if only there were more of it."
+
+They stopped over night in Chicago, and Mrs. Valentin bought some
+shirt-waists; for the heat had "doubled up on them," as a Kansas farmer on
+the train remarked.
+
+Elsie trailed about the shops with her mother, not greatly interested in
+shirt-waists or bargains in French underclothing.
+
+The war pressure seemed to close in upon them as they left the mid-West and
+drew toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbing
+over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering,
+was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the
+irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems,
+freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to
+commercial account,--advertising, in symbols of death and priceless
+devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to
+speak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you could
+deface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to you by
+your bootmaker.
+
+Elsie cast hunted eyes on the bulletin boards. She knew by heart that first
+list after Las Guasimas. One glance had burned it in forever. It had become
+one of the indelible scars of a lifetime. Yet those were the names of
+strangers. If a whiff from an avalanche can fell trees a mile away, how if
+the avalanche strike you?
+
+They returned to their hotel, exhausted, yet excited, by the heat; and Mrs.
+Valentin admonished herself of what our boys must be suffering in that
+"unimaginable climate," and she entered into details, forgetting to spare
+Elsie, till the girl turned a sickly white.
+
+It was then the bishop's card was sent up--their own late bishop, much
+mourned and deplored because he had been transferred to an Eastern diocese.
+There could be no one so invariably welcome, who knew so well, without
+effort, how to touch the right chord, whether in earnest or in jest that
+sometimes hid a deeper earnest. His manner at first usually hovered between
+the two, your own mood determining where the emphasis should rest. He had
+brought with him the evening paper, but he kept it folded in his hand.
+
+"So you are pilgrims to Mecca," he said, looking from mother to daughter
+with his gentle, musing smile. "But are you not a little early for the
+Eastern schools?"
+
+"There are the home visits first, and the clothes," said Mrs. Valentin.
+
+"And where do you stop, and for how long?"
+
+"Boston, for one year, Bishop, and then we go abroad for a year, perhaps."
+
+"Bless me! what has Elsie done that she should be banished from home for
+two years?"
+
+"She takes her mother with her."
+
+"Yes; that is half of the home. Perhaps that's as much as one girl ought to
+expect."
+
+"The fathers are so busy, Bishop."
+
+"Yes; the fathers do seem to be busy. So Elsie is going East to be
+finished? And how old is she now? How does she presume to account for the
+fact that she is taller than her mother and nearly as tall as her bishop?"
+
+Elsie promptly placed herself at the bishop's side and "measured," glancing
+over her shoulder at him in the glass. He turned and gravely placed his
+hand upon her head.
+
+"I thought of writing to you at one time," said Mrs. Valentin, "but of
+course you cannot keep us all on your mind. We are a 'back number.'"
+
+"She thought I would have forgotten who these Valentins were," said the
+bishop, smiling.
+
+"No; but you cannot keep the thread of all our troubles--the sheep of the
+old flock and the lambs of the new. I have had a thousand minds lately
+about Elsie, but this was the original plan, made years ago, when we were
+young and sure about things. Don't you think young lives need room, Bishop?
+Oughtn't we to seek to widen their mental horizons?"
+
+"The horizons widen, they widen of themselves, Mrs. Valentin--very suddenly
+sometimes, and beyond our ken." The bishop's voice had struck a deeper
+note; he paused and looked at Elsie with eyes so kind and tender that the
+girl choked and turned away. "This war is rather a widening business, and
+California is getting her share. Our boys of the First, for instance,--you
+see I still call them _our_ boys,--what were they doing a year ago, and
+what are they doing now? I'll be bound half of them a year ago didn't know
+how 'Philippines' was spelled."
+
+Mrs. Valentin became restless.
+
+"Is that the evening paper?" she asked.
+
+The bishop glanced at the paper. "And who," said he, "is to open the gates
+of sunrise for our Elsie? With whom do you intend to place her in Boston?"
+
+"Oh, with Mrs. Barrington."
+
+Mrs. Valentin was watching the bishop, whose eyes still rested upon Elsie.
+
+"She is to be one of the chosen five, is she? The five wise virgins--of the
+East? But they are all Western virgins this year, I believe."
+
+"If you mean that they are all from the Western States, I think you are
+mistaken, Bishop."
+
+"Am I? Let us see. There is Elsie, and Gladys Castant, perhaps, and the
+daughters of my friend Mr. Laws of West Dakota"--
+
+"Bishop!"
+
+"Of West Dakota; that makes four. And then the young lady who was on the
+train with you, Miss Bigelow, from Los Angeles."
+
+"Bishop! I am certain you are mistaken there. If those people are not
+Eastern, then I'm from West Dakota myself!"
+
+"We are all from West Dakota virtually, so far as Mecca is concerned.
+But Mrs. Barrington offers her young ladies those exceptional social
+opportunities which Western girls are supposed to need. If you want Elsie
+to be with Eastern girls of the East, let her go to a good Boston Latin
+school. Did you not go to one yourself, Mrs. Valentin?"
+
+Mrs. Valentin laughed. "That was ages ago, and I was at home. I had the
+environment--an education in itself. Won't you dine with us, Bishop? We
+shall have dinner in half an hour."
+
+"In half an hour I must be on the limited express. You seem to have made
+different connections."
+
+"'The error was, we started wrong,'" said Mrs. Valentin lightly. "We took
+the morning instead of the evening train. But I was convinced we should be
+left, and I preferred to get left by the wrong train and have the right one
+to fall back on." She ceased her babble, as vain words die when there is a
+sense of no one listening.
+
+Elsie stood at the window looking back into the room. She thought, "Mother
+doesn't know what she is saying. What is she worried about?"
+
+The bishop was writing with a gold pencil on the margin of the newspaper.
+He folded it with the writing on top.
+
+"If you had consulted me about that child,"--he looked at Elsie,--"I should
+have said, 'Do not hurry her--do not hurry her. Her education will come as
+God sends it.' With experience, as with death, it is the prematureness that
+hurts."
+
+His beautiful voice and perfect accent filled the silence with heart-warmed
+cadences.
+
+"Well, good-by, Mrs. Valentin. Remember me to that busy husband."
+
+Mrs. Valentin rose; the bishop took her hand. "Elsie will see me to the
+elevator. This is the evening paper."
+
+He offered it with the writing toward her. Mrs. Valentin read what he had
+written: "Billy Castant was killed in the charge at San Juan. Every man in
+that fight deserves the thanks of the nation."
+
+"Come, Elsie, see me to my carriage," the bishop was saying. He placed the
+girl's hand on his arm and led her out of the room. At the elevator grating
+they waited a moment; the cold draft up the shaft fanned the hair back from
+Elsie's forehead as she stood looking down, watching the ascent of the
+cage.
+
+"It would be a happy thing," said the bishop, "if parents could always go
+with their children on these long roads of experience; but there are some
+roads the boys and the girls will have to take alone. We shall all meet at
+the other end, though--we shall all meet at the end."
+
+Elsie walked up and down the hall awhile, dreading to go back to the room.
+A band in the street below was playing an old war-song of the sixties,
+revived this battle summer of '98,--a song that was sung when the cost of
+that war was beginning to tell, "We shall meet, but we shall miss him."
+Elsie knew the music; she had not yet learned the words.
+
+Next morning Mr. Valentin received one of his wife's vague but thrifty
+telegrams, dated at Chicago, on Sunday night, July 3:
+
+"We cannot go through with it. Expect us home Wednesday."
+
+Mrs. Valentin had spent hours, years, in explaining to Elsie's father
+the many cogent and crying reasons for taking her East to be finished. It
+needed not quite five minutes to explain why she had brought her back.
+
+Strangely, none of the friends of the family asked for an explanation of
+this sudden change of plan. But Elsie envies Gladys her black clothes, and
+the privilege of crying in public when the bands play and the troops go by.
+
+"Such children--such mere children!" Mrs. Valentin sighs.
+
+But she no longer speaks to Elsie about wrinkling her forehead or showing
+her boot-soles. It is eye to eye and heart to heart, and only straight talk
+between them now, as between women who know.
+
+
+
+
+THE HARSHAW BRIDE
+
+
+[Mrs. Tom Daly, of Bisuka in the Northwest, writes to her invalid sister
+spending the summer on the coast of Southern California.]
+
+
+I
+
+You know I am always ready to sacrifice truth to politeness, if the truth
+is of that poor, stingy upstart variety everybody is familiar with and if
+the occasion warrants the expense. We all know politeness is not cheap, any
+more than honesty is politic. But surely I mistook my occasion, one day
+last winter--and now behold the price!
+
+We are to have a bride on our hands, or a bride-elect, for she isn't
+married yet. The happy man to be is rustling for a home out here in the
+wilds of Idaho while she is waiting in the old country for success to crown
+his efforts. How much success in her case is demanded one does not know.
+She is a little English girl, upper middle class, which Mrs. Percifer
+assures us is _the_ class to belong to in England at the present day,--from
+which we infer that it's her class; and the interesting reunion is to
+take place at our house--the young woman never having seen us in her life
+before.
+
+She sailed, poor thing, this day week and will be forwarded to us by her
+confiding friends in New York as soon as she arrives. Meantime she will
+have heard from us from the Percifers: that is something.
+
+Really they were very nice to us in New York, last winter, the
+Percifers--though one must not plume one's self too much. It began as
+a business flirtation down town between the husbands, and then Tom
+confidingly mentioned that he had a wife at his hotel. We unfortunate women
+were dragged into it forthwith, and more or less forced to live up to it.
+I cannot say there was anything riotous in the way she sustained her part.
+She was so very impersonal in fact, when we said good-by, that my natural
+tendency to invite people to come and stay with us, on the spur of any
+moment, was strangled in my throat.
+
+But one must say something by way of retaliation for hospitality one cannot
+reject. So I put it off on any friends of theirs who might have occasion to
+command us in the West. We should be so happy, and so forth. And, my dear,
+she has taken me up on it! She's not impersonal now. She is so glad--for
+dear Kitty's sake--that we are here, and she is sure we will be very
+good to her--such a sweet girl, no one could help being--which rather
+cuts down the margin for our goodness. The poor child--I am quoting Mrs.
+Percifer--knows absolutely no one in the West but the man she is coming
+to marry (?)and can have no conception of the journey she has before her.
+She will be _so_ comforted to find us at the end of it. And if anything
+unforeseen should occur to delay Mr. Harshaw, the fiance, and prevent his
+meeting her train, it will be a vast relief to Kitty's friends to know that
+the dear brave little girl is in good hands--ours, if you can conceive it!
+
+Please observe the coolness with which she treats his _not_ meeting that
+train, after the girl has traversed half the globe to compass her share of
+their meeting.
+
+Well, it's not the American way; but perhaps it will be when bad times have
+humbled us a little more, and the question is whether we can marry our
+daughters at all unless we can give them dowries, or professions to support
+their husbands on, and "feelings" are a luxury only the rich can afford.
+
+I hope "Kitty" won't have any; but still more I hope that her young man
+will arrive on schedule time, and that they can trot round the corner and
+be married, with Tom and me for witnesses, as speedily as possible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've had such a blow! Tom, with an effort, has succeeded in remembering
+this Mr. Harshaw who is poor Kitty's fate. He must have been years in this
+country,--long enough to have citizenized himself and become a member of
+our first Idaho legislature (I don't believe you even know that we are a
+State!). Tom was on the supper committee of the ball the city gave them.
+They were a deplorable set of men; it was easy enough to remember the nice
+ones. Tom says he is a "chump," if you know what that means. I tell him
+that every man, married or single, is constitutionally horrid to any other
+man who has had the luck to be chosen of a charming girl. But I'm afraid
+Harshaw wasn't one of the nice ones, or I should have remembered him
+myself; we had them to dinner--all who were at all worth while.
+
+Poor Kitty! There is so little here to come for _but_ the man.
+
+Well, my dear, here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kitty has arrived, and _one_
+Mr. Harshaw. Where _the_ Mr. Harshaw is, _quien sabe_! It's awfully late.
+Poor Kitty has gone to bed, and has cried herself to sleep, I dare say, if
+sleep she can. I never have heard of a girl being treated so.
+
+Tom and the other Mr. Harshaw are smoking in the dining-room, and Tom is
+talking endlessly--what about I can't imagine, unless he is giving this
+young record-breaker his opinion of his extraordinary conduct. But I must
+begin at the beginning.
+
+Mrs. Percifer wired us from New York the day the bride-elect started, and
+_she_ was to wire us from Ogden, which she did. I went to the train to meet
+her, and I told Tom to be on the watch for the bridegroom, who would come
+in from his ranch on the Snake River, by wagon or on horseback, across
+country from Ten Mile. To come by rail he'd have had to go round a hundred
+miles or so, by Mountain Home. An American would have done it, of course,
+and have come in with her on the train; but the Percifers plainly expected
+no such wild burst of enthusiasm from him.
+
+The train was late. I walked and walked the platform; some of the people
+who were waiting went away, but I dared not leave my post. I fell to
+watching a spurt of dust away off across the river toward the mesa. It
+rolled up fast, and presently I saw a man on horseback; then I didn't see
+him; then he had crossed the bridge and was pounding down the track-side
+toward the depot. He pulled up and spoke to a trainman, and after that he
+walked his horse as if he was satisfied.
+
+This is Harshaw, I thought, and a very pretty fellow, but not in the
+least like an Idaho legislator. I can't say that I care for the sort
+of Englishman who is so prompt to swear allegiance to our flag; they
+never do unless they want to go in for government land, or politics, or
+something that has nothing to do with any flag. But this youngster looked
+ridiculously young. I simply knew he was coming for that girl, and that
+he had no ulterior motives whatever. He was ashy-white with dust--hair,
+eyebrows, eyelashes, and his fair little mustache all powdered with it;
+his corduroys, leggings, and hat all of a color. I saw no baggage, and I
+wondered what he expected to be married in. He leaned on his horse dizzily
+a moment when he first got out of the saddle, and the poor beast stretched
+his fore legs, and rocked with the gusts of his panting, his sides going
+in and out like a pair of bellows. The young fellow handed him over to a
+man to take to the stables, and I saw him give him a regular bridegroom's
+tip. He's all right, I said to myself, and Tom _was_ horrid to call him
+a "chump." He beat himself off a bit, and went in and talked to the
+ticket-agent. They looked at their watches.
+
+"I don't think you'll have time to go uptown," said the ticket-man.
+
+Harshaw came out then, and _he_ began to walk the platform, and to stare
+down the track toward Nampa; so I sat down. Presently he stopped, and
+raised his hat, and asked if I was Mrs. Daly, a friend of Mrs. Percifer of
+London and New York.
+
+Not to be boastful, I said that I knew Mrs. Percifer.
+
+"Then," said he, "we are here on the same errand, I think."
+
+_I_ was there to meet Miss Kitty Comyn, I told him, and he said so was he,
+and might he have a little talk with me? He seemed excited and serious,
+very.
+
+"Are you _the_ Mr. Harshaw?" I asked, though I hadn't an idea, of course,
+that he could be anybody else.
+
+"Not exactly," he said. "I'm his cousin, Cecil Harshaw."
+
+"Is Mr. Harshaw ill?"
+
+He looked foolish, and dropped his eyes. "No," said he. "He was well last
+night when I left him at the ranch." Last night! He had come a hundred
+miles between dark of one day and noon of the next!
+
+"Your cousin takes a royal way of bringing home his bride--by proxy," I
+said.
+
+"Ah, but it's partly my fault, you know"--he could not quell a sudden
+shamefaced laugh,--"if you'd kindly allow me to explain. I shall have to
+be quite brutally frank; but Mrs. Percifer said"--Here he lugged in a
+propitiatory compliment, which sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it
+fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he
+babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and his
+perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and American
+colloquialisms, not to say slang.
+
+"It's like this, Mrs. Daly. A man oughtn't to be a dog-in-the-manger about
+a girl, even if he has got her promise, you know. If he can't get a move on
+and marry her before her hair is gray, he ought to step out and give the
+other fellows a chance. I'm not speaking for myself, though I would have
+spoken three years ago if she hadn't been engaged to Micky--she's always
+been engaged to him, one may say. And I accepted the fact; and when I came
+over here and took a share in Micky's ranch I meant right by him, and God
+knows I meant more than right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she must
+be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he
+has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad
+with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not
+looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl
+waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass
+I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to
+offer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over his
+natural difficulty--laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, only
+he's slow, and it's hard to get him to look things square in the face.
+It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, that
+I undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a
+----. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say to
+her"--His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level of
+ordinary conversation, with the remark, "It's a facer, by Jove!"
+
+I managed not to smile. If he'd undertaken, I said, to "boom" his cousin's
+marriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit for
+disinterestedness; but so few good acts were ever rewarded in this world! I
+seemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might be
+heroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark.
+
+"Ah," he said feelingly, "it's fierce! I never was so rattled in my life.
+But before you give me too much credit for disinterestedness, you know, I
+must tell you that I'm thinking of--that--in short, I've a mind to speak
+for myself now, if Micky doesn't come up to time."
+
+I simply looked at him, and he blushed, but went on more explicitly. "He
+could have married her, Mrs. Daly, any time these three years if he'd had
+the pluck to think so. He'd say, 'If we have a good season with the horses,
+I'll send for her in the fall.' We'd have our usual season, and then he'd
+say, 'It won't do, Cecy.' And in the spring we are always as poor as
+jack-rabbits, and so he'd wait till the next fall. I got so mad with his
+infernal coolness, and the contrast of how things were and how she must
+think they were! Still, I knew he'd be good to her if he had her here, and
+he'd save twice as much with her to provide for as he ever could alone. I
+used to hear all her little news, poor girl. She had lost her father, and
+there were tight times at home. The next word was that she was going for a
+governess. Then I said, 'You ought to go over and get her, or else send for
+her sharp. You are as ready to marry her now as ever you will be.'
+
+"'I'm too confounded strapped,' said he. I told him I would fix all that if
+he would go, or write her to come. But the weeks went by, and he never made
+a move. And there were reasons, Mrs. Daly, why it was best that any one who
+cared for him should be on the ground. Then I made my kick. I don't believe
+in kicking, as a rule; but if you do kick, kick hard, I say. 'If you don't
+send for her, Micky, I'll send for her myself,' I said.
+
+"'What for?' said he.
+
+"'For you,' said I, 'if you'll have the manliness to step up and claim her,
+and treat her as you ought. If not, she can see how things are, and maybe
+she'll want a change. You may not think you are wronging her and deceiving
+her,' I said, 'but that's what you are; and if you won't make an end of
+this situation' (I haven't told you, and I can't tell you, the whole of it,
+Mrs. Daly), 'I will end it myself--for your sake and for her sake and for
+my own.' And I warned him that I should have a word to say to her if he
+didn't occupy the field of vision quite promptly after she arrived. 'One of
+us will meet her at the train,' said I, 'and the one who loves her will get
+there first.'
+
+"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him at
+the ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it,
+he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I was
+not bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. Then
+I cabled her just the question, Would she come? and she answered directly
+that she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and I
+told Micky what I'd done.
+
+"And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from that
+moment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I haven't a
+blessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, I
+should say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength of
+the situation, seeing it's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rum
+justice in it; but think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake of
+punishing me!
+
+"Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast of
+it, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including the
+fact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and try
+to smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance?
+There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet."
+
+The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of his
+tale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for "Micky."
+
+"If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+I agreed that it would. Then I made the only suggestion it occurred to me
+to offer in the case--that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheon
+or breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet Miss
+Comyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. My
+husband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and after
+dinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactory
+message, he could cast himself into the breach.
+
+"And I'm sorry for you," I said; "for I don't think you will have an easy
+time of it."
+
+"She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that's better than sending
+me friendly little messages in her letters to Micky."
+
+I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of his
+extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good
+faith--as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as
+convincing as a scene in comic opera.
+
+"By the way," said he, "I didn't encumber myself with much luggage this
+trip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in."
+
+I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he as
+recklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thought
+he did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the whole
+of him from head to foot as pale as a plaster cast with dust, except his
+bright blue eyes, which had hard, dark circles around them.
+
+"The train is coming," I warned him.
+
+"_She_ is coming! _A la bonne heure!_" he cried, and was off on a run, and
+whistled a car that was going up Main Street to the natatorium; and I knew
+that in ten minutes he would be reveling in the plunge, while I should be
+making the best of this beautiful crisis of his inventing to Miss Comyn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dear, they are the prettiest pair! Providence, no doubt, designed
+them for each other, if he had not made this unpardonable break. She has
+a spirit of her own, has Miss Kitty, and if she cried up-stairs alone
+with me,--tears of anger and mortification, it struck me, rather than of
+heart-grief,--I will venture she shed no tears before him.
+
+As Mr. Michael Harshaw did not arrive, we gave Mr. Cecil his opportunity,
+as promised, of speech with his victim and judge. He talked to her in the
+little sitting-room after dinner--as long as she would listen to him,
+apparently. We heard her come flying out with a sort of passionate
+suddenness, as if she had literally run away from his words. But he had
+followed her, and for an instant I saw them together in the hall. His
+poor young face was literally burning; perhaps it was only sunburn, but I
+fancied she had been giving him a metaphorical drubbing--"ragging," as Tom
+would call it--worse than Lady Anne gave Richard.
+
+She was still in a fine Shakespearean temper when I carried her off
+up-stairs. Reserves were impossible between us; her right to any privacy
+in her own affairs had been given away from the start; that was one of the
+pleasing features of the situation.
+
+"_Marry_ him! marry _him_!" she cried. "That impertinent, meddlesome boy!
+That false, dishonorable"--
+
+"Go slow, dear," I said. "I don't think he's quite so bad as that."
+
+"And what do I want with _him_! And what do you think he tells me, Mrs.
+Daly? And whether there's any truth in him, how do I know? He declares
+it was not Michael Harshaw who sent for me at all! The message, all the
+messages, were from him. In that case I have been decoyed over here to
+marry a man who not only never asked me to come, but who stood by and let
+me be hoaxed in this shameful way, and now leaves me to be persecuted by
+this one's ridiculous offers of marriage,--as if I belonged to all or any
+of the Harshaws, whichever one came first! Michael may not even know that
+I am here," she added in a lower key. "If Cecil Harshaw was capable of
+doing what he has done, by his own confession, it would be little more to
+intercept my answers to his forgeries."
+
+That was true, I said. It was quite possible the young man lied. She would,
+of course, give Mr. Michael Harshaw a chance to tell _his_ story.
+
+"I cannot believe," said the distracted girl, "that Michael would lend
+himself, even passively, to such an abominable trick. Could any one believe
+it--of his worst enemy!"
+
+Impossible, I agreed. She must believe nothing till she had heard from her
+lover.
+
+"But if Michael did not know it," she mused, with a piteous blush, "then
+Cecil Harshaw must have sent me that money himself--the insolence! And
+after that to ask me to marry him!"
+
+Men were fearfully primitive still, after all that we had done for them, I
+reminded her, especially in their notions of love-making. Their intentions
+were generally better than their methods. No great harm had been done,
+for that matter. A letter, if written that night, would reach Mr. Michael
+Harshaw at his ranch not later than the next night. All these troubles
+could wait till the real Mr. Harshaw had been heard from. My husband would
+see that her letter reached him promptly, and in the mean time Mr. Cecil
+need not be told that we were proving his little story.
+
+I was forced to humor her own theory of her case; but I have no idea,
+myself, that Cecil Harshaw has not told the truth. He does not look like
+a liar, to begin with, and how silly to palm off an invention for to-day
+which to-morrow would expose!
+
+Tom is still talking and talking. I really must interfere and give Mr.
+Cecil a chance to go. It is quite too late to look for the other one. If he
+comes at this hour, there is nothing he can do but go to bed.
+
+... Well, the young man has gone, and Tom is shutting up the house, and I
+hope the bride is asleep, though I doubt it. Have I told you how charming
+she is? Not so discouragingly tall or so classic as the Du Maurier goddess,
+but "comfy," much more "comfy," to my mind. Her nose is rudimentary,
+rather, which doesn't prevent her having a mind of her own, though noses
+are said to have it all to say as to force of character. Her upper lip has
+the most fascinating little pout; her chin is full and emotional--but these
+are emotional times; and there is a beautiful finish about her throat and
+hands and wrists. She looks more dressed in a shirt-waist, in which she
+came down to dinner, her trunk not having come, than some of us do in the
+best we have. Her clothes are very fresh and recent, to a woman of Idaho;
+but she does not wear her pretty ears "cachees," I am glad to say. They are
+very pretty, and one--the left one--is burned pure crimson from sitting
+next the window of her section all the way from Omaha.
+
+But why do I write all this nonsense at twelve o'clock at night, when all
+I need say by way of description is that we want her to stay with us,
+indefinitely if necessary, and let her countrymen and lovers go to--their
+ranch on the Snake River!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What do you suppose those wretches were arguing about in the dining-room
+last night, over their whisky and soda? Sentiment was "not in it," as they
+would say. They were talking up a scheme--a scheme that Tom has had in mind
+ever since he first saw the Thousand Springs six years ago, when he had the
+Snake River placer-mining fever. It was of no use then, because electrical
+transmission was in its infancy, its long-distance capacities undreamed of.
+But Harshaw was down there fishing last summer, and he was able to satisfy
+the only doubt Tom has had as to some natural feature of the scheme--I
+don't know what; but Harshaw has settled it, and is as wild as Tom himself
+about the thing. Also he wants to put into it all the money he can
+recover out of his cousin's ranch. (I shouldn't think the future of that
+partnership would be exactly happy!) And now they propose to take hold of
+it together, and at once.
+
+Harshaw, who, it seems, is enough of an engineer to run a level, will go
+down with Tom and make the preliminary surveys. Tom will work up the plans
+and estimates, and prepare a report, which Harshaw will take to London,
+where his father has influence in the City, and the sanguine child sees
+himself placing it in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+Tom made no secret with me of their scheme, and I fell upon him at once.
+
+"You are not taking advantage of that innocent in your own house!" I said.
+
+"Do you take him for an innocent? He has about as shrewd a business
+head--but he has no money, anyhow. I shall have to put up for the whole
+trip."
+
+To be honest, that was just what I had feared; but it didn't sound well
+to say so. Tom is always putting up for things that never come to
+anything--for us.
+
+He tried to propitiate me with the news that I was to go with them.
+
+"And what do you propose to do with our guest?"
+
+"Take her along. Why not? It's as hard a trip as any I know of, for the
+distance. Her troubles won't keep her awake, nor spoil her appetite, after
+the first day's ride."
+
+"I don't know but you are right," I said; "but wild horses couldn't drag
+her if _he_ goes. And how about the other Harshaw--the one she has promised
+to marry?"
+
+"She isn't going to marry him, is she? I should think she had gone about
+far enough, to meet that fellow halfway."
+
+Even if she wasn't going to marry him, I said, it might be civil to tell
+him so. She had listened to his accuser; she could hardly refuse to listen
+to him.
+
+"I think, myself, the dear boy has skipped the country," said Tom, who is
+unblushingly on Cecil's side. "If he hasn't, the letter will fetch him. She
+will have time to settle his hash before we start."
+
+"Before we start! And when do you propose to start?"--I shouldn't have been
+surprised if he had said "to-morrow," but he considerately gives me until
+Thursday.
+
+The truth is, Lou, it is years and years since I have been on one of these
+wild-goose chases with Tom. I have no more faith in this goose than in any
+of the other ones, but who wants to be forever playing the part of Wisdom
+"that cries in the streets and no man regards her"? One might as well be
+merry over one's folly, to say nothing of the folly of other people. I
+confess I am dying to go; but of course nothing can be decided till the
+recreant bridegroom has been heard from.
+
+This morning, when I went to Kitty's door for her letter, I found she
+hadn't written it. She made me come in while she "confessed," as she said.
+
+"I couldn't submit to the facts last night," she faltered. "I had to
+pretend that I thought he didn't know; but of course he does--he must. I
+wrote him from home before I started, and again from New York. I can't
+suppose that Cecil would intercept my letters. He is not a stage villain.
+No; I must face the truth. But how can I ever tell it to mamma!"
+
+"We will arrange all that by and by," I assured her (but I don't see myself
+how she can tell the truth about this transaction to anybody, her mother
+least of all, who would be simply wild if she knew how the girl has been
+betrayed and insulted, among utter strangers); meantime I begged her to
+promise me that she would not waste--
+
+She interrupted me quickly. "I have wasted enough, I think. No; don't be
+afraid for me, Mrs. Daly, and for Heaven's sake don't pity me!"
+
+I had just written the above when Tom came in and informed me that the
+"regular candidate had arrived," and requested to know if we were to have
+them both to dinner, or if the "dark horse" was to be told he needn't come.
+
+"Of course he can't come!" I screamed; "let him keep himself as dark as
+possible."
+
+"Then you needn't expect me," said Tom. "Cecy and I will dine at the
+Louvre." And I would give a good deal if I could dine there too, or any
+where but with this extraordinary pair of lovers.
+
+I went out to meet the real Harshaw, embarrassed with the guilty
+consciousness of having allowed my sympathies to go astray; for though in
+theory I totally disapprove of Cecil Harshaw, personally I defy anybody not
+to like him. I will except prejudiced persons, like his cousin and the lady
+he is so bent on making, by hook or by crook, _a_ Mrs. Harshaw.
+
+Mr. Harshaw the first (and last to arrive) has shaved his mustache quite
+recently, I should say, and the nakedness of his upper lip is not becoming.
+I wonder if she ever saw him with his mouth bare? I wonder if she would
+have accepted him if she had? He was so funny about his cousin, the
+promoter; so absolutely unconscious of his own asinine position. He argued
+very sensibly that if, after waiting four years for him, she couldn't wait
+one day longer, she must have changed in her feelings very decidedly, and
+that was a fact it behooved him to find out. Better now than later. I think
+he has found out.
+
+Possibly he was nicer four years ago. Men get terribly down at heel,
+mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in these
+out-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily making
+growth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself has
+helped to develop her. It must have been a knot of perpetual doubt and
+self-questioning. No one need tell me that she really loves him; if she
+did, if she had, she could not take his treatment of her like this. Perhaps
+the family circumstances constrained her. They may have thought Harshaw
+had a fortune in the future of his ranch, with its river boundary of
+placer-mines. English girls are obedient, and English mammas are practical,
+we read.
+
+She is practical, and she is beginning to look her situation in the face.
+
+"I shall want you to help me find some way to return that money," she said
+to me later, with an angry blush--"that money which Cecil Harshaw kindly
+advanced me for my journey. I shall hate every moment of my life till that
+debt is paid. But for the insult I never can repay him, never!
+
+"We are a large family at home--four girls besides me, and three boys;
+and boys are so expensive. I cannot ask mamma to help me; indeed, I was
+hoping to help her. I should have gone for a governess if I had not been
+duped into coming over here. Would there be any one in this town, do
+you think, who might want a governess for her children? I have a few
+'accomplishments,' and though I've not been trained for a teacher, I am
+used to children, and they like me, when I want them to."
+
+I thought this a good idea for the future; it would take time to work it
+up. But for the present an inspiration came to me,--on the strength of
+something Tom had said,--that he wished I could draw or paint, because he
+could make an artist useful on this trip, he condescended to say, if he
+could lay his hand on one. All the photographs of the Springs, it seems,
+have the disastrous effect of dwarfing their height and magnitude. There
+is a lagoon and a weedy island directly beneath them, and in the camera
+pictures taken from in front, the reeds and willows look gigantic in the
+foreground, and the Springs--out of all proportion--insignificant. This
+would be fatal to our schemers' claims as to the volume of water they are
+supposed to furnish for an electrical power plant to supply the Silver City
+mines, one hundred miles away. Hence the demand of Science for Art, with
+her point of view.
+
+"Just the thing for her," I thought. "She can draw and water-color, of
+course; all English girls do." And I flew and proposed it to Tom. "Pay her
+well for her pictures, and she'll make your Thousand Springs look like Ten
+Thousand." (That was only my little joke, dear; I am always afraid of your
+conscience.) But the main thing is settled; we have found a way of inducing
+Kitty to go. Tom was charmed with my intelligence, and Kitty, poor child,
+would go anywhere, in any conceivable company, to get even with Cecil
+Harshaw on that hateful money transaction. When I told her she would have
+to submit to his presence on the trip, she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's one of 'life's little ironies,'" she said.
+
+"And," I added, "we shall have to pass the ranch that was to have been"--
+
+"Oh, well, that is another. I must get used to the humorous side of my
+situation. One suffers most, perhaps, through thinking how other people
+will think one suffers. If they would only give one credit for a little
+common sense, to say nothing of pride!"
+
+You see, she will wear no willows for him. We shall get on beautifully,
+I've no doubt, even with the "irony" of the situation rubbed in, as it
+inevitably will be, in the course of this journey.
+
+Tom solemnly assures me that the other Harshaw's name is not Micky, but
+"Denis;" and he explains his having got into the legislature (quite
+unnecessarily, so far as I am concerned) on the theory that he is too lazy
+even to make enemies.
+
+I shall get the governess project started, so it can be working while we
+are away. If you know of anybody who would be likely to want her, and could
+pay her decently, and would know how to treat a nursery governess who is
+every bit a lady, but who is not above her business (I take for granted she
+is not, though of course I don't know), do, pray, speak a word for her.
+I'll answer for it she is bright enough; better not mention that she is
+pretty. There must be a hundred chances for her there to one in Idaho. We
+are hardly up to the resident-governess idea as yet. It is thought to be
+wanting in public spirit for parents not to patronize the local schools.
+If they are not good enough for the rich families, the poor families feel
+injured, and want to know the reason why.
+
+To return to these Harshaws. Does it not strike you that the English are
+more original, not to say queer, than we are; more indifferent to the
+opinions of others--certain others? They don't hesitate to do a thing
+because on the face of it it's perfectly insane. Witness the lengths they
+go, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen to
+set their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have the
+love of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding,
+high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons," who have
+inherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without having
+inherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to be
+responsible for them.
+
+I note what you say about my tendency to slang, and how it "seems to grow
+upon me." It "seems" to, alas! for the simple reason, I fear, that it
+does. I can remember when I used carefully to corral all my slang words in
+apologetic quote-marks, as if they were range-cattle to be fenced out from
+the home herd--our mother-tongue which we brought with us from the East,
+and which you have preserved in all its conscientious purity. But I give
+it up. I hardly know any longer, in regard to my own speech, which are my
+native expressions and which are the wild and woolly ones adopted off the
+range. It will serve all human purposes of a woman irretrievably married
+into the West. If the worst come to the worst, I can make a virtue of
+necessity and become a member of the "American Dialect Society"--a member
+in good standing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the morning of our glorious start. I am snatching a few words with
+you while the men are packing the wagon, which stands before the door.
+What a sensation it would make drawn up in front of--Mrs. Percifer's, for
+instance, in Park Avenue! Here no one turns the head to look at it.
+
+I told Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to have
+two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any
+fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending,
+make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking
+themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony
+ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of
+course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls of blankets.
+We don't go out of our way to be uncomfortable; that is the tenderfoot's
+pet weakness. The "kitchen-box" and the "grub-box" sit shoulder to shoulder
+in the back of the wagon. The stovepipe, tied with rope in sections, keeps
+up a lively clatter in concert with the jiggling of the tinware and the
+thumps and bumps of the camp-stove, which has swallowed its own feet, and,
+by the internal sounds, doesn't seem to have digested them.
+
+I spent last evening covering the canteens with canvas. The maiden was
+quite cheerful, sorting her drawing-materials and packing her colors and
+sketch-blocks. She laughs at everything Tom says, whether she sees the
+point or not, and most when there is none to see. Tom will be cook, because
+he prefers his own messing to any of ours, and we can't spare room in the
+wagon for a regular camp chef. Mr. Harshaw is the "swamper," because he
+makes himself useful doing things my lord doesn't like to do. And Kitty is
+not Miss Co-myn, as we called it, but Miss "Cummin," as they call it,--"the
+Comin' woman," Tom calls her. Mr. Billings, the teamster, completes our
+party.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sept.--Never mind the date. This is to-morrow morning, and we are at
+Walter's Ferry. It seems a week since we left Bisuka. We started yesterday
+on the flank of a dust-storm, and soon were with the main column, the wind
+pursuing us and hurling the sweepings of the road into the backs of our
+necks. The double-sides raised us out of the worst of the dust, else I
+think we should have been smothered. It was a test of our young lady's
+traveling manners. She kept her head down and her mouth shut; but when I
+shrieked at her to ask how she was standing it, she plucked her dusty veil
+from between her lips and smiled for answer.
+
+We two have the back seat, Tom sits in front with Billings, and the
+"swamper" sits anywhere on the lumps and bumps which our baggage
+makes, covered by the canvas wagon-sheet. He might have ridden his
+horse--everybody supposed he would; but that would have separated him from
+the object of his existence; the object sternly ignoring him, and riding
+for miles with her face turned away, her hand to her hat, which the wind
+persistently snatched at. It was her wide-brimmed sketching-hat--rather a
+daring creation but monstrously becoming, and I had persuaded her to wear
+it, the morning being delusively clear, thinking we were to have one of
+our midsummer scorchers that would have burned her fair English face to a
+blister.
+
+Mr. Harshaw thought she would be tired, wearing her hand continually in the
+air, and suggested various mechanical substitutes,--a string attached to
+the hat-trimming, a scarf tied over her head; but a snubbing was all the
+reward he got for his sympathy.
+
+"When this hand is tired I take the other one," she said airily.
+
+We lunched at Ten Mile, by the railroad track. Do you remember that
+desolate place? The Oregon Short Line used to leave us there at a little
+station called Kuna. There is no Kuna now; the station-house is gone; the
+station-keeper's little children are buried between four stakes on the bare
+hill--diphtheria, I think it was. Miss Kitty asked what the stakes were
+there for. Tom didn't like to tell her, so he said some traveler had made a
+"cache" there of something he couldn't carry with him, and the stakes were
+to mark the spot till his return.
+
+"And will nobody disturb the cache?" asked Miss Kitty. I couldn't bear
+to hear them. "They are graves," I whispered. "Two little children--the
+station-keeper's--all they had." And she asked no more questions.
+
+Mr. Harshaw had got possession of the canteen, and so was able to serve the
+maiden, both when she drank and when she held out her rosy fingers to be
+sprinkled, he tilting a little water on them slowly--with such provoking
+slowness that she chid him; then he let it come in gulps, and she chid
+him more, for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain very
+prettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the game
+to be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestal
+of virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don't
+care to be made the stamping-ground for their little differences.
+
+The horses were longer at their lunch than we, and Miss Kitty requested
+her traveling-bag. "And now," she said, "I will get rid of this fiend of a
+hat," whereas she had steadily protested for miles that she didn't mind it
+in the least. She took out of her bag a steamer-cap, and when she had put
+it on I could see that poor Harshaw dared not trust himself to look at her,
+her fair face exposed, and so very fair, in its tender, soft coloring,
+against that grim, wind-beaten waste of dust and sage.
+
+I shall skip the scenery on the road to Walter's Ferry, partly because we
+couldn't see it for the dust; and if we had seen it, I would not waste it
+upon you, an army woman. But Walter's Ferry was a hard-looking place when
+we crawled in last night out of the howling, dirt-throwing wind.
+
+The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering and
+tugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loaded
+with dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hooted
+and we howled,--the men did,--and the ferry-keeper came out and stared at
+us in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if we
+could have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river,
+which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely to
+sleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp.
+
+The one guest-room at the Ferry that could be called private was given to
+Kitty and me; but we used it as a sitting-room till bedtime, there being
+nowhere else to go but into the common room where the teamsters congregate.
+
+We stood and looked at each other, in our common disguise of dust, and
+tried to find our feet and other members that came awake gradually after
+the long stupor of the ride. There was a heap of sage-brush on the hearth
+laid ready for lighting. I touched a match to it, and Kitty dropped on her
+knees in front of its riotous warmth and glow. Suddenly she sprang up and
+stared about her, sniffing and catching her breath. I had noticed it too;
+it fairly took one by the throat, the gruesome odor.
+
+"What is this beastly smell?" She spoke right out, as our beloved English
+do. Tom came in at that moment, and she turned upon him as though he were
+the author of our misery.
+
+"What _has_ happened in this horrid room? We can't stay here, you know!"
+The proposition admitted of no argument. She refused to draw another breath
+except through her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+By this time I had recognized the smell. "It's nothing but sage-brush," I
+cried; "the cleanest, sterilest thing that grows!"
+
+"It may be clean," said Kitty, "but it smells like the bottomless pit.
+I must have a breath of fresh air." The only window in the room was a
+four-pane sash fixed solid in the top of the outside door. Tom said we
+should have the sweepings of the Snake River valley in there in one second
+if we opened that door. But we did, and the wind played havoc with our
+fire, and half the country blew in, as he had said, and with it came Cecil,
+his head bent low, his arms full of rugs and dust-cloaks.
+
+"You angel!" I cried, "have you been shaking those things?"
+
+"He's given himself the hay-fever," said Tom, heartlessly watching him
+while he sneezed and sneezed, and wept dust into his handkerchief.
+
+"Doesn't the man do those things?" Miss Kitty whispered.
+
+"What, our next Populist governor? Not much!" Tom replied. Kitty of course
+did not understand; it was hopeless to begin upon that theme--of our labor
+aristocracy; so we sent the men away, and made ourselves as presentable as
+we could for supper.
+
+I need not dwell upon it; it was the usual Walter's Ferry supper. The
+little woman who cooked it--the third she had cooked that evening--served
+it as well, plodding back and forth from the kitchen stove to the
+dining-room table, a little white-headed toddler clinging to her skirts,
+and whining to be put to bed. Out of regard for her look of general
+discouragement we ate what we could of the food without yielding to the
+temptation to joke about it, which was a cross to Tom at least.
+
+"Do you know how the farmers sow their seed in the Snake River valley?" he
+asked Miss Kitty. She raised eyes of confiding inquiry to his face.
+
+"They prepare the land in the usual way; then they go about five miles to
+windward of the ploughed field and let fly their seed; the wind does the
+rest. It would be of no use, you see, to sow it on the spot where it's
+meant to lie; they would have to go into the next county to look for their
+crop, top-soil and all."
+
+Now whenever Tom makes a statement Miss Kitty looks first at me to see how
+I am taking it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a fair, pale morning, as still as a picture, after last night's
+orgy of wind and dust. The maiden is making her first sketch on American
+soil--of the rope-ferry, with the boat on this side. She is seated in
+perfect unconsciousness on an inverted pine box--empty, I trust--which
+bears the startling announcement, in legible lettering on its side, that it
+holds "500 smokeless nitro-powder cartridges." Now she looks up disgusted,
+to see the boat swing off and slowly warp over to the other side. The
+picturesque blocks and cables in the foreground have hopelessly changed
+position, and continue changing; but she consoles herself by making
+marginal notes of the passengers returning by the boat,--a six-horse
+freight-team from Silver City, and a band of horses driven by two realistic
+cow-boys from anywhere. The driver of the freight-team has a young wildcat
+aboard, half starved, haggard, and crazed with captivity. He stops, and
+pulls out his wretched pet. The cow-boys stop; everybody stops; they make
+a ring, while the dogs of the ferry-house are invited to step up and
+examine for themselves. The little cat spits and rages at the end of its
+blood-stained rope. It is not a pretty show, and I am provoked with our men
+for not turning their backs upon it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sunday, at Broadlands. From Walter's Ferry, day before yesterday, we
+climbed back upon the main road, which crosses the plateau of the Snake,
+cutting off a great bend of the river, to see it again far below in the
+bottom of the Grand Canon.
+
+The alkali growth is monotonous here; but there was a world of beauty
+and caprice in the forms of the seed-pods dried upon their stalks. Most
+of these pretty little purses were empty. Their treasure went, like the
+savings of a maiden aunt, when the idle wind got hold of it. There is an
+almost humorous ingenuity in the pains Nature has taken to secure the
+propagation of some of the meanest of her plant-children. The most
+worthless little vagabond seeds have wings or fans to fly with, or
+self-acting bomb-receptacles that burst and empty their contents (which
+nobody wants) upon the liberal air, or claws or prickers to catch on with
+to anything that goes. And once they have caught on, they are harder to get
+rid of than a Canadian "quarter."
+
+"And do you call this a desert?" cries Miss Kitty. "Why, millions of
+creatures live here! Look at the footprints of all the little beasties.
+They must eat and drink."
+
+"That is the cheek of us humans," said Tom. "We call our forests solitudes
+because _we_ have never shown up there before. Precious little we were
+missed. This desert subsisted its own population, and asked no favors
+of irrigation, till man came and overstocked it, and upset its domestic
+economies. When the sheep-men and the cattle-men came with their foreign
+mouths to fill, the wild natives had to scatter and forage for food, and
+trot back and forth to the river for drink. They have to travel miles now
+to one they went before. Hence all these desert thoroughfares."
+
+And he showed us in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and a
+horned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopher
+skipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their own
+broad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break in
+the canon wall, where the thirsty tracks went down.
+
+We plodded along, and having with much deliberation taken the wrong road,
+we found ourselves about nightfall at the bottom of the canon, in a perfect
+cul-de-sac. The bluffs ahead of us crowded close to the river, stretching
+their rocky knees straight down into deep water, and making no lap at all
+for our wagon to go over. And now, with this sweet prospect before us, it
+came on steadily to rain. The men made camp in the slippery darkness, while
+we sat in the wagon, warm and dry, and thanked our stars there were still a
+few things left that men could do without our aid or competition. Presently
+a lantern flashed out, and spots of light shifted over them as they
+slaved--pounding tent-pegs, and scraping stones away from places where our
+blankets were to be spread, hacking and hewing among the wet willows, and
+grappling with stovepipes and tent-poles; and the harder they worked the
+better their spirits seemed to be.
+
+"I wish some of the people who used to know Cecil Harshaw in England could
+see him now," said Kitty.
+
+"What did he do in England?" I asked.
+
+"He didn't hammer stovepipes and carry kitchen-boxes and cut fire-wood, you
+know."
+
+"Don't you like to see men use their muscle?" I asked her. "Very few of
+them are reflective to any purpose at his age."
+
+"Why, how old, or how young, do you take him to be?"
+
+"I think you spoke of him as a boy, if I remember."
+
+"If I called him a boy, it was out of charity for his behavior. He's within
+six months of my own age."
+
+"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed.
+
+"It's always 'girls' and 'men,'" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a man
+now, he never will be."
+
+I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. _I_ thought
+Cecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly,
+so very far amiss with his behavior.
+
+"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Daly, to defend him, I am sure. I suppose he
+could do no less than propose to me, after he had brought me out to marry a
+man who didn't appear to be quite ready; and if it had to be done, it was
+best to do it quickly."
+
+So _that_ was what she had been threshing out between whiles? I might have
+tried to answer her, but now the little tent among the willows began to
+glow with fire and candlelight, and a dark shape loomed against it. It was
+Cecil Harshaw, bareheaded, with an umbrella, coming to escort us in to
+supper.
+
+I never saw such a pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night,
+nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance across
+the table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either the
+beginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction.
+
+I shall have to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't go
+on by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawl
+out of the canon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriously
+to walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk with
+us; and how Kitty made it difficult for him to walk with both of us by
+staving on ahead, with the step of a young Atalanta. I was so provoked with
+her that I let her take her pace and I took mine. Fancy a woman of my age
+racing a girl of her build and constitution seven miles to Broadlands! Poor
+Harshaw was cruelly torn between us, but he manfully stuck to his duty. He
+would not abandon the old lady even for the pleasure of running after the
+young one, though I absolved him many times, and implored him to leave me
+to my fate. I take pride in recording his faithfulness, and I see now why
+I have always liked him. He wears well, particularly when things are most
+harassing.
+
+It certainly was hard upon him when I gave out completely, toiling through
+the sand, and sat down to rest on the door-stone of a placer-miner's
+cabin (cabin closed and miner gone), and nowhere through the hot, morning
+stillness could we catch a sound or a sight of the runaway. I could almost
+hear his heart beat, and his eyes and ears and all his keen young senses
+were on a stretch after that ridiculous girl. But he kept up a show of
+interest in my remarks, and paid every patient attention to my feeble
+wants, without an idea of how long it might be my pleasure to sit there.
+It was not long, however it may have seemed to him, before we heard
+wagon-wheels booming down a little side-canon between the hills. The team
+had managed to drag the wagon up through a scrubby gulch that looked
+like no thoroughfare, but which opened into a very fair way out of our
+difficulties.
+
+When we had come within sight of Broadlands Ferry, all aboard except Kitty,
+and still not a sign nor a sound of her, our hearts began to soften toward
+that willful girl.
+
+Tom requested Harshaw to jump out and see if he couldn't round up his
+countrywoman. But Harshaw rather haughtily resigned--in favor of a better
+man, he said. Then Tom stood up in the wagon and gave the camp call,
+"Yee-ee-ip! yee-ip, ye-ip!" a brazen, barbarous hoot. Kitty clapped both
+hands to her ears when she was first introduced to it, but it did not fetch
+her now. Tom "yee-iped" again, and as we listened there she was, strolling
+toward us through the greasewood, with the face of a May morning! She
+wouldn't give us the satisfaction of seeing her run, but her flushed
+cheeks, damp temples, and quick, sighing breath betrayed her. She _had_
+been running fast enough.
+
+"Kitty," I said severely, "there are rattlesnakes among those rocks."
+
+"Are there?" she answered serenely. "But I wasn't looking for rattlesnakes,
+you know. See what lovely things I did find! I've got the 'prospecting'
+fever already."
+
+She had filled her pockets with specimens of obsidian, jaspers, and
+chalcedonies, of colors most beautiful, with a deep-dyed opaqueness, a
+shell-fracture, and a satiny polish like jade. And she consulted us about
+them very prettily--the little fraud! Of course she was instantly forgiven.
+
+But I notice that since our arrival at Broadlands, Harshaw has not troubled
+her with his attentions. They might be the most indifferent strangers, for
+all that his manner implies. And if she is not pleased with the change, she
+ought to be, for she has made her wishes plain.
+
+
+II
+
+Camp at the Thousand Springs. A little grass peninsula running out between
+the river and a narrow lagoon, a part of Decker's ranch, two miles by water
+below the Springs and half a mile from Decker's Ferry, set all about with
+a hedge of rose, willow, and wild-currant bushes, sword-grass, and tall
+reeds,--the grasses enormous, like Japanese decorations,--crossing the
+darks of the opposite shore and the lights of the river and sky. Our tents
+are pitched, our blankets spread in the sun, our wagon is soaking its tired
+feet in the river. Tom and Harshaw are up-stream somewhere, fishing for
+supper. Billings is bargaining with Old Man Decker for the "keep" of his
+team. Kitty and I are enjoying ourselves. There is a rip in one of the back
+seams of my jacket, Kitty tells me, but even that cannot move me.
+
+I say we are enjoying ourselves; but my young guest has developed a new
+mood of late which gives poignancy to my growing tenderness for the girl.
+She has kept up wonderfully, with the aid of her bit of a temper, for which
+I like her none the less. How she will stand this idleness, monotony, and
+intimacy, with the accent of beauty pressing home, I cannot say. I rather
+fear for her.
+
+The screws have been tightened on her lately by something that befell at
+the Harshaw ranch. Our road lay past the place, and Harshaw had to stop for
+his surveying instruments, also to pack a bag, he said,--with apologies for
+keeping us waiting.
+
+I think we were all a little nervous as we neared the house. Very few women
+could have spelled the word "home" out of those rough masculine premises. I
+wondered if Kitty was not offering up a prayer of thanksgiving for the life
+she had been delivered from.
+
+Harshaw jumped down, and, stooping under the wire fence, ran across the
+alfalfa stubble to the house as fast as he could for the welcome of a
+beautiful young setter dog--Maisie he called her--that came wildly out to
+meet him. A woman--not a nice-looking woman--stood at the door and watched
+him, and even at our distance from them there was something strange in
+their recognition.
+
+Kitty began to talk and laugh with forced coolness. Tom turned the horses
+sharply, so that the wagon's shadow lay on the roadside, away from the
+house. "Get out, hadn't you better?" he suggested, in the tone of a
+command. We got out, and Kitty asked for her sketching-bag.
+
+"Kitty," I whispered, pointing to the house, "draw _that_, and send it to
+your mother. She will never ask again why you didn't care to live there."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," she retorted coldly. "I would have lived
+there, or anywhere, with the right person."
+
+There was no such person. I couldn't help saying it.
+
+She is very handsome when she looks down, proud and a trifle sullen when
+you "touch her on the raw," as the men say.
+
+"But there _is_ such a person, Kitty," I ventured. I had ventured, it
+seemed, too far.
+
+"You are my hostess. Your house is my only home. Don't be his accomplice!"
+I thought it rather well said.
+
+Now that woman's clothes were hanging on the line (and very common-looking
+clothes they were), so she could not have been a casual guest. Moreover,
+she was pacing the hard ground in front of the house, and staring at us
+with a truculent yet uneasy air. Curiosity was strong, and a sort of anger
+possessed me against the place and everybody connected with it.
+
+When Cecil came out, looking very hot and confused for him, who is always
+so fresh and gay, I inquired, rather shortly perhaps, "Who is your
+visitor?"
+
+"I have no visitor," he answered me, as cool as you please. But there was
+a protest in his eye. I was determined not to spare him or any of the
+Harshaws.
+
+"Your housekeeper, then?"
+
+"I have no housekeeper."
+
+"Who is the lady stopping at your house?"
+
+"I have no house."
+
+"Your cousin's house, then?"
+
+"If you refer to the person I was talking to--she is my cousin's
+housekeeper, I suppose."
+
+Tom gave me a look, and I thought it time to let the subject drop. This was
+in Kitty's presence, though apparently she neither saw nor heard. I walked
+on ahead of the wagon, so angry that I was almost sick. Instantly Harshaw
+joined me, with a much nicer, brighter look upon his face.
+
+"Mrs. Daly," he said, "I want to beg your pardon. I could not answer your
+question before Miss Comyn. The lady, as you were pleased to call her, is
+Mrs. Harshaw, _my cousin_--Micky's wife, you understand."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+"Day before yesterday, she tells me. They were married at Bliss."
+
+"Well, I should say it was 'Bliss' for Kitty Comyn that _she_ is not Mrs.
+Harshaw--too," I was about to add, but that would be going rather far. "And
+what did you want to bring that girl over here for?"
+
+"Mrs. Daly, I have told you,--I thought she loved him."
+
+"And what of his love for her?"
+
+"Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has
+married! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be
+the deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that."
+
+Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what the
+saving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have been
+offered up to that end?
+
+"You leave out one small feature of the case," said Harshaw, with a sick
+and burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love her
+myself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man,
+she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But I
+didn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! I
+couldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smash
+things. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing,
+but I had to do something."
+
+I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I did
+say to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-century
+young Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of his
+simple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was,
+or how promptly she had been succeeded.
+
+"But just now you said you wanted her to know the truth."
+
+"Not the whole truth. Great Scott! she knows enough. No need to rub it in."
+
+"She knows just enough about this to misunderstand, perhaps. In justice
+to yourself--she heard you beating about the bush--do you want her to
+misunderstand you?"
+
+"Oh, hang me! I don't expect her to understand me, or even tolerate me,
+yet. Mine is a waiting race, Mrs. Daly."
+
+"Very well; you can wait," I said. "But news like this will not wait. She
+will be obliged to hear it; you don't know how or where she may hear it.
+Better let her hear it first in as decent a way as possible."
+
+"But there is no decent way. How can I explain to you, or you to her,
+such a measly affair as this? It began with a question of money he owed
+that woman on the ranch. He bought it of her,--and a cruel bad bargain it
+was,--and he never could make his last payment. She has threatened him,
+and played the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. His
+governor would have helped him out; but, you see, Micky has been a rather
+expensive boy, and he has given the old gentleman to understand that the
+place is paid for,--to account for money sent him at various times for that
+ostensible purpose,--and on that basis the bargain was struck, between
+our governors, for my interest in the ranch. My father bought me in, on a
+clear title, as Uncle George represented it, in perfect good faith. I've
+never said a word, on the old gentleman's account; and Micky has never
+dared undeceive his father, who is the soul of honor in business, as in
+everything else. I am sorry to bore you with family affairs; but it's
+rather rum the way Micky's fate has caught up with him, through his one
+weakness of laziness, and perhaps lying a little, when he was obliged to.
+How this affair came about so suddenly I can't say. Didn't like to ask her
+too many questions; and Micky, poor devil, faded from view directly he saw
+us coming. But at a venture: she had heard he was going to be married, and
+came down here to make trouble when he should arrive with his bride; but he
+came back alone, disgusted with life, and found her here. It was easier to
+marry her than--pay her, we'll say. She has been something over-generous,
+perhaps. She would rather have had him, any time, than her money, and now
+was the time. She took advantage of a weak moment."
+
+"A weak and a spiteful moment," I kindly added. "Now if he hastens the news
+to England, and the Percifers hear of it in New York, how pleasant for
+Kitty to have all her friends hear that _he_ is married and _she_ is not!"
+
+"Great Heavens!" said the young fellow, "if she would let me hasten the
+news--that she is married to me!"
+
+"Why don't you appeal to her pride and her spirit now while they are in the
+dust? Why do you bother with sentiment now?"
+
+I liked him so much at that moment that I would have had him have Kitty, no
+matter what way he got her.
+
+"Yes," he said; "why not take advantage of her, as everybody else has
+done?"
+
+"Some people's scrupulousness comes rather late," I said.
+
+"To those who don't understand," he had the brazenness to say. "What is
+done is done. It's a rough beginning--awfully rough on her. The end must
+atone somehow. If I don't win her I shall be punished enough; but if I do,
+it will be because she loves me. And pray God"--He stopped, with that look.
+It is a number of years since a young man has looked at me in that way, but
+a woman does not forget.
+
+It was rather difficult telling to Kitty the story of her old lover's
+marriage, as I took it on myself to do. Not that she winced perceptibly;
+but I fear she has taken the thing home, and is dwelling on it--certain
+features of it--in a way that can do no good. From a word she lets slip now
+and then, I gather that she is brooding over that fancy of hers that Cecil
+Harshaw offered himself by way of reparation, as she was falling between
+two stools,--her own home and her lover's,--to save her from the ground.
+As since that rainy night in the wagon she has never distinctly referred
+to this theory of his conduct, I have no excuse for bringing it up, even
+to attack it. In fact, I dare not; she is in too complicated a mood. And,
+after all, why should I want her to marry either of them? Why should the
+"hungry generations" tread her down? She is nice enough to stay as she is.
+
+Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped to
+confirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw's disinterestedness.
+
+At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many such
+places, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo)
+Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavy
+sand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drank
+with such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, and
+putting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breast
+pocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and the
+river had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick,
+and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. We
+saw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, which
+he caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; and
+precious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on,
+smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwing
+off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to
+follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less
+realized it--his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch;
+the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot
+where the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore.
+
+I am sorry to say that my husband's first words to the man he may be said
+to have saved from death were, "You young fool, what did you do that for?"
+
+"For this," Harshaw panted, slapping his wet breast.
+
+"For a pocket-book! Great Sign! What had you in it? I wouldn't have done
+that for the whole of the Snake River valley."
+
+"Nor I," laughed Harshaw.
+
+"Nor the Bruneau to boot."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"What did you do it for, then?"
+
+"For this," Harshaw repeated.
+
+"For a piece of pasteboard with a girl's face on it, or some such toy, I'll
+be sworn!"
+
+Harshaw did not deny the soft impeachment.
+
+"I didn't know you had a girl, Harshaw," Tom began seductively.
+
+"Well, I haven't, you know," said Harshaw. "There was one I wanted badly
+enough, a few years ago," he added with engaging frankness.
+
+"When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of second
+dentition?"
+
+"Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed."
+
+"Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I'd keep out of that Snake
+River," my husband advised.
+
+Kitty's face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy.
+
+"Do _you_ know who Harshaw's 'girl' was?" I asked her the other night, as
+we were undressing,--without an idea that she wouldn't see where the joke
+came in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtains
+of our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kitty
+worships there awhile every night before she goes to bed.
+
+"No," she said. "I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the families
+that have always known each other." The simple child! She hadn't understood
+him, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can't make out whether
+she is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yet
+the cleverness of a young girl's mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainly
+in spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon that
+precious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty.
+Great good may it do her!
+
+The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facing
+west across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of the
+day and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has no
+use for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does draw
+it; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons,
+and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, in
+moonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will,
+she never can do it.
+
+"Oh, you exquisite, hopeless thing! Why can't I let you alone!" she cries;
+"and why can't you let _me_ alone!"
+
+"It is rather hard, the way the thing doubles up on you," says Tom.
+"The real fall, right side up, is bad enough; but when it comes to the
+reflection of it, standing on its head in the lagoon, I should lie right
+down myself. I wouldn't pull another pound."
+
+("_Lay_ down," he said; but I thought you wouldn't stand it. Tom would
+never spoil a cherished bit of dialect because of shocking anybody with his
+grammar.)
+
+Kitty throws herself back in the dry salt-grass with which the whole of
+our little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains,
+through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sun
+rises long before we see him, above the dark-blue mountains beyond the
+shore.
+
+"Won't somebody repeat
+
+  'There is sweet music here that softlier lies?'"
+
+Kitty asks, letting her eyelashes fall on her sun-flushed cheeks. Her face,
+as I saw it, sitting behind her in the grass, was so pretty--upside down
+like the reflection of the waterfall, its colors all the more wonderfully
+blended.
+
+We did not all speak at once. Then Harshaw said, to break the silence, "I
+will read it to you, if you don't mind."
+
+"Oh, have you the book?" Kitty asked in surprise.
+
+He went to his tent and returned with _a_ book, and sitting on the grass
+where she could hear but could not see him, he began. I trembled for him;
+but before he had got to the second stanza I was relieved: he could read
+aloud.
+
+"Now _there_ is a man one could live on a Snake River ranch with," I felt
+like saying to Kitty. Not that I am sure that I want her to.
+
+When he had finished,
+
+  "O rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more!"
+
+Tom remarked, after a suitable silence, that it was all well enough for
+Harshaw, who would be in London in six weeks, to say, "We will not wander
+more!" But how about the rest of us?
+
+Kitty sat straight up at that.
+
+"Will Mr. Harshaw be in London six weeks from now?" The question was almost
+a cry.
+
+"Will you?" she demanded, turning upon him as if this was the last injury
+he could do her.
+
+"I suppose so," he said.
+
+"And you will see my mother, and all of them?"
+
+"I think so--if you wish."
+
+She rose up, as if she could bear no more. Harshaw waited an instant, and
+then followed her; but she motioned him back, and went away to have it out
+with herself alone.
+
+I took up the book Harshaw had left on the grass. It was "Copp's
+Manual"--"For the use of Prospectors," etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After all, it is not so sure that Harshaw will go to London. There has been
+an engineer on the ground since last summer, when all this water was free.
+He has located a vast deal of it, perhaps the whole. Tom says he can hold
+only just as much as he can use; I hope there will be no difference of
+opinion on that point. There generally is a difference of opinion on points
+of location when the thing located is proved to have any value. The prior
+locator has gone East, they tell us at the ranch, on a business visit,
+presumably to raise capital for his scheme; which, as I understand it,
+is to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for
+irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping
+arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are
+clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing,
+creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was
+pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the plan is perfectly
+feasible.
+
+The wall of the river canon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each
+story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters
+gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich
+under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that
+sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the
+bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and might
+the next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the pretty
+island between itself and the river. Winter and summer the volume of water
+never varies, and the rate of discharge is always the same, and the water
+is never cold, though I have just said it is. It looks cold until the rocks
+warm it with their gemlike tints, like a bride's jewels gleaming through
+her veil. Back of the bluffs, where it might be supposed to come from,
+there is nothing for a hundred miles but drought and desert plains. I don't
+care for any of their theories concerning its source. It is better as it
+is--the miracle of the smitten rock.
+
+You can fancy what wild presumption it must seem that a mere man should
+think to reverse those torrents and make them climb the bluff or cram them
+into an iron pipe and send them like paid laborers to hoist and pump and
+grind, and light the streets at Silver City, a hundred miles away. And how
+the cataracts will shout while these two pigmies compare their rival claims
+to ownership--in a force that with one stroke could lay them as flat as
+last year's leaves in the bottom of a mill-race!
+
+The particular fall my schemer has located for his own--other claims to be
+discussed hereafter--is called the "Snow Bank." He says he doesn't want the
+earth: this one cataract is enough for him. To look at the whole frontage
+of the springs and listen to their roar, one would think there might be
+water enough for them both, poor children! Hardly what you'd call two bites
+of a cherry!
+
+If the springs were the half of a broken diamond bracelet, the Snow Bank
+would be its brightest gem, lying separate in the case--perhaps the one
+that was the clasp. It is half hidden by the shoulder of a great barren
+bluff which, at a certain angle of the sun, throws a blue shadow over it.
+At other times the fall is almost too bright in its foaming whiteness for
+the eye to endure.
+
+Kitty is painting it with this shadow half across it; but the light shines
+upon it at its source. Tom is doubtful if she is showing the fall to the
+best advantage for his purpose, but he is obliging enough to let the artist
+try it in her own way first.
+
+"Go up there," she says, "and stand at the head of the spring, if you want
+to show by comparison how big it is, or how small you are."
+
+He goes, and gets in position, and Kitty makes some pencil-marks on the
+margin of her sketch. Then she waves her hands to tell him, across the
+shouting current, that she is done with him. She has been so quick that
+he thinks he must have mistaken her gesture. Then Harshaw makes the
+train-conductor's signal for the train to move on.
+
+"You see," she says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder,
+"_that_ would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal
+pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make
+a little black dot like that look like a man."
+
+"In this particular sketch, for his purpose, he'd rather look like a dot
+than a man, I dare say," said Harshaw.
+
+"Well, shall I put him in? I can make a note of it on the margin: 'This
+black dot is Mr. Daly, standing at the spring-head. He is six feet'"--
+
+"But he isn't, you know," Harshaw says. "He's five feet ten--if he's that."
+
+"Ten and a half," I hasten to amend.
+
+Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate it
+under the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into the
+lagoon--not _our_ lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovely
+Sand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves,
+before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by the
+lagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres,
+not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, propping
+up a large hop-vine, showed against a mass of birch and cottonwood on the
+river side of the island.
+
+"What a place for a honeymoon!" said I.
+
+"There is material there for half of a honeymoon," said Tom--"not bad
+material, either."
+
+"Oh, yes," I said; "we have seen her--that is, we have seen her sunbonnet."
+
+"Kitty, you've got a rival," I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre of
+the island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank,
+_our_ Snow Bank, was an artist's big white umbrella.
+
+"Why should I not have, in a place like this?" she said. "If the schemers
+arrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? _We_ shall leave it as we
+find it; we don't intend to carry it away in our pockets." She stopped, and
+blushed disdainfully. "I forgot," she murmured, "my own mercenary designs."
+
+"I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, may
+I ask?" Harshaw had turned on his side on the grass, and half rose on one
+elbow as he looked at her.
+
+"That is strange," mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. "You have always
+been so interested in my affairs!"
+
+"I always shall be," he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness.
+
+"I ought to be so grateful."
+
+"But unfortunately you are not."
+
+"I should be grateful--if you would move a little farther to the right, if
+you please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to water
+her horses again."
+
+Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe,
+and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently,
+as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet,
+the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped to
+drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pink
+sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue
+sky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon.
+
+There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other
+note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet
+would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I
+had seen it.
+
+"_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you see
+the face inside it."
+
+"Have you seen it?"
+
+"Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her,
+as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?"
+
+"As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" I
+requested to be told.
+
+"Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one.
+She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of
+every live enterprise."
+
+"Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't see
+what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet.
+
+"I don't say that it's always on business," Tom threw in significantly.
+
+"Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with
+her?" I demanded.
+
+"I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone," said Tom,
+"inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines.
+She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl
+who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an
+artist--one of the great unappreciated"--
+
+"So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted.
+
+"Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listened
+to my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He had
+made a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with the
+world on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She was
+somebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informality
+about the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They both
+died, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant,
+though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned."
+
+"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"
+
+"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail.' She is the owner of
+something else we do want--this piece of ground,"--he looked about him and
+waved his hand,--"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand.
+And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won't
+lease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of that
+piece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery and
+nonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridge
+the lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there."
+
+"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe
+her off the face of the earth--abolish her and her pretty island at one
+fell swoop?"
+
+"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven't
+approached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch."
+
+"So good of you!" I murmured.
+
+"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house."
+
+"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing
+for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such
+grasping profanation."
+
+"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her,--I wouldn't ask
+him to woo her in cold blood,--it would be a monstrous convenient way to
+settle it."
+
+"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone.
+"They are not pretty things to say, in the first place."
+
+"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it time
+somebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for the
+joys of life on the crumbs of her society."
+
+"Do you suppose she cares whom he talks to, or whom he spends his time
+with?"
+
+"Perhaps she doesn't care. I should like to give her a chance to see if she
+cares, that's all."
+
+Tom's location notice being plain for all eyes to read, the mistress of
+the island naturally inquired what he wanted with the Snow Bank; and he,
+thinking she would see at once the value to her ranch of such a neighboring
+enterprise, frankly told her of his scheme. Nothing of its scientific
+interest, its difficulties, its commercial value, even its benefit to
+herself, appealed to the little islander. To her it was simply an attempt
+to alter and ruin the spot she loved best on earth; to steal her beautiful
+waterfall and carry it away in an ugly iron pipe. Whether the thing could
+be done, she did not ask herself; the design was enough. Never would she
+lend herself, or anything that was hers, to such an impious desecration!
+This was her position, which any child might have taken in defense of a
+beloved toy; but she was holding it with all a woman's force and constancy.
+
+I was glad of it, I said to Tom, and I hoped she would stand them off
+for all she was worth. But I am not really glad. What woman could love
+a waterfall better than her husband's success? There are hundreds of
+waterfalls in the world, but only this one scheme for Tom.
+
+But anent this hitch, it teases me a little, I confess, on Kitty's account,
+when Cecil meanders over to the island at all hours of the day. To be sure,
+it relieves Kitty of his company; but is she so glad, after all, to be
+relieved?
+
+It was last Friday, after one of Harshaw's entirely frank but perfectly
+unexplained absences, that he came into camp and inquired if there was any
+clam-broth left in the kitchen. I referred him to the cook. Finding there
+was, he returned to me and asked if he might take a tin of it to Miss
+Malcolm for her patient.
+
+"Who is Miss Malcolm?" I asked. But of course who could she be but the lady
+of the island, where he spends the greater part of his time? He was welcome
+to the clam-broth, or anything else he thought would be acceptable in that
+quarter, I said. And how was the patient?
+
+"Oh, she's quite bad all the time. She doesn't get about. I wonder if
+you'd mind, Mrs. Daly, if I asked you to look in on her some day? The old
+creature's in a sad way, it seems to me."
+
+Of course I didn't mind, if Miss Malcolm did not. Harshaw seemed to feel
+authorized to assure me of that fact. So I went first with Tom, and then I
+went again alone, leaving Harshaw in the boat with Kitty.
+
+Miss Malcolm's maid or man servant, or both--for she does the work of both,
+and looks in her bed (dressed in a flannel bed-sack, her head tied up in
+an old blue knitted "fascinator") less like a woman than anything I ever
+beheld--appears to have had a mild form of grippe fever, and having never
+been sick in her life before, she thought she was nearing her end. My
+simple treatment, the basis of which was quinine and whiskey, seemed to
+strike old Tamar favorably; and after the second visit there was no need to
+come again to see her. But by this time I was deep in the good books of her
+mistress, who knows too little of illness herself to appreciate how little
+has been done, by me at least, or how very little needed to be done after
+restoring the old woman's confidence in her power to live. (The last time I
+saw her she still wore the blue fascinator, but with a man's hat on top of
+it; she was waddling toward the cow-corral with half a haystack, it looked
+like, poised on a hay-fork above her head. She was certainly a credit to
+her doctor, if not to her _corsetiere_, she and the haystack being much of
+a figure.)
+
+Miss Malcolm's innocent gratitude is most embarrassing, really painful,
+under the circumstances, and the poor child cannot let the circumstances
+alone. She imagines I am always thinking about Tom's scheme. It is evident
+that _she_ is; and not being exactly a woman of the world, out of the
+fullness of her heart her mouth speaketh. That would be all right if she
+would speak to somebody else. _I_ don't want to take advantage of her
+gratitude, as she seems determined I shall do.
+
+"You must think me a very strained, sentimental creature," she said to me
+the last time, "to care so much for a few old rocks and a little piece of
+foamy water."
+
+I didn't think so at all, I told her. If I had lived there all my life, I
+should feel about the place just as she did.
+
+Here she began to blush and distress herself. "But think how kind you have
+all been to me! Mr. Harshaw was here every day, after he found how ill poor
+Tamar was. He did so many things: he lifted her, for one thing, and that
+I couldn't have done to save her life. And your two visits have simply
+cured her! And here I am making myself a stumbling-block and ruining your
+husband's plans!"
+
+I said he was quite capable of taking care of himself.
+
+"Does your husband want _all_ the water?" she persisted. "Do I understand
+that he must have it all?"
+
+I supposed she was talking of the Snow Bank, and since she was determined
+we should discuss the affair in this social way, I said he would have
+to have a great deal; and I told her about the distance the power would
+have to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the rest
+of it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got started
+unintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. It
+is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom
+pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face
+of a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot.
+
+"It shall never go through,--not _that_ scheme--not if"--Then she
+remembered to whom she was talking, and set her lips together, and two
+great shiny drops stood in her eyes.
+
+"Don't, don't, you child!" I said. "Don't worry about their old scheme! If
+it must come it will come; but as a rule, a scheme, my dear, is the last
+thing that ever does go through. There's plenty of time."
+
+"But I can't give in," she said. "No; I _must_ try to hinder it all I
+can. I will be honest with you. I like you all; of all the strangers who
+have come here I never liked any people better. But your husband--must
+_not_--set his heart on _all_ that water! It doesn't belong to him."
+
+"Does it belong to you, dear?"
+
+"The _sight_ of it belongs to me," she said. "I will not have the place
+all littered up with their pipes and power-plants. Look out there! Look at
+that! Has any one the right to come here and spoil such a lovely thing as
+that?"--This is what it is to be the daughter of an artist.
+
+"And how about the other despoiler," I asked--"the young man with the
+pneumatic pipe?"
+
+"The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated.
+
+"'Pump,' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_
+pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that they
+incommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush them
+away as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls."
+
+"I do not own the bluffs," she said in a distant, tremulous voice.
+
+But the true answer to my question, as I surmise, was the sudden, helpless
+flush which rose, wave upon wave, covering her poor little face, blotting
+out all expression but that of painful girlish shame. Here, if I'm not
+mistaken, will be found the heart of the difficulty. Miss Malcolm's
+sympathies are evidently with compressed air rather than with electrical
+transmission. I shall tell Tom he need waste no more arguments on her. Let
+him first compound with his rival of the pump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I suppose there is just such a low, big moon as this looking in upon you
+where you sit, you little dot of a woman, lost in the piazza perspectives
+of the Coronado; and you might think small things of our present
+habitation--a little tent among the bushes, with wind-blown weeds against
+the moon, shifting their shadow-patterns over our canvas walls. But you'd
+not think small things of our Sand Springs Fall by night, that glimmers on
+the dark cliff opposite--cliff, and mist-like cataract, and the low moon
+throwing the shadow of the bluff across it, all repeated in the stiller,
+darker picture of the lagoon. I shall not inflict much of this sort of
+thing upon you; but the senseless beauty of it all gives one a heartache.
+Why should it be here, where you and I shall never see it together--where
+I shall leave it soon, never to see it again? Tom says we are coming
+back--when the great scheme is under way. Ah, the scheme, the scheme! It
+looks very far away to-night, and so do some other schemes that I had set
+my heart on unaware, foolish old woman that I am. As if there was only one
+way in this--world for young men and women to be happy!
+
+Harshaw brought me your sweet letter yesterday. It was stage-day, and he
+went up over the bluffs to the ferry mail-box at the cross-roads, where the
+road to Shoshone Falls branches from the road to Bliss.
+
+I read to Kitty what you wrote me about the Garretts and their children,
+and the going to New York and then to Paris. (Thank you so much, dear, for
+your prompt interest in my little bride that isn't to be!) She had two
+letters of her own which she had read by herself, and afterward I thought
+she had been crying; but with her it is best not to press the note of
+sympathy. Neither does she like me to handle her affairs with gloves on,
+so to speak. So I plunged into the business in a matter-of-fact tone, and
+she replied in the same. Her objection is to going east to New York, and
+then to the other side. "I had rather stay in California," she said, "or
+anywhere in the West." Naturally; westward lies the way of escape from
+social complications.
+
+She is afraid of the Percifers, and of meeting people she knows in Paris.
+But an offer like this was exceptional in this part of the world, I
+reminded her. A nurse for the boy, a maid, and only two little girls of
+eight and ten on her hands; and such nice people as the Garretts, who have
+been all over the world!
+
+"Well," she said, "I should certainly like to get away from here as soon as
+possible. From _here_, not from _you_!" she added, looking me in the face.
+Her eyes were full of tears. We clasped hands on that.
+
+"What is it? Has anything else happened?" I asked; for I knew by her looks
+that something had.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I should so like to take myself and my troubles
+seriously once in a while. No sooner do I try, but something perfectly
+farcical is sure to happen. If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh.
+It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear!
+I'm so fond of him!"
+
+The "old dear," it seems, is Micky's father--a very superior sort of father
+for such a son to have, but accidents will happen in the best-regulated
+families. He is a gallant widower of fair estate, one of those splendid old
+club-men of London; a very expensive article of old gentleman, with fine
+old-fashioned manners and morals, and a few stray impulses left, it would
+seem by what follows. According to the father's code, the son has not
+conducted himself in his engagement to Kitty Comyn as a gentleman should.
+Thereupon the head of the house goes to Miss Kitty's mother and makes the
+_amende honorable_ by offering his hand and heart and fortune to his son's
+insulted bride! The mother is touched and pleased not a little by this
+prompt espousal of her daughter's cause; and having wiped away all tears
+from _her_ eyes, this gallant old gentleman is coming over to America, for
+the first time in his life, to make his proposal to the bride herself! He
+is not so old, to get down to particulars; sixty-three doesn't look so
+old to some of us as it does to Miss Kitty. He is in fine health, I doubt
+not, and magnificently preserved. Kitty's mother is not at all averse, as
+I gather, to this way of settling her child's difficulties. She rather
+pleadingly assures Kitty that Mr. Harshaw senior has solemnly sworn that
+this is no unpleasant duty he feels called on to perform; not only his
+honor, but his affections are profoundly enlisted in this proposal. Kitty
+has had for years a sacred place in his regard; and from thinking of her as
+a daughter absolutely after his own heart, it is but a step to think of her
+in a still nearer--the nearest--relation. He begs her mother to prepare her
+for no perfunctory offer of marriage, but one that warms with every day's
+delay till he can take the dear child under his lifelong protection. Not to
+punish or to redress does he come, but to secure for himself and posterity
+a treasure which his son had trampled under foot. Somehow we did not feel
+like laughing, after all. Kitty, I think, is a little frightened. She
+cannot reach her mother, even with a cable dispatch, before this second
+champion will arrive.
+
+"He's an awfully grand old fellow, you know. I could never talk to him as I
+do to the boys. If he thinks it his duty to marry me, I don't know if I can
+help myself. Poor Uncle George! I've always called him 'uncle' like his own
+nieces, who are all my friends. I never thought that I should be 'poor-ing'
+Uncle George! But he can't have heard yet of Micky's marriage. Fancy his
+going down to the ranch to stay with Micky and that woman! And then for a
+girl like me to toss him aside, after such a journey and such kindness! I
+don't know how I shall ever have courage to do it. There are fine women in
+London who would jump at the chance of being Mrs. Harshaw--not Mrs. Micky,
+nor Mrs. Stephen, nor Mrs. Sidney, but _Mrs. Harshaw_, you understand?" I
+understood.
+
+"And now," she said, producing the second letter, "you _will_ laugh! And
+you may!"
+
+The envelope contained a notification, in due form, of the arrival from New
+York, charges not paid, of some five hundred pounds of second-class freight
+consigned to Mrs. Harshaw, Harshaw's ranch, Glenn's Ferry (via Bisuka).
+
+"These things belong to me," said Kitty. "They cost me the last bit of
+money I had that was my own. Mrs. Percifer, who is so clever at managing,
+persuaded me I should need them directly on the ranch--curtains and rugs
+and china, and heaven knows what! She nearly killed me, dragging me about
+those enormous New York shops. She said it would be far and away cheaper
+and better to buy them there. I didn't mind about anything, I was so scared
+and homesick; I did whatever she said. She saw to getting them off, I
+suppose. That must have been her idea, directing them to Mrs. Harshaw. She
+thought there would be no Kitty Comyn, no _me_, when these got here. And
+there isn't; _this_ is not the Kitty Comyn who left England--six weeks, is
+it?--or six years ago!"
+
+"How did the letter reach you?" I asked. We examined the envelope. It bore
+the postmark, not of Bisuka, but of Glenn's Ferry, which is the nearest
+post-office to the Harshaw ranch. Micky's wife had doubtless opened the
+letter, and Micky, perceiving where the error lay, had reinclosed, but some
+one else had directed it--the postmaster, probably, at his request--to
+Kitty, at our camp. That was rather a nice little touch in Micky, that last
+about the direction.
+
+"Come, he is honest, at the least," I said, "whether Mrs. Micky would have
+scrupled or not. She could claim the things if she chose."
+
+"She is quite welcome," said Kitty. "I don't know what in the world I shall
+do with them. There'll be boxes and bales and barrels--enough to bury me
+and all my troubles. I might build me a funeral pyre!"
+
+We fell into each other's arms and screamed with laughter.
+
+"Kitty, we'll have an auction," I cried. "There's nothing succeeds like
+an auction out here. We'll sell the things at boom prices--we'll sell
+everything."
+
+"But the bride," said Kitty; "you will have to keep the bride." And without
+a moment's warning, from laughing till she wept, she began to weep in
+earnest. I haven't seen her cry so since she came to us, not even that
+miserable first night. She struggled with herself, and seemed dreadfully
+ashamed, and angry with me that I should have seen her cry. Did she suppose
+I thought she was crying because she wasn't going to be a bride, after all?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Daly, I feel so ill!" were Kitty's first words to me when I woke
+this morning. I looked her over and questioned her, and concluded that a
+sleepless night, with not very pleasant thoughts for company, might be held
+responsible for a good share of her wretchedness.
+
+"What were you lying awake about? Your new champion, Uncle George?" I asked
+her.
+
+She owned that it was. "Don't you see, Mrs. Daly, mamma doesn't leave room
+for the possibility of my refusing him. And if I do refuse him, he'll
+simply take me back to England, and then, between him and mamma, and all of
+them, I don't know what may happen."
+
+"Kitty," I said, "no girl who has just escaped from one unhappy engagement
+is going to walk straight into another with her eyes wide open. I won't
+believe you could be so foolish as that."
+
+"You don't understand," she said, "what the pressure will be at home--in
+all love and kindness, of course. And you don't know Uncle George. He is
+so sure that I need him, he'll force me to take him. He'll take me back to
+England in any case."
+
+"And would you not like to go, Kitty?"
+
+"Ah, wouldn't I! But not in that way."
+
+She sat up in her flannel camp-gown, and began to braid up her loosened
+hair.
+
+"Kitty," I commanded, "lie down. You are not to get up till luncheon."
+
+"I have a plan," she said, "and I must see Cecil Harshaw; he must help me
+carry it out. There is no one else who can."
+
+"You have all day to see him in."
+
+"Not all day, Mrs. Daly. He must be ready to start to-morrow. Uncle George
+will reach Bisuka on the fifteenth, not later. Cecil must meet him there;
+first, to prepare him for Micky's new arrangement, and second, to persuade
+him that he does not owe me an offer of marriage in consequence. Cecil
+will know how to manage it; he must know! I will not have any more of the
+Harshaws offering themselves as substitutes. It will be very strange if I
+cannot exist without them somehow."
+
+It struck me that the poor child's boast was a little premature, as she
+seemed to be making rather free use of one of the substitutes still, as
+a shield against the others; but it was of a piece with the rest of the
+comedy. I kept her in bed till she had had a cup of tea; afterward she
+slept a little, and about noon she dressed herself and gave Cecil his
+audience. But first, at her request, I had possessed him with the main
+facts and given him an inkling of what was expected of him. His face
+changed; he looked as he did after his steeplechase the day I saw him
+first,--except that he was cleaner,--grave, excited, and resolved. He had
+taken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a cause
+like this! I would have left them to have their little talk by themselves,
+but Kitty signified peremptorily that she wished me to stay, with a
+flushed, appealing look that softened the nervous tension of her manner.
+
+"I would do anything on earth for you, Kitty," Cecil said most gently and
+fervently; "but don't ask me to give advice--to Uncle George of all men--on
+a question of this kind--unless you will allow me to be perfectly frank."
+
+"It's a family question," said Kitty, ignoring his proviso.
+
+"I think it would get to be a personal question very soon between Uncle
+George and me. No; I meddled in one family question not very long ago."
+
+"It's very strange," said Kitty restlessly, "if you can't help me out
+of this in some way. I cannot be so disrespectful to him, the dear old
+gentleman! He ought not to be put in such a position, or I either. How
+would you like it if it were your father?"
+
+Cecil reddened handsomely at this home thrust. "I'd have a deuce of a time
+to stop him if he took the notion, you know; it's not exactly a son's or a
+nephew's business. There is only one way in which I can help you, Kitty.
+You must know that."
+
+He had struck a different key, and his face was all one blush to correspond
+with the new note in his voice. I think I never saw a manlier, more
+generous warmth of ardor and humility, or listened to words so simply
+uttered in such telling tones.
+
+"What way is that?" asked Kitty coldly.
+
+"Forgive me! I could tell him that you are engaged to me."
+
+"That would be a nice way--to tell him a falsehood! I should hope I had
+been humiliated enough"--
+
+She snatched her handkerchief from her belt and pressed it to her burning
+face. I rose again to go. "Sit still, pray!" she murmured.
+
+
+"It need not be a falsehood, Kitty. Let it be anything you like. You may
+trust me not to take advantage. A nominal engagement, if you choose, just
+to meet this exigency; or"--
+
+"That would be cheating," cried Kitty.
+
+"The cheat would bear a little harder on me than on any one else, I think."
+
+"You are too good!" Kitty smiled disdainfully. "First you offer yourself to
+me as a cure, and now as a preventive."
+
+"Kitty, I think you ought at least to take him seriously," I remonstrated.
+
+"By all that's sacred, you'll find it's serious with me!" Cecil ejaculated.
+
+"Since when?" retorted Kitty. "How many weeks ago is it that I came out
+here by your contrivance to marry your cousin? Is that the way a man shows
+his seriousness? You sacrificed more to marry me to Micky than some men
+would to win a girl themselves."
+
+"I did, and for that very reason," said Cecil.
+
+"I should like to see you prove it!"
+
+"Kitty, excuse me," I interrupted. "_I_ should like to ask Mr. Harshaw one
+question, if he does not mind. Do you happen to have that picture about
+you, Mr. Harshaw?"
+
+I thought I was looking at him very kindly, not at all like an inquisitor,
+but his face was set and stern. I doubt if he perceived or looked for my
+intention.
+
+"'That picture,' Mrs. Daly?" he repeated.
+
+"The photograph of a young lady that you jumped into the river to
+save--don't you remember?"
+
+Cecil smiled slightly, and glanced at Kitty. "Did I say it was a photograph
+of a lady?"
+
+"No; you did not. But do you deny that it was?"
+
+"Certainly not, Mrs. Daly. I have the picture with me; I always have it."
+
+"And do you think _that_ looks like seriousness? To be making such
+protestations to one girl with the portrait of another in your coat pocket?
+We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by the
+river."
+
+He saw my meaning now, and thanked me with a radiant look. "Here is the
+picture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely _you_ might
+have known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago and have wanted ever
+since; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I tried
+to save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because I
+thought she loved him. Or, if he couldn't be saved, I wanted to expose him
+and save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I was
+for my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself for
+your sake, Kitty."
+
+I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobody
+tried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as the
+little water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees beside
+her, whispering, "I stole it from Micky's room at the ranch. That was no
+place for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?"
+
+I think he will get one--of his own Kitty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our rival schemer, Mr. Norman Fleet, has arrived, and electrical
+transmission has shaken hands with compressed air. The millennium must be
+on the way, for never did two men want so nearly the same thing, and yet
+agree to take each what the other does not need.
+
+Mr. Fleet does not "want the earth," either, nor all the waters thereof;
+but the most astonishing thing is, he doesn't want the Snow Bank! He not
+only doesn't want it himself, but is perfectly willing that Tom should have
+it. In fact, do what we will, it seems to be impossible for us to tread on
+the tail of that young man's coat. But having heard a little bird whisper
+that he is in love, and successfully so, I am not so surprised at his
+amiability. Neither am I altogether unprepared, if the little bird's
+whisper be true, for the fact that Miss Malcolm is becoming reconciled to
+Tom's designs upon her beloved scenery. For the sake of consistency, and
+that pure devotion to the Beautiful, so rare in this sordid age, I could
+have wished that she had not weakened so suddenly; but for Tom's sake I am
+very glad. She is clay in the hands of the potter, now that she knows my
+husband does not want "all the water," and that his success does not mean
+the failure of Mr. Norman Fleet.
+
+Harshaw will take the Snow Bank scheme when he takes Kitty back to London.
+If he promotes it, I tell Tom, after the fashion in which he "boomed"
+Kitty's marriage to his cousin, we're not likely to see either him or the
+Snow Bank again. But "Harshaw is all right," Tom says; and I believe that
+the luck is with him.
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories
+by Mary Hallock Foote
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories
+
+Author: Mary Hallock Foote
+
+Release Date: July, 2005  [EBook #8538]
+[This file was first posted on July 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A TOUCH OF SUN AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+A Touch of Sun and Other Stories
+
+by
+
+Mary Hallock Foote
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A TOUCH OF SUN
+
+THE MAID'S PROGRESS
+
+PILGRIMS TO MECCA
+
+THE HARSHAW BRIDE
+
+
+
+
+A TOUCH OF SUN
+
+
+I
+
+The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequential
+chest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of the
+Asgard group, a famous mining property of northern California.
+
+The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric titles on the
+western slope of the foot-hills,--land enough for the preservation of a
+natural park within its own boundaries where fire-lines were cleared,
+forest-trees respected, and roads kept up. Wherever the company erected a
+board fence, gate, or building, the same was methodically painted a color
+known as "monopoly brown." The most conspicuous of these objects cropped
+out on the sunset dip of the property where the woods for twenty years
+had been cut, and the Sacramento valley surges up in heat and glare, with
+yearly visitations of malaria.
+
+Higher than the buildings in brown, a gray-shingled bungalow ranged itself
+on the lap of its broad lawns against a slope of orchard tops climbing to
+the dark environment of the forest. Not the original forest: of that only
+three stark pines were left, which rose one hundred feet out of a gulch
+below the house and lent their ancient majesty to the modern uses of
+electric wires and telephone lines. Their dreaming tops were in the sky;
+their feet were in the sluicings of the stamp-mill that reared its long
+brown back in a semi-recumbent posture, resting one elbow on the hill; and
+beneath the valley smouldered, a pale mirage by day, by night a vision of
+color transcendent and rich as the gates of the Eternal City.
+
+At half past five the night watchman, on his way from town, stopped at
+the superintendent's gate, ran up the blazing path, and thrust a newspaper
+between the dark blue canvas curtains that shaded the entrance of the
+porch. For hours the house had slept behind its heat defenses, every
+shutter closed, yards of piazza blind and canvas awning fastened down. The
+sun, a ball of fire, went slowly down the west. Rose-vines drooped against
+the hanging lattices, printing their watery lines of split bamboo with
+a shadow-pattern of leaf and flower. The whole house-front was decked
+with dead roses, or roses blasted in full bloom, as if to celebrate with
+appropriate insignia the passing of the hottest day of the year.
+
+Half-way down the steps the watchman stopped, surprised by a voice from
+behind the curtains. He came back in answer to his name.
+
+A thin white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker
+of a fan held against the light.
+
+"Oh, Hughson, will you tell Mr. Thorne that I am here? He doesn't know I
+have come."
+
+"Tell him that Mrs. Thorne is home?" the man translated slowly.
+
+"Yes. He does not expect me. You will tell him at once, please?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+The curtain was fastened again from inside. A woman's step went restlessly
+up and down, up and down the long piazza floors, now muffled on a rug, now
+light on a matting, or distinct on the bare boards.
+
+Later a soft Oriental voice inquired, "Wha' time Missa Tho'ne wanta dinna?"
+
+"The usual time, Ito," came the answer; "make no difference for me."
+
+"Lika tea--coffee--after dinna?"
+
+"Tea--iced. Have you some now? Oh, bring it, please!"
+
+After an interval: "Has Mr. Thorne been pretty well?"
+
+"I think."
+
+"It is very hot. How is your kitchen--any better than it was?"
+
+"Missa Tho'ne fixa more screen; all open now, thank you."
+
+"Take these things into my dressing-room. No; there will be no trunk. I
+shall go back in a few days."
+
+The gate clashed to. A stout man in a blaze of white duck came up the
+path, lifting his cork helmet slightly to air the top of his head. As he
+approached it could be seen that his duck was of a modified whiteness, and
+that his beard, even in that forcing weather, could not be less than a two
+days' growth. He threw his entire weight on the steps one by one, as he
+mounted them slowly. The curtains were parted for him from within.
+
+"Well, Margaret?"
+
+"Well, dear old man! How hot you look! _Why_ do you not carry an umbrella?"
+
+"Because I haven't got you here to make me. What brought you back in such
+weather? Where is your telegram?"
+
+"I did not telegraph. There was no need. I simply had to speak to you at
+once--about something that could not be written."
+
+"Well, it's good to have a look at you again. But you are going straight
+back, you know. Can't take any chances on such weather as this."
+
+Mr. Thorne sank copiously into a piazza chair, and pulled forward another
+for his wife.
+
+She sat on the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Her
+profile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powdered
+with gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back from
+a small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She had
+taken off her high, close neckwear, and the wanness of her throat showed
+above a collarless shirt-waist.
+
+"Don't look at me; I am a wreck!" she implored, with a little exhausted
+laugh. "I wonder where my keys are? I must get on something cool before
+dinner."
+
+"Ito has all the keys somewhere. Ito's a gentleman. He takes beautiful care
+of me, only he won't let me drink as much _shasta_ as I want. What is that?
+Iced tea? Bad, bad before dinner! I'm going to watch _you_ now. You are not
+looking a bit well. Is there any of that decoction left? Well, it is bad;
+gets on the nerves, too much of it. The problem of existence here is, What
+shall we drink, and how much of it _can_ we drink?"
+
+Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. But
+we will talk when it is cooler. Don't you--don't you shave but twice a week
+when I am away, Henry?"
+
+"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don't
+have anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do to
+live and be up to his work."
+
+"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! It
+starts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now it
+roars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"
+
+"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazza
+floor. It will be the grass if this keeps on."
+
+"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's careless
+speeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiar
+way of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioning
+looks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, who
+realize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing.
+
+"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"
+
+"Why didn't you write _me_ that you were not well?"
+
+"I am well."
+
+"You don't look it--anything but."
+
+"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health that
+brought me. But--never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys."
+
+At dinner she looked ten years younger, sitting opposite him in her summery
+lawns and laces. She tasted the cold wine soup, but ate nothing, watching
+her husband's appetite with the mixed wonder and concern that thirty
+years' knowledge of its capacities had not diminished. He studied her face
+meanwhile; he was accustomed to reading faces, and hers he knew by line and
+precept. He listened to her choked little laughs and hurried speeches. All
+her talk was mere postponement; she was fighting for time. Hence he argued
+that the trouble which had sent her flying home to him from the mountains
+was not fancy-bred. Of her imaginary troubles she was ready enough to
+speak.
+
+The moon had risen, a red, dry-weather moon, when they walked out into
+the garden and climbed the slope under low orchard boughs. The trees were
+young, too quickly grown; like child mothers, they had lost their natural
+symmetry, overburdened with hasty fruition. Each slender parent trunk was
+the centre of a host of artificial props, which saved the sinking boughs
+from breaking. Under one of these low green tents they stopped and handled
+the great fruit that fell at a touch.
+
+"How everything rushes to maturity here! The roses blossom and wither
+the same hour. The peaches burst before they ripen. Don't you think it
+oppresses one, all this waste fertility, such an excess of life and good
+living, one season crowding upon another? How shall we get rid of all these
+kindly fruits of the earth?"
+
+She did not wait for an answer to her morbid questions. They moved on up
+a path between hedges of sweet peas going to seed, and blackberry-vines
+covered with knots of fruit dried in their own juices. A wall of gigantic
+Southern cane hid the boundary fence, and above it the night-black pines of
+the forest towered, their breezy monotone answering the roar of the hundred
+stamps below the hill.
+
+A few young pines stood apart on a knoll, a later extension of the garden,
+ungraded and covered with pine-needles. In the hollow places native shrubs,
+surprised by irrigation, had made an unwonted summer's growth.
+
+Here, in the blanching moon, stood a tent with both flaps thrown back. A
+wind of coolness drew across the hill; it lifted one of the tent-curtains
+mysteriously; its touch was sad and searching.
+
+Mrs. Thorne put back the canvas and stepped inside. She saw a folding
+camp-cot stripped of bedding, a dresser with half-open drawers that
+disclosed emptiness, a dusty book-rack standing on the floor. The little
+mirror on the tent-pole, hung too high for her own reflection, held a
+darkling picture of a pine-bough against a patch of stars. She sat on the
+edge of the cot and picked up a discarded necktie, sawing it across her
+knee mechanically to free it from the dust. Her husband placed himself
+beside her. His weight brought down the mattress and rocked her against his
+shoulder; he put his arm around her, and she gave way to a little sob.
+
+"When has he written to you?" she asked. "Since he went down?"
+
+"I think so. Let me see! When did you hear last?"
+
+"I have brought his last letter with me. I wondered if he had told you."
+
+"I have heard nothing--nothing in particular. What is it?"
+
+"The inevitable woman."
+
+"She has come at last, has she? Come to stay?"
+
+"He is engaged to her."
+
+Mr. Thorne breathed his astonishment in a low whistle. "You don't like it?"
+he surmised at once.
+
+"Like it! If it were merely a question of liking! She is impossible. She
+knows it, her people know it, and they have not told him. It remains"--
+
+"What is the girl's name?"
+
+"Henry, she is not a girl! That is, she is a girl forced into premature
+womanhood, like all the fruits of this hotbed climate. She is that Miss
+Benedet whom you helped, whom you saved--how many years ago? When Willy was
+a schoolboy."
+
+"Well, she _was_ saved, presumably."
+
+"Saved from what, and by a total stranger!"
+
+"She made no mistake in selecting the stranger. I can testify to that; and
+she was as young as he, my dear."
+
+"A girl is never as young as a boy of the same age. She is a woman now, and
+she has taken his all--everything a man can give to his first--and told him
+nothing!"
+
+"Are you sure it's the same girl? There are other Benedets."
+
+"She is the one. His letter fixes it beyond a question--so innocently he
+fastens her past upon her! And he says, 'She is "a woman like a dewdrop."'
+I wonder if he knows what he is quoting, and what had happened to _that_
+woman!"
+
+"Dewdrops don't linger long in the sun of California. But she was
+undeniably the most beautiful creature this or any other sun ever shone
+on."
+
+"And he is the sweetest, sanest, cleanest-hearted boy, and the most
+innocent of what a woman may go through and still be fair outside!"
+
+"Why, that is why she likes him. It speaks well for her, I think, that she
+hankers after that kind of a boy."
+
+"It speaks volumes for what she lacks herself! Don't misunderstand me.
+I hope I am not without charity for what is done and never can be
+undone,--though charity is hardly the virtue one would hope to need in
+welcoming a son's wife. It is her ghastly silence now that condemns her."
+
+Mr. Thorne heaved a sigh, and changed his feet on the gritty tent floor.
+He stooped and picked up some small object on which he had stepped, a
+collar-stud trodden flat. He rolled it in his fingers musingly.
+
+"She may be getting up her courage to tell him in her own time and way."
+
+"The time has gone by when she could have told him honorably. She should
+have stopped the very first word on his lips."
+
+"She couldn't do that, you know, and be human. She couldn't be expected to
+spare him at such a cost as that. Mighty few men would be worth it."
+
+"If he wasn't worth it she could have let him go. And the family! Think of
+their accepting his proposal in silence. Why, can they even be married,
+Henry, without some process of law?"
+
+"Heaven knows! I don't know how far the other thing had gone--far enough to
+make questions awkward."
+
+Husband and wife remained seated side by side on the son's deserted bed.
+The shape of each was disconsolately outlined to the other against the
+tent's illumined walls. Now a wind-swayed branch of manzanita rasped the
+canvas, and cast upon it shadows of its moving leaves.
+
+"It's pretty rough on quiet old folks like us, with no money to get us into
+trouble," said Mr. Thorne. "The boy is not a beauty, he's not a swell. He
+is just a plain, honest boy with a good working education. If you judge a
+woman, as some say you can, by her choice of men, she shouldn't be very far
+out of the way."
+
+"It is very certain you cannot judge a man by his choice of women."
+
+"You cannot judge a boy by the women that get hold of him. But Willy is
+not such a babe as you think. He's a deuced quiet sort, but he's not
+been knocking around by himself these ten years, at school and college
+and vacations, without picking up an idea or two--possibly about women.
+Experience, I grant, be probably lacks; but he has the true-bred instinct.
+We always have trusted him so far; I'm willing to trust him now. If there
+are things he ought to know about this woman, leave him to find them out
+for himself."
+
+"After he has married her! And you don't even know whether a marriage is
+possible without some sort of shuffling or concealment; do you?"
+
+"I don't, but they probably do. Her family aren't going to get themselves
+into that kind of a scrape."
+
+"I have no opinion whatever of the family. I think they would accept any
+kind of a compromise that money can buy."
+
+"Very likely, and so would we if we had a daughter"--
+
+"Why, we _have_ a daughter! It is our daughter, all the daughter we shall
+ever call ours, that you are talking about. And to think of the girls and
+girls he might have had! Lovely girls, without a flaw--a flaw! She will
+fall to pieces in his hand. She is like a broken vase put together and set
+on the shelf to look at."
+
+"Now we are losing our sense of proportion. We must sleep on this, or it
+will blot out the whole universe for us."
+
+"It has already for me. I haven't a shadow of faith in anything left."
+
+"And I haven't read the paper. Suppose the boy were in Cuba now!"
+
+"I wish he were! It is a judgment on me for wanting to save him up, for
+insisting that the call was not for him."
+
+"That's just it, you see. You have to trust a man to know his own call.
+Whether it's love or war, he is the one who has got to answer."
+
+"But you will write to him to-morrow, Henry? He must be saved, if the truth
+can save him. Think of the awakening!"
+
+"My dear, if he loves her there will be no awakening. If there is, he will
+have to take his dose like other men. There is nothing in the truth that
+can save him, though I agree with you that he ought to know it--from her."
+
+"If you had only told her your name, Henry! Then she would have had a
+fingerpost to warn her off our ground. To think what you did for her, and
+how you are repaid!"
+
+"It was a very foolish thing I did for her; I wasn't proud of it. That was
+one reason why I did not tell her my name."
+
+Mr. Thorne removed his weight from the cot. The warped wires twanged back
+into place.
+
+"Come, Maggie, we are too old not to trust in the Lord--or something.
+Anyhow, it's cooler. I believe we shall sleep to-night."
+
+"And haven't I murdered sleep for you, you poor old man? What a thing it
+is to have nerve and no nerves! I know you feel just as wrecked as I do. I
+wish you would say so. I want it said to the uttermost. If I could but--our
+only boy--our boy of 'highest hopes'! You remember the dear old Latin words
+in his first 'testimonials'?"
+
+"They must have been badly disappointed in their girl, and I suppose they
+had their 'hopes,' too."
+
+"They should not drag another into the pit, one too innocent to have
+imagined such treachery."
+
+"I wouldn't make too much of his innocence. He is all right so far as we
+know; he's got precious little excuse for not being: but there is no such
+gulf between any two young humans; there can't be, especially when one is a
+man. Take my hand. There's a step there."
+
+Two shapes in white, with shadows preposterously lengthening, went down the
+hill. The long, dark house was open now to the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no night in the "stilly" sense at a mine.
+
+The mill glared through all its windows from the gulch. Sentinel lights
+kept watch on top. The hundred stamps pounded on. If they ceased a moment,
+there followed the sob of the pump, or the clang of a truck-load of drills
+dumped on the floor of the hoisting-works, or the thunder of rock in the
+iron-bound ore-bins. All was silence on the hill; but a wakeful figure
+wrapped in white went up and down the empty porches, light as a dead leaf
+on the wind. It was the mother, wasting her night in grievous thinking,
+sighing with weariness, pining for sleep, dreading the day. How should they
+presume to tell that woman's story, knowing her only through one morbid
+chapter of her earliest youth, which they had stumbled upon without the key
+to it, or any knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they might
+be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her
+heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him.
+If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why,
+then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence,
+even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence as well!
+
+The roar of the stamp-heads deadened her hearing of the night's subtler
+noises. Her thoughts went grinding on, crushing the hard rock of
+circumstance, but incapable of picking out the grains of gold therein.
+Later siftings might discover them, but she was reasoning now under too
+great human pressure for delicate analysis.
+
+She saw the planets set and the night-mist cloak the valley. By four
+o'clock daybreak had put out the stars. She went to her room then and
+fell asleep, awakening after the heat had begun, when the house was again
+darkened for the day's siege.
+
+She was still postponing, wandering through the darkened rooms, peering
+into closets and bureau drawers to see, from force of habit, how Ito
+discharged his trust.
+
+At luncheon she asked her husband if he had written. He made a gesture
+expressing his sense of the hopelessness of the situation in general.
+
+"You know how I came by my knowledge, and how little it amounts to as a
+question of facts."
+
+"Henry, how can you trifle so! You believe, just as I do, that such facts
+would wreck any marriage. And you are not the only one who knows them. I
+think your knowledge was providentially given you for the saving of your
+son."
+
+"My son is a man. _I_ can't save him. And take my word for it, he will go
+all lengths now before he will be saved."
+
+"Let him go, then, with his eyes open, not blindfold, in jeopardy of other
+men's tongues."
+
+Mr. Thorne rose uneasily.
+
+"Do as you think you must; but it rather seems to me that I am bound to
+respect that woman's secret."
+
+"You wish that you had not told me."
+
+"Well, I have, and I suppose that was part of the providence. It is in your
+hands now; be as easy on her as you can."
+
+With a view to being "easy," Mrs. Thorne resolved not to expatiate, but to
+give the story on plain lines. The result was hardly as merciful as might
+have been expected.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"DEAR WILLY," she wrote: "Prepare yourself for a most unhappy letter [what
+woman can forego her preface?]--unhappy mother that I am, to have such a
+message laid upon me. But you will understand when you have read why the
+cup may not pass from us. If ever again a father or a mother can help you,
+my son, you have us always here, poor in comfort though we are. It seems
+that the comforters of our childhood have little power over those hurts
+that come with strength of years.
+
+"Seven years ago this summer your father went to the city on one of his
+usual trips. Everything was usual, except that at Colfax he noticed a pair
+of beautiful thoroughbred horses being worked over by the stablemen, and a
+young fellow standing by giving directions. The horses had been overridden
+in the heat. It was such weather as we are having now. The young man, who
+appeared to have everything to say about them, was of the country sporting
+type, distinctly not the gentleman. In a cattle country he would have been
+a cowboy simply. Your father thought he might have been employed on some
+of the horse-breeding ranches below Auburn as a trainer of young stock. He
+even wondered if he could have stolen the animals.
+
+"But as the train moved out it appeared he had appropriated something of
+greater value--a young girl, also a thoroughbred.
+
+"It did not need the gossip of the train-hands to suggest that this was an
+elopement of a highly sensational kind. Father was indignant at the jokes.
+You know it is a saying with the common sort of people that in California
+elopements become epidemic at certain seasons of the year--like earthquake
+shocks or malaria. The man was handsome in a primitive way--worlds beneath
+the girl, who was simply and tragically a lady. Father sat in the same car
+with them, opposite their section. It grew upon him by degrees that she was
+slowly awakening, as one who has been drugged, to a stupefied consciousness
+of her situation. He thought there might still be room for help at the
+crisis of her return to reason (I mean all this in a spiritual sense), and
+so he kept near them. They talked but little together. The girl seemed
+stunned, as I say, by physical exhaustion or that dawning comprehension
+in which your father fancied he recognized the tragic element of the
+situation.
+
+"The young man was outwardly self-possessed, as horsemen are, but he seemed
+constrained with the girl. They had no conversation, no topics in common.
+He kept his place beside her, often watching her in silence, but he did not
+obtrude himself. She appeared to have a certain power over him, even in her
+helplessness, but it was slipping from her. In her eyes, as they rested
+upon him in the hot daylight, your father believed that he saw a wild and
+gathering repulsion. So he kept near them.
+
+"The train was late, having waited at Colfax two hours for the Eastern
+Overland, else they would have been left, those two, and your father--but
+such is fate!
+
+"It was ten o'clock when they reached Oakland. He lost the pair for a
+moment in the crowd going aboard the boat, but saw the girl again far
+forward, standing alone by the rail. He strolled across the deck, not
+appearing to have seen her. She moved a trifle nearer; with her eyes on the
+water, speaking low as if to herself, she said:--
+
+"'I am in great danger. Will you help me? If you will, listen, but do
+not speak or come any nearer. Be first, if you can, to go ashore; have
+a carriage ready, and wait until you see me. There will be a moment,
+perhaps--only a moment. Do not lose it. You understand? _He_, too, will
+have to get a carriage. When he comes for me I shall be gone. Tell the
+driver to take me to--' she gave the number of a well-known residence on
+Van Ness Avenue.
+
+"He looked at her then, and said quietly, 'The Benedet house is closed for
+the summer.'
+
+"She hung her head at the name. 'Promise me your silence!' she implored in
+the same low, careful voice.
+
+"'I will protect you in every way consistent with common sense,' your
+father answered, 'but I make no promises.'
+
+"'I am at your mercy,' she said, and added, 'but not more than at his.'
+
+"'Is this a case of conspiracy or violence?' your father asked.
+
+"She shook her head. 'I cannot accuse him. I came of my own free will. That
+is why I am helpless now.'
+
+"'I do not see how I can help you,' said father.
+
+"'You can help me to gain time. One hour is all I ask. Will you or not?'
+she said. 'Be quick! He is coming.'
+
+"'I must go with you, then,' your father answered, 'I will take you to this
+address, but I need not tell you the house is empty.'
+
+"'There are people in the coachman's lodge,' she answered. Then her
+companion approached, and no more was said.
+
+"But the counter-elopement was accomplished as only your father could
+manage such a matter on the spur of the moment--consequences accepted with
+his usual philosophy and bonhomie. If he could have foreseen _all_ the
+consequences, he would not, I think, have refused to give her his name.
+
+"He left her at the side entrance, where she rang and was admitted by an
+oldish, respectable looking man, who recognized her evidently with the
+greatest surprise. Then your father carried out her final order to wire
+Norwood Benedet, Jr., at Burlingame, to come home that night to the house
+address and save--she did not say whom or what; there she broke off,
+demanding that your father compose a message that should bring him as sure
+as life and death, but tell no tales. I do not know how she may have put
+it--these are my own words.
+
+"There was a paragraph in one newspaper, next morning, which gave the
+girl's full name, and a fancy sketch of her elopement with the famous
+range-rider Dick Malaby. This was just after the close of the cattlemen's
+war in Wyoming. Malaby had fought for one of the ruined English companies.
+(The big owners lost everything, as you know. The country was up in arms
+against them; they could not protect their own men.) Malaby's employers
+were friends of the Benedets, and had asked a place with them for their
+liegeman. He was a desperado with a dozen lives upon his head, but men like
+Norwood Benedet and his set would have been sure to make a pet of him. One
+could see how it all had come about, and what a terrible publicity such a
+name associated with hers would give a girl for the rest of her life.
+
+"But money can do a great deal. Society was out of town; the newspapers
+that society reads were silent.
+
+"It was announced a few days later that Mrs. Benedet and her daughter Helen
+had gone East on their way to Europe. As Mr. Benedet's health was very
+bad,--this was only six months before he died,--society wondered; but it
+has been accustomed to wondering about the Benedets.
+
+"Mrs. Benedet came home at the time of her husband's death and remained for
+a few months, but Helen was kept away. You know they have continually been
+abroad for the last seven years, and Helen has never been seen in society
+here. When you spoke of 'Miss Benedet' I no more thought of her than if
+she had not been living. Aunt Frances met them last winter at Cannes, and
+Mrs. Benedet said positively that they had no intention of coming back to
+California ever to live. Aunt Frances wondered why, with their beautiful
+homes empty and going to destruction. I have told you the probable reason.
+Whether it still exists, God knows--or what they have done with that man
+and his dreadful knowledge.
+
+"Helen Benedet may have changed her spiritual identity since she made that
+fatal journey, but she can hardly have forgotten what she did. She must
+know there is a man who, if he lives, holds her reputation at the mercy of
+his silence. Money can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything.
+
+"I am tempted to wish that we--your father and I--could share your
+ignorance, could trust as you do. Better a common awakening for us all,
+than that I should be the one necessity has chosen to apply the torture to
+my son.
+
+"The misery of this will make you hate my handwriting forever. But why do I
+babble? You do not hear me. God help you, my dear!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These words, descriptive of her own emotions, Mrs. Thorne on re-reading
+scored out, and copied the last page.
+
+She did not weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled
+away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out
+at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow.
+But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an attitude
+befitting her years.
+
+The letter was absently sealed and addressed; there was no reason why the
+shaft should not go home. Yet she hesitated. It were better that she should
+read it to her husband first.
+
+The sun dropped below the piazza roof and pierced the bamboo lattices with
+lines and slits of fervid light.
+
+  "From heat to heat the day declined."
+
+The gardener came with wet sacking and swathed the black-glazed
+jardinières, in which the earth was steaming. The mine whistle blared, and
+a rattle of miners' carts followed, as the day-shift dispersed to town. The
+mine did not board its proletariate. At his usual hour the watchman braved
+the blinding path, and left the evening paper on the piazza floor. There it
+lay unopened. Mrs. Thorne fanned herself and looked at it. There must be
+fighting in Cuba; she did not move to see. Other mothers' sons were dying;
+what was death to such squalor as hers? Sorrow is a queen, as the poet
+says, and sits enthroned; but Trouble is a slave. Mothers with griefs like
+hers must suffer in the fetters of silence.
+
+When dinner was over, Ito made his nightly pilgrimage through the house,
+opening bedroom shutters, fastening curtains back. He drew up the
+piazza-blinds, and like a stage-scene, framed in post and balustrade, and
+bordered with a tracery of rose-vines, the valley burst upon the view.
+Its cool twilight colors, its river-bed of mist, added to the depth of
+distance. Against it the white roses looked whiter, and the pink ones
+caught fire from the intense, great afterglow.
+
+The silent couple, drinking their coffee outside, drew a long mutual sigh.
+
+"Every day," said Mrs. Thorne, "we wonder why we stay in such a place, and
+every evening we are cajoled into thinking there never can be such
+another day. And the beauty is just as fresh every night as the heat is
+preposterous by day."
+
+"It's a great strain on the men," said Mr. Thorne. "We lost two of our best
+hands this week--threw down their tools and quit, for some tomfoolery they
+wouldn't have noticed a month ago. The bosses irritate the men, and the
+men get fighting mad in a minute. Not one of them will bear the weight of
+a word, and I don't blame them. The work is hard enough in decent weather;
+they are dropping off sick every day. The night-shift boys can't sleep in
+their hot little houses---they look as if they'd all been on a two weeks'
+tear. The next improvement we make I shall build a rest-house where the
+night-shift can turn in and sleep inside of stone walls, without crying
+babies and scolding wives clattering around. This heat every summer
+costs us thousands of dollars in delays, from wear and tear and extra
+strain--tempers and nerves giving out, men getting frantic and jerking
+things. I believe it breeds a form of acute mania when it keeps on like
+this."
+
+"Yes, the point of view changes the instant the sun goes down," said Mrs.
+Thorne. "I am glad I did not send my letter. Will you let me read it to
+you, Henry?"
+
+"Not now; let us enjoy the peace of God while it lasts." He stretched
+himself on his back on the rattan lounge, and folded his hands on that
+part of his person which illustrated, geographically speaking, the great
+Continental Divide. The locked hands rose softly up and down. His wife
+fanned him in silence.
+
+He turned his head and looked at her; her tired eyes, the dragged lines
+about her mouth, disturbed his sense of rest. He took the fan from her and
+returned her attention vigorously. "Please don't!" she said with a little
+teased laugh. She rearranged the lock he had blown across her forehead. His
+larger help she needed, but he had seldom known how to pet her in little
+ways.
+
+"I think you ought to let me read it to you," she said. "There is nothing
+so difficult as telling the truth, even about one's self, and when it's
+another person"--
+
+"That's what I claim; she is the only one who can tell it."
+
+"This is a case of first aid to the injured," she sighed. "I may not be a
+surgeon, but I must do what I can for my son."
+
+Then there was silence; the valley grew dimmer, the sky nearer and more
+intense.
+
+"Yes, the night forgives the day," after a while she said; "it even
+forgets. And we forget what we were, and what we did, when we were young.
+What is the use of growing old if we can't learn to forgive?" she vaguely
+pleaded; and suddenly she began to weep.
+
+The rattle of a miner's cart broke in upon them; it stopped at the gate.
+Mr. Thorne half rose and looked out; a man was hurrying up the walk. He
+waved with his cane for him to stop where he was. Messengers at this hour
+were usually bearers of bad news, and he did not choose that his wife
+should know all the troubles of the mines.
+
+The two men conversed together at the gate; then Mr. Thorne returned to
+explain.
+
+"I must go over to the office a moment, and I may have to go to the
+power-house."
+
+"Is anybody hurt?"
+
+"Only a pump. Don't think of things, dear. Just keep cool while you can."
+
+"For pity's sake, there is a carriage!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed. "We are
+going to have a visitor. Fancy making calls after such a day as this!"
+
+Mr. Thorne hurried away with manlike promptitude in the face of a social
+obligation. The mistress stepped inside and gave an order to Ito.
+
+As she returned, a lady was coming up the walk. She was young and tall, and
+had a distant effect of great elegance. She held herself very erect, and
+moved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed to
+the eyes of critical assemblages. Her thin black dress was too elaborate
+for a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permitted
+the wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings that
+started up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thorne
+chiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers.
+She retreated a little from what she felt to be a crisis of some sort, and
+her heart beat hard with acute agitation.
+
+"Mrs. Thorne?" said the visitor. "Do I need to tell you who I am? Has any
+one forewarned you of such a person as Helen Benedet?"
+
+The two women clasped hands hurriedly. The worn eyes of the elder, strained
+by night-watchings, drooped under the young, dark ones, reinforced by their
+splendor of brows and lashes.
+
+"It was very sweet of you to come," she said in a lifeless voice.
+
+"Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet as
+that?"
+
+Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she asked
+gently.
+
+"I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But you
+will not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hot
+night, I know."
+
+"You must not think of going back to-night." Mrs. Thorne glanced at the
+hired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather,
+my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself."
+
+"Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, that
+you were at the mine. I came--by main strength. But I should have come
+somehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with your
+lights--you look like a whole community."
+
+"We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talking
+of you only just now," Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously.
+
+The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengths
+of empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above the
+trees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to the
+pillars motionless.
+
+"What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"
+
+"No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you."
+
+"I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. I
+shall tire you to death."
+
+Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage.
+
+"May he bring me a glass of water? Just water, please." The tall girl, in
+her long black dress, moved to and fro, making a pretense of the view to
+escape observation.
+
+"What is that sloping house that roars so? It sounds like a house of
+beasts. Oh, the stamps, of course! There goes one on the bare metal. Did
+anything break then?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mrs. Thorne; "things do not break so easily as that in a
+stamp-mill. Only the rock gets broken."
+
+Ito returned with a tray of iced soda, and was spoken to aside by his
+mistress.
+
+"It's quite a farce," she said, "preparing beds for our friends in this
+weather. No one sleeps until after two, and then it is morning; and though
+we shut out the heat, it beats on the walls and burns up the air inside,
+and we wake more tired than ever."
+
+"Let us not think of sleep! I need all the night to talk in. I have to tell
+you impossible things."
+
+"Is Willy's father to be included in this talk?" Mrs. Thorne inquired;
+"because he is coming--he is there, at the gate."
+
+She rose uneasily. Her visitor rose, too, and together they watched the
+man's unconscious figure approaching. An electric lamp above the gate threw
+long shadows, like spokes of a wheel, across the grass. Mr. Thorne's face
+was invisible till he had reached the steps.
+
+"Henry," said his wife, "you do not see we have a visitor."
+
+He took off his hat, and perceiving a young lady, waved her a gallant and
+playful greeting, assuming her to be a neighbor. Miss Benedet stepped back
+without speaking.
+
+"God bless me!" said Thorne simply, when his wife had named their guest,
+and so left the matter, for Miss Benedet to acknowledge or deny their
+earlier meeting.
+
+Mrs. Thorne gave her little coughing laugh.
+
+"Well, you two!" she said with ghastly gayety. "Must I repeat, Henry, that
+this is"--
+
+"He is trying to think where he has seen me before," said Helen Benedet.
+There was a ring in her voice like that of the stamp-heads on the bare
+steel.
+
+"I am wondering if you remember where you saw me before," Thorne
+retorted. He did not like the young lady's presence there. He thought it
+extraordinary and rather brazen. And he liked still less to be drawn into a
+woman's parlance.
+
+Mrs. Thorne sat still, trembling. "Henry, tell her! Speak to her!"
+
+Miss Benedet turned from husband to wife. Her face was very pale. "Ah," she
+said, "you knew about me all the time! He has told you everything--and you
+called me 'my dear'! Is it easy for you to say such things?"
+
+"Never mind, never mind! What did you wish to say to me? What was it?"
+
+"Give me a moment, please! This alters everything. I must get accustomed to
+this before we go any further."
+
+She reached out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and
+helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and
+distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness,
+as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could
+never be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard,
+whether of grief or shame, her own or of any belonging to her.
+
+"You are the very man," she said, "the one who would not promise. And you
+kept your word and told your wife. And how long have you known of--of this
+engagement?"
+
+Mr. Thorne looked at his wife.
+
+"Only a few days," she said.
+
+"Still, there has been time," the girl reflected. She let her voice fall
+from its high society pitch. "I did not dream there was so much mercy in
+the world--among parents! You both knew, and you have not told him. You
+deserve to have Willy for your son!"
+
+Mrs. Thorne leaned forward to speak. Her husband, guessing what trouble her
+conscience would be making her, forestalled the effort with a warning look.
+"There was no mercy in the case," he bluntly said; "we do not know your
+story."
+
+Miss Benedet continued, as if thinking aloud: "Yet you gave me that supreme
+trust, that I would tell him myself! I have not, and now it is too late.
+Now I can never know how he would have taken it had he known in time. I
+do not want his forgiveness, you may be sure, or his toleration. I must
+be what I was to him or nothing. You will tell him, and then he will
+understand the letter I wrote him last night, breaking the engagement.
+We may be honest with each other now; there is no peace of the family to
+provide for. This night's talk, and I leave myself, my whole self, with
+you, to do with as you think best for him. If you think better to have it
+over at one blow, tell him the worst. The facts are enough if you leave
+out the excuses. But if you want to soften it for the sake of his faith
+in general,--isn't there some such idea, that men lose their faith in all
+women through the fault of one?--why, soften it all you like. Make me the
+victim of circumstances. I can show you how. I had forgiven myself, you
+know. I thought I was as good as new. I had forgotten I had a flaw. And I
+was so tired of being on the defensive. Now at last, I said, I shall have a
+friend! You know--_do_ you know what a restful, impersonal manner your son
+has? What quiet eyes! We rode and talked together like two young men. It
+seems a pleasure common enough with some girls, but I never had it; lads of
+my own age were debarred when I was a girl. I had neither girls nor boys to
+play with. Girl friends were dealt out to me to fit my supposed needs, but
+taken that way as medicine I didn't find them very interesting. If I clung
+to one more than another, that one was not asked soon again for fear of
+inordinate affections and unbalanced enthusiasms. I was to be an all-around
+young woman; so they built a wall all around me. It fitted tight at last,
+and then I broke through one night and emptied my heart on the ground. My
+plea, you see, is always ready. Could I have lived and kept on scorning
+myself as I did that night? Do you remember?" She bent her imperative,
+clears gaze upon Thorne. "I told you the truth when you gave me a chance
+to lie. Heaven knows what it cost to say, 'I came with him of my own free
+will!'"
+
+Mrs. Thorne put her hand in her husband's. He pressed it absently, with his
+eyes on the ground.
+
+"It is such a mercy that I need not begin at the beginning. You know the
+worst already, and your divine hesitation before judgment almost demands
+that I should try to justify it. I _may_ excuse myself to you. I will not
+be too proud to meet you half-way; but remember, when you tell the story to
+him, everything is to be sacrificed to his cure."
+
+"When we really love them," Mrs. Thorne unexpectedly argued, "do we want
+them to be cured?"
+
+The defendant looked at her in astonishment, "Do I understand you?" she
+asked. "You must be careful. I have not told you my story. Of course I want
+to influence you, but nothing can alter the facts."
+
+There was no reply, and she took up her theme again with visible and
+painful effort. A sickening familiarity, a weariness of it all before she
+had begun, showed in her voice and in her pale, reluctant smile.
+
+"Seven years is a long time," she said, looking at Thorne. "Are you sure
+you have forgotten nothing? You saw what the man was?" she demanded. "He
+was precisely what he looked to be--one of the men about the stables. I was
+not supposed to know one from another.
+
+"It is a mistake to talk of a girl having fallen. She has crawled down in
+her thoughts, a step at a time--unless she fell in the dark; and I declare
+that before this happened it was almost dark with me!
+
+"My mother is a very clever woman; she has had the means to carry out her
+theories, and I am her only child (Norwood Benedet is my half-brother). I
+was not allowed to play with ordinary children; they might have spoiled my
+accent or told me stories that would have made me afraid of the dark; and
+while the perfect child was waited for, I had only my nurses. I was not
+allowed to go to school, of course. Schools are for ordinary children. When
+I was past the governess age I had tutors, exceptional beings, imported
+like my frocks. They were too clever for the work of teaching one ignorant,
+spoiled child. They wore me out with their dissertations, their excess of
+personality, their overflow of acquirements, all bearing upon poor, stupid
+me, who could absorb so little. And mama would not allow me to be pushed,
+so I never actually worked or played. These persons were in the house,
+holidays and all, and there was a perpetual little dribble of instruction
+going on. Oh, how I wearied of the deadly deliberation of it all!
+
+"As a family we have always been in a way notorious; I am aware of that:
+but my mother's ideals are far different from those that held in father's
+young days, when he made his money and a highly ineligible circle of
+acquaintances. Nordy inherited all the fun and the friends, and he spent
+the money like a prince. Once or twice a year he would come down to the
+ranch, and the place would be filled with his company, and their horses and
+jockeys and servants. Then mama would fly with me till the reign of sport
+was over. It was a terrible grief to have to go at the only time when the
+ranch was not a prison. I grew up nursing a crop of smothered rebellions
+and longings which I was ashamed to confess. At sixteen mama was to take me
+abroad for two years; I was to be presented and brought home in triumph,
+unless Europe refused to part with a pearl of such price. All pearls have
+their price. I was not left in absolute ignorance of my own. Of all who
+suffered through that night's madness of mine, poor mama is most to be
+pitied. There was no limit to her pride in me, and she has never made the
+least pretense that religion or philosophy could comfort her.
+
+"Now, before I really begin, shall we not speak of something else for a
+while? I do not want to be quite without mercy."
+
+"I think you had better go on," said Mrs. Thorne gently; "but take off your
+bonnet, my dear."
+
+"Still 'my dear'?" sighed the girl. "Is so much kindness quite consistent
+with your duty? Will you leave _all_ the plain speaking to me?"
+
+"Forgive me," said the mother humbly; "but I cannot call you 'Miss
+Benedet.' We seem to have got beyond that."
+
+"Oh, we have got beyond everything! There is no precedent for us in the
+past"--she felt for her hat pins--"and no hope in the future." She put off
+the winged circlet that crowned her hair, and Mrs. Thorne took it from her.
+Almost shyly the middle-aged woman, who had never herself been even pretty,
+looked at the sad young beauty, sitting uncovered in the moonlight.
+
+"You should never wear anything on your head. It is desecration."
+
+"Is it? I always conform, you know. I wear anything, do anything, that is
+demanded."
+
+"Ah, but the head--such hair! I wonder that I do not hate you when I think
+of my poor Willy."
+
+"You will hate me when I am gone," said the beautiful one wearily; "you
+may count on the same revulsion in him. I know it. I have been through it.
+There is nothing so loathsome in the bitter end as mere good looks."
+
+"Ah, but why"--the mother checked herself. Was she groveling already for
+Willy's sake? She had stifled the truth, and accepted thanks not her due,
+and listened to praise of her own magnanimity. Where were the night's
+surprises to leave her?
+
+
+II
+
+Mr. Thorne had changed his seat, and the sound of a fresh chair creaking
+under his comfortable weight was a touch of commonplace welcomed by his
+wife with her usual laugh, half amused and half apologetic.
+
+"Why do you go off there, Henry? Do you expect us to follow you?"
+
+"There's a breeze around the corner of the house!" he ejaculated fervently.
+
+"Go and find it, then; we do not need you. Do we?"
+
+"_I_ need him," said the girl in her sweetest tones. "He helped me once,
+without a word. It helps me now to have him sitting there"--
+
+"Without a word!" Mrs. Thorne irrepressibly supplied.
+
+"Why can't we let her finish?" Thorne demanded, hitching his chair into an
+attitude of attention.
+
+It was impossible for Miss Benedet to take up her story in the key in which
+she had left off. She began again rather flatly, allowing for the chill of
+interruptions:--
+
+"To go back to that summer; I was in my sixteenth year, and the policy
+of expansion was to have begun. But father's health broke, and mama was
+traveling with him and a cortège of nurses, trying one change after
+another. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at table
+in a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fräulein Henschel,
+and myself. Fräulein was the resident governess. She was a great,
+soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, but
+she had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weather
+as we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I had
+dreamed of a breath of freedom, but instead of the open door I was in
+straiter bonds than ever.
+
+"I revolted first against keeping hours. I would not get up to breakfast,
+I refused to study, it was too hot to practice. I took my own head about
+books, and had my first great orgy of the Russians. I used to lie beside
+a chink of light in the darkened library and read while Fräulein in the
+music-room held orgies of her own. She had just missed being a great
+singer; but she was a master of her instrument, and her accompaniments were
+divine. What voice she had was managed with feeling and a pure method, and
+where voice failed her the piano thrilled and sobbed, and broke in chords
+like the sea.
+
+"I can give you no idea of the effect that Tolstoi, combined with
+Fräulein's music, had upon me. My heart hung upon the pauses in her
+song; it beat, as I read, as if I had been running. I would forget to
+breathe between the pages. One day Fräulein came in and found me in the
+back chapters of 'Anna Karénina.' She had been playing one of Lizst's
+rhapsodies--the twelfth. Waves of storm and passion had been thundering
+through the house, with keen little rifts of melody between, too sweet
+almost to be endured. She was very negligée, as the weather obliged us to
+be. Her great white arms were bare above the elbow, and as wet as if she
+had been over the wash-tub.
+
+"'That is not a book for a _jeune fille_,' she said.
+
+"I was in a rapture of excitement; the interruption made me wild. 'All the
+books are for me,' I told her. 'I will read what I please.'
+
+"'You will go mad!'
+
+"I went on reading.
+
+"'You have no way to work it off. You will not study, you cannot sing, you
+write no letters, the mother does not believe'--
+
+"'Do go away!' I cried.
+
+"'--in the duty to the neighbor. Ach! what will you do with the whole of
+Tolstoi and Turgenieff shut up within you?'
+
+"'I can ride,' I said. 'If you don't want me to go mad, leave me in the
+evenings to myself. Take my place in the carriage with Aunt Isabel, and let
+me ride alone.'
+
+"Fräulein had lived in bonds herself, and she had the soul of an artist.
+She knew what it is, for days together, to have barely an hour to one's own
+thoughts; never to step out alone of a summer night, after a long, hot,
+feverish day. She let me go with old Manuel, the head groom, as my escort.
+He was no more hindrance to solitude than a pine-tree or a post.
+
+"The reading and the music and the heat went on. I was in a fever of
+emotion such as I had never known. Fräulein perceived it. She recommended
+'My Religion' as an antidote to the romances. I did not want his religion.
+I wanted his men and women, his reading of the human soul, the largeness of
+incident, the sense of time and space, the intricacy of family life, the
+problems of race, the march of nations across the great world-canvas.
+
+"I rode--not alone, but with the high-strung beings that lived between the
+pages of my books: men and women who knew no curb, who stopped at nothing,
+and who paid the price of their passionate mistakes. Old Manuel, standing
+by the horses, looked strange to me. I spoke to him dramatically, as the
+women I read of would have spoken. Nothing could have added to or detracted
+from his own manner. He was of the old Spanish stock, but for the first
+time I saw his picturesqueness. I liked him to call me 'the Niña,' and
+address me in the third person with his eyes upon the ground.
+
+"All this was preparatory. It is part of my defense; but do not forget the
+heat, the imprisonment, the sense of relief when the sun went down, the
+wild, bounding rapture of those night rides.
+
+"One evening it was not Manuel who stood by the horses in the white track
+between the laurels. It was a figure as statuesque as his, but younger, and
+the pose was not that of a servant. It was the stand-at-ease of a soldier,
+or of an Indian wrapped in his blanket in the city square. This man was
+conscious of being looked at, but his training, of whatever sort, would not
+permit him to show it. Plainly the training had not been that of a groom.
+I was obliged to send him to the stables for his coat, and remind him that
+his place was behind. He took the hint good-humoredly, with the nonchalance
+of a big boy condescending to be taught the rules of some childish game. As
+we were riding through the woods later, I caught the scent of tobacco. It
+was my groom smoking. I told him he could not smoke and ride with me. He
+threw away his cigarette and straightened himself in the saddle with such
+a smile as he might have bestowed on the whims of a child. He obeyed me
+exactly in everything, with an exaggerated ironical precision, and seemed
+to find amusement in it. I questioned him about Manuel. He had gone to one
+of the lower ranches, would not be back for weeks. By whose orders was he
+attending me? By Manuel's, he said. He must then have had qualifications.
+
+"'What is one to call you?' I asked him.
+
+"He hesitated an instant. 'Jim is what I answer to around here,' said he.
+
+"'What is your _name_?' I repeated.
+
+"'The lady can call me anything she likes,'--he spoke in a low, lazy
+voice,--'but Dick Malaby is my name.'
+
+"We have better heroes now than the Cheyenne cowboys, but I felt as a girl
+to-day would feel if she discovered she had been telling one of the men of
+the Merrimac to ride behind!"
+
+"They would not need to be told," Mrs. Thorne interjected.
+
+"No, that is the difference; but discipline did not appeal to me then;
+recklessness did. Every man on the place had taken sides on the Wyoming
+question; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives among
+the victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with,
+not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, and
+all in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set,' as
+he would have called us.
+
+"I signed to him one evening to ride up. 'I want you to talk to me,' I
+said. 'Tell me about the cattle war.'
+
+"'Miss Benedet forgets--my place is behind.' He touched his hat and fell
+back again. Lesson for lesson--we were quits. I made no further attempt to
+corrupt my own pupil.
+
+"We rode in silence after that, but I was never without the sense of his
+ironical presence. I was conscious of showing off before him. I wished him
+to see that I could ride. Fences and ditches, rough or smooth, he never
+interfered with my wildest pace. I could not extract from him a look of
+surprise, far less the admiration that I wanted. What was a girl's riding
+to him? He knew a pace--all the paces--that I could never follow. I felt
+the absurdity of our mutual position, its utter artificiality, and how it
+must strike him.
+
+"In the absence of words between us, externals spoke with greater force.
+He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with a
+dare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physical
+mastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my silly
+freaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! That
+was the beginning. It lasted through a week of starlight and a week of
+moonlight--lyric nights with the hot, close days between; and each night
+an increasing interest attached to the moment when he was to put me on my
+horse. I make no apology for myself after that.
+
+"One evening we approached a gate at the farther end of our longest course,
+and the gate stood open. He rode on to close it. I stopped him. 'I am going
+out,' I said. It was a resolution taken that moment. He held up his watch
+to the light, which made me angry.
+
+"'Go back to the stables,' I said, 'if you are due there. _I_ don't want to
+know the time.'
+
+"He brought his horse alongside. 'Where is Miss Benedet going, please?'
+
+"'Anywhere,' I said, 'where it will be cool in the morning.'
+
+"'Miss Benedet will have a long ride. Does she wish for company?'
+
+"I did not answer. Something drove me forward, though I was afraid.
+
+"'Outside that gate,' he went on quietly, '_I_ shall set the pace, and I do
+not ride behind.' Still I did not answer. 'Is that the understanding?'
+
+"'Ride where you please,' I said.
+
+"After that he took command, not roughly or familiarly, but he no longer
+used the third person, as I had instructed him, in speaking to me. The
+first time he said 'you' it sent the blood to my face. We were far up the
+mountain then, and morning was upon us.
+
+"I wish to be definite here. From the moment I saw him plainly face to face
+the illusion was gone. Before, I had seen him by every light but daylight,
+and generally in profile. The profile is not the man. It is the plan in
+outline, but the eyes, the mouth, tell what he has made of himself. So
+attitude is not speech. As a shape in the moonlight he had been eloquent,
+but once at my side, talking with me naturally--I need not go on! From that
+moment our journey was to me a dream of horror, a series of frantic plans
+for escape.
+
+"All fugitives on the coast must put to sea. The Oakland ferry would
+have answered my purpose. I would never have been seen with him in the
+city--alive.
+
+"But at Colfax we met your husband. He knows--you know--the rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In thinking of the one who had first pitied her, pity for herself overcame
+her, and the proud penitent broke down.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Thorne sat in the shy silence of older persons who are past
+the age of demonstrative sympathy. The girl rose, and as she passed her
+hostess she put out her hand. Mrs. Thorne took it quickly and followed her.
+They found a seat by themselves in a dark corner of the porch.
+
+"Your poor, good husband--how tired he is! How patiently you have listened,
+and what does it all come to?"
+
+"Think of yourself, not of us," said Mrs. Thorne.
+
+"Oh, it's all over for me. I have had my fight. But you have _him_ to
+grieve for."
+
+"Shall you not grieve for him yourself a little?"
+
+The girl sat up quickly.
+
+"If you mean do I give him up without a struggle--I do not. But you need
+not say that to him. I told him that it was all a mistake; I did not--do
+not love him."
+
+"How could you say that"--
+
+"It was necessary. Without that I should have been leaving it to his
+generosity. Now it remains only to show him how little he has lost."
+
+"But could you not have done that without belying yourself? You do--surely
+you still care for him a little?"
+
+"Insatiate mother! Is there any other proof I can give?"
+
+"Your hand is icy cold."
+
+"And my face is burning hot. Good-night. May I say, 'Now let thy servant
+depart in peace'?"
+
+"I shall not know how to let you go to-morrow, and I do not see, myself,
+why you should go."
+
+"You will--after I am gone."
+
+"My dear, are you crying? I cannot see you. How cruel we have been, to sit
+and let you turn your life out for our inspection!"
+
+"It was a free exhibition! No one asked me, and I did not even come
+prepared, more than seven years' study of my own case has prepared me.
+
+"I was a child; but the fault was mine. I should have been allowed to
+suffer for it in the natural way. No good ever comes of skulking. But they
+hurried me off to Europe, and began a cowardly system of concealment. They
+made me almost forget my own misconduct in shame for the things they did by
+way of covering it up. My mother never took me in her arms and cried over
+my disgrace. She would not speak of it, or allow me to speak. Not a word
+nor an admission; the thing must be as though it had never been!
+
+"They ruined Dick Malaby with their hush-money. They might better have
+shot him, but that would have made talk. My father died with only servants
+around him. Mama could not go to him. She was too busy covering my retreat.
+Oh, she kept a gallant front! I admired her, I pitied her, but I loathed
+her policy. Does not every girl know when she has been dedicated to the
+great god Success, and what the end of success must be?
+
+"I told mama at last that if she would bring men to propose to me I should
+tell them the truth. Does Lord So-and-so wish to marry a girl who ran away
+with her father's groom? That was the breach between us. She has thrown
+herself into it. She is going to marry a title herself, not to let it go
+out of the family. Have you not heard of the engagement? She is to be a
+countess, and the property is controlled by her, so now I have an excuse
+for doing something."
+
+"My dear!" Mrs. Thorne took the girl's cold hands in hers. "Do you mean
+that you are not your father's heiress?"
+
+"Only by mama's last will and testament. We know what that would be if she
+made it now!"
+
+"It was _then_ you came home?"
+
+"It was then, when I learned that one of my rejected suitors was to become
+my father. He might be my grandfather. But let us not be vulgar!"
+
+"Aren't you girls going to bed to-night?" Mr. Thorne inquired, with his
+usual leaning toward peace and quietness. "You can't settle everything at
+one sitting."
+
+"Everything is settled, Mr. Thorne, and I am going to bed," said Miss
+Benedet.
+
+Mrs. Thorne did not release her hands. "I want to ask you one more
+question."
+
+"I know exactly what it is, and I will tell you to-morrow."
+
+"Tell me now; it is perfectly useless going to your room; the temperature
+over your bed is ninety-nine."
+
+"The question, then! Why did I allow your son to commit himself in
+ignorance?"
+
+"No, _no_!" Mrs. Thorne protested.
+
+"Yes, yes! You have asked that question, you must have. You are an angel,
+but you are a mother, too."
+
+"I have asked no questions since you began to tell your story; but I have
+wondered how Willy could have found courage, in one week, to offer himself
+to such gifts and possessions as yours."
+
+"A mother, and a worldly mother!" Miss Benedet apostrophized. "I did not
+look for such considerations from you. And you are troubled for the modesty
+of your son?"
+
+"My dear, he has nothing, and he is--of course we think him everything he
+should be--but he is not a handsome boy."
+
+"Thank Heaven he is not."
+
+"And he does not talk"--
+
+"About himself. No."
+
+"Ah, you do care for him! You understand him. You would"--
+
+Miss Benedet rose to her feet with decision.
+
+"You have not answered my question," the unconscionable mother pursued.
+"Does he know--is it known that you are not the great heiress your name
+would imply?"
+
+"Everything is known," said the girl. "You do not read your society column,
+I see. Six weeks ago you might have learned the fate of my father's
+millions."
+
+She stood by the balustrade and leaned out under the stars, taking a deep
+breath of the night's growing coolness. A rose-spray touched her face. She
+put it back, and a shower of dry, scented petals fell upon her breast and
+sleeve.
+
+"There is always one point in every true story," she said in a tired voice,
+"where explanations cease to explain. The mysteries claim their share in
+us, deny them as we will. I don't know why it was, but from the time I
+threw off all that bondage to society and struck out for myself, I felt
+made over. Life began again with life's realities. I came home to earn my
+bread, and on that footing I felt sane and clean and honest. The question
+became not what I am or was, but what could I do? I discussed the question
+with your son."
+
+"You discussed!"
+
+"We did, indeed. We went over the whole field. East and west we tested
+my accomplishments by the standards of those who want teachers for their
+children. I have gone rather further in music than anything else. Even
+Fräulein would hardly say now I lacked an outlet. I was working things off
+one evening on the piano--many things beyond the power of speech--the help
+of prayer, I might say. There were whispers about me already in the house."
+
+"What _do_ you mean?"
+
+"People talking--my mother's old friends. It was rather serious, as I had
+been thinking of their daughters for pupils. I thought I was alone, but
+your son--the 'boy' as you call him--was listening. He came and stood
+beside me. For a person who does not talk, he can make himself quite well
+understood. I tried to go on playing. My blinded eyes, the wrong notes,
+told him all. I lay and thought all night, and asked myself, why might I
+not be happy and give happiness, like other women of my age. I denied to
+my conscience that I was bound to tell him, since I was not, never had
+been, what that story in words would report me. Why should I affect a lie
+in order literally, vainly to be honest? So a day passed, and another
+sleepless night. And now I had his image of me to battle with. Then it
+became impossible, and yet more necessary, and each day's silence buried
+me deeper beyond the hope of speech. So I gave it up. Why should he have
+in his wife less than I would ask for in my husband? I want none of your
+experienced men. Such a record as his, such a look in the eyes, the
+expression unawares of a life of sustained effort--always in one
+direction"--
+
+A white arm in a black sleeve pointed upward in silence.
+
+"And you would rob him of his reward?" said the mother, in a choked voice.
+
+"Mrs. Thorne! Do you not understand me? I am not talking for effect. But
+this is what happens if one begins to explain. I did not come here to talk
+to you for the rest of my life! It was your sweetness that undid me. I will
+never again say what I think of parents in general."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Maggie, do you know what time it is?" a suppressed voice issued an hour
+later from that part of the house supposed to be dedicated to sleep. "Are
+you going to sit up till morning?"
+
+"I am looking for my letter," came the answer, in a tragic whisper.
+
+"What letter?"
+
+"My letter to Willy, that you wouldn't let me read to you last night."
+
+"You don't want to read it to me now, do you?"
+
+There was no reply. A careful step kept moving about the inner rooms,
+newspapers rustled, and small objects were lifted and set down.
+
+"Maggie, do come to bed! You can't mail your letter to-night."
+
+"I don't want to mail it. I want to burn it. I will not have it on my
+conscience a moment longer"--
+
+"I wish you'd have me on your conscience! It's after one o'clock." The
+voices were close together now, only an open door between the speakers.
+
+"Won't you put something on and come out here, Henry? There is a light in
+Ito's house. I suppose you wouldn't let me go out and ask him?"
+
+"I suppose not!"
+
+"Then won't you go and ask if he saw a letter on my desk, sealed and
+addressed?"
+
+Mr. Thorne sat up in bed disgustedly. "What is Ito doing with a light this
+time of night?"
+
+"Hush, dear; don't speak so loud. He's studying. He's preparing himself to
+go into the Japanese navy."
+
+"He is, is he! And that's why he can't get us our breakfast before
+half-past eight. I'll see about that light!"
+
+"The letter, the letter!" Mrs. Thorne prompted in a ghostly--whisper. "Ask
+him if he saw it on my desk--a square blue envelope, thin paper."
+
+The studious little cook was seated by a hot kerosene-lamp, at a table
+covered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. He
+was in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appeared
+to have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stood
+all ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked under Mr. Thorne's
+brusque examination.
+
+"I care fo' everything," he repeated, eliminating the consonants as he slid
+along. "Missa Tho'ne letta--all a-ready fo' mail--I putta pos'age-stamp,
+gifa to shif'-boss. I think Sa' F'a'cisco in a mo'ning. I care fo'
+everything!"
+
+"Ito cares for everything," Mr. Thorne quoted, in answer to his wife's
+haggard inquiries. "He stamped your letter and sent it to town yesterday by
+one of the day-shift men."
+
+"Now what shall be done!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed tragically.
+
+"I know what _I_ shall do!" Mr. Thorne wrapped his toga around him with
+an air of duty done. But a husband cannot escape so easily as that. His
+ministering angel sat beside his bed for half an hour longer, brooding
+aloud over the day's disaster, with a rigid eye upon the question of
+personal accountability.
+
+"If you had not stopped me, Henry, when I tried to confess about my letter!
+There's no time for the truth like the present."
+
+"My dear, when a person is telling a story you don't want to interrupt with
+quibbles of conscience; if it made it any easier for her to think us a
+little better than we are, why rob her of the delusion?"
+
+"I shall have to rob her of it to-morrow. To think of my sitting there, a
+whited sepulchre, and being called generous and forbearing and merciful,
+with that letter lying on my desk all the time!"
+
+"It would be lying there still except for an accident. She will see how you
+feel about it. Give her something to forgive in you. Depend upon it, she'll
+rise to the occasion."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the mother passed her guest's room next morning she paused and looked
+remorsefully at the closed door.
+
+"I ought to have told her that we never shut our doors. She must be
+smothered. I wonder if she can be asleep."
+
+Mr. Thorne went on into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisper
+as it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draft
+of air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. The
+sleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed,
+and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all the
+room there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted memory of the night's
+despairing heat. Mrs. Thorne stepped across the matting, and noiselessly
+bowed the shutters. A dash of spray from the lawn-sprinkler was spattering
+the sill, threatening to dampen a pile of dainty clothing laid upon a
+chair. She moved the chair, looked once more at the lovely dark-lashed
+sleeper, and left her again in peace.
+
+Beside her plate at the breakfast-table there was a great heap of roses,
+gathered that morning, her husband's usual greeting. She praised them as
+she always did, and then began to finger them over, choosing the finest to
+save for her guest. Rare as they were in kind, and opened that morning,
+there was not a perfect rose among them. Each one showed the touch of
+blight in bloom. Every petal, just unclosed and dewy at the core, was
+curled along the edges, scorched in the bud. It was not mildew or canker or
+disease, only "a touch of sun."
+
+"I won't give them to her," said the mother; "they are too like herself."
+
+She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself,
+according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbing
+him of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughed
+at the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day's
+actualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's loose
+outside."
+
+Everything was "loose" apparently. Something about a "hoist" had broken
+in the night, and the men were still at work without breakfast, an
+eighteen-hour shift. The order came for Ito to send out coffee and bread
+and fruit to the famished gang. Ito was in the lowest of spirits; had just
+given his mistress warning that he could not stay. The affair of the letter
+had wounded his susceptibilities; he must go where he would be better
+understood. All this in a soft, respectful undertone, his mistress trying
+to comfort him, and incidentally hasten his response to the requisition
+from outside. At eleven o'clock Mr. Thorne sent in a pencil message on a
+card: "I shall not be home to lunch. Does she want to get the 12:30 train?"
+Mrs. Thorne replied in the same manner, by bearer: "She did, but she is
+asleep. I don't like to wake her."
+
+The darkened house preserved its silence, a restless endurance of the
+growing heat. Mrs. Thorne, in the thinnest of morning gowns, her damp hair
+brushed back from her powdered temples, sat alone at luncheon. Ito had put
+a melancholy perfection into his last salad. It was his valedictory.
+
+She was about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room with
+her long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang,
+and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each felt
+at the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch of
+expression to meet again in the same emotional key.
+
+Miss Benedet looked at the clock, lifting her eyebrows wearily. "I have
+lost my train," she remarked, but added no reproaches. "Is there an evening
+train to the city?"
+
+"Not from here," Mrs. Thorne replied; "but we could send you over to Colfax
+to catch the night train from there. I hoped we could have you another
+day."
+
+"That would be impossible," said Miss Benedet; "but I shall be giving you a
+great deal of trouble."
+
+"Oh, no; it is only ten miles. Mr. Thorne will take you; we will both take
+you. It is a beautiful drive by moonlight through the woods. Was I wrong
+not to call you?"
+
+"If you were, you will be punished by having me on your hands this long,
+hot afternoon. I ought to have gone last night. When one has parted with
+the very last bit of one's self, one should make haste to remove the
+shell."
+
+"Then you would have left me with something remaining on my mind, something
+I must get rid of at once. Come, let us go where we cannot see each other's
+faces. I am deeply in the wrong concerning you."
+
+Mrs. Thorne went on incriminating herself so darkly in her preface that
+when she came to the actual offense her confessor smiled. "I am so
+relieved!" she exclaimed. "This is much more like real life. I felt you
+must be keeping something back, or, if not, I could never live up to such a
+pitch of generosity. I am glad you did not reach it all at once."
+
+"But what becomes of the truth--the story as it should have been told to
+Willy? Oh, I have sinned, for want of patience, of faith--not against you,
+dear, but my son!"
+
+After a silence Miss Benedet said, "Now for the heart of my own weakness.
+Suppose that I did have a hope. Suppose that I had laid the responsibility
+upon you, the parents, hoping that you would decide for happiness, mere
+happiness, without question of desert or blame. And suppose you had
+defended me to him. Would that have been best? Where then would be his
+cure? Now let us put away all cowardice, for him as well as for ourselves.
+Happiness for him could have but one foundation. You have told him the
+facts; if he cannot bear them as all the world knows them, that is his
+cure. I thank you. You knew where to put the knife."
+
+"Oh, but this is cruel!" said the mother. "I don't want to be your judge.
+You have had your punishment, and you took it like a queen. Now let us
+think of Willy!"
+
+"Please!" said the girl. "I cannot talk of this any more. We must stop
+sometime."
+
+The time of twilight came; the gasping house flung open doors and windows
+to the night. Mr. Thorne pursued his evening walk alone among the fruits
+and vegetables, counting his egg-plants, and marking the track of gophers
+in his rows of artichokes. The women were strolling toward the hill. Miss
+Benedet had put on a cloth skirt and stiff shirt-waist for her journey,
+and suffered from the change, but did not show it. Her beauty was not of
+the florid or melting order. Mrs. Thorne regarded her inconsolably, noting
+with distinct and separate pangs each item of her loveliness, as she
+moved serene and pale against the dark, resonant green of the pines. They
+followed a foot-path back among the trees to a small gate or door in the
+high boundary fence. Mrs. Thorne tried it to see if it were locked.
+
+"Willy used to live, almost, on this hill when he came out for his
+vacations." She spoke dreamily, as if thinking aloud. "He slept in that
+tent. It looks like a little ghost to me these nights in the moonlight, the
+curtains flap in such a lonely way. That gate was his back door through the
+woods to town. His wheel used to lean against this tree. I miss his fair
+head in the sun, and his white trousers springing up the hill. But one
+cannot keep one's boy forever. You have made him a man, my dear."
+
+The mother put out her hand timidly. She had ventured on forbidden ground
+once more. But she was not rebuffed. The girl's hand clasped hers and
+drew it around a slender waist, and they walked like two school friends
+together.
+
+"I cannot support the idea that you will never come again," mourned the
+elder. "It is years since I have known a girl like you--a girl who can say
+things. I can make no headway with girls in general. They are so big and
+silent and athletic. They wear pins and badges, and belong to more _things_
+than I have ever heard of!"
+
+Miss Benedet laughed. "I am silent, too, sometimes," she said.
+
+"But you are not dense!"
+
+"I'm afraid you go very much to extremes in your likes and dislikes, dear
+lady, and you are much younger than I, you know."
+
+"I am quite aware of that," said Mrs. Thorne. "You have had seven years of
+Europe to my twenty of Cathay."
+
+"Dear Cathay!" the girl murmured, with moist eyes; "I could live in this
+place forever."
+
+"Where have you lived? Tell me in how many cities of the world."
+
+"Oh, we never lived. We stayed in places for one reason or another. We were
+two years in Vienna. I worked there. I was a pupil of Leschetizky."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Did I not tell you? I can play a little."
+
+"A little! What does that exactly mean?"
+
+"It means too much for drawing-room music, and not enough for the stage."
+
+"You are not thinking of that, are you?"
+
+"Why that voice of scorn? Have I hit upon one of your prejudices?"
+
+"I am dreadfully old-fashioned about some things--publicity, for instance."
+
+"It depends upon the kind, doesn't it? But you will never hear of me on
+the concert stage. Leschetizky says I have not the poise I might have had.
+He is very clever. There was a shock, he says, to the nerve centres. They
+will never again be quite under control. It is true. At this moment I am
+shivering within me because I must say good-by to one I might have had all
+my life for a friend. Is it so?"
+
+"My dear, if you mean me, I love you!"
+
+"Call me Helen, then. You said 'my dear' before you knew me."
+
+"Before I meant it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder who can be arriving. That is the carriage I came out in last
+night."
+
+A light surrey with two seats passed below the hill, and was visible an
+instant against a belt of sky.
+
+"It is going to stop," said Mrs. Thorne. "Suppose we step back a little. I
+shall not see visitors to-night. Very likely it is only some one for Mr.
+Thorne."
+
+A tall young man in traveling clothes stepped out upon the horse-block,
+left his luggage there, and made ten strides up the walk. They heard his
+step exploring the empty piazzas.
+
+"It is Willy!" said Mrs. Thorne in a staccato whisper.
+
+"Then good-by!" said Miss Benedet. "I will find Mr. Thorne in the garden.
+Dearest Mrs. Thorne, you must let me go!"
+
+"You will not see him? Not see Willy!"
+
+"Not for worlds. He must not know that I am here. I trust you." She tore
+herself away.
+
+Mrs. Thorne stood paralyzed between the two--her advancing son, and her
+fleeing guest.
+
+"Willy!" she cried.
+
+Her tall boy was bending over her--once more the high, fair head, the
+smooth arch of the neck, which she could barely reach to put her arms about
+it.
+
+"Mother!" The word in his grave man's voice thrilled her as once had the
+touch of his baby hands.
+
+"I am afraid to look at you, my son. How is it with you?"
+
+"I am all right, mother. How are things here?"
+
+"Oh, don't speak of us! Did you get my letter?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"And you read it, Willy?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+There was a silence. Mrs. Thorne clasped her son's arm and leaned her head
+against it.
+
+"I am sorry you worried so, mother."
+
+"What does it matter about me?"
+
+"I am sorry you took it so hard--because--I knew it all the time."
+
+"You knew it! What do you mean?"
+
+"A nice old lady told me. She was staying in the house. She cornered me and
+told me a long story--the day after I met Miss Benedet."
+
+"What an infamous old woman!"
+
+"She called herself a friend of yours--warned me for your sake, she said,
+and because she has sons of her own."
+
+"Oh! Has she daughters?"
+
+"Two--staying in the house."
+
+"I see. She told it brutally, I suppose?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Worse than I did, Willy?"
+
+William the Silent held his peace.
+
+"You did not believe it? How much of it did you believe?"
+
+"Mother," he said, "do you think a man can't see what a girl is?"
+
+"But what do you know about girls?"
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Where is Helen? The man from Lord's said he brought her out here last
+night."
+
+"Did you not get her letter?" Mrs. Thorne evaded.
+
+"Where shall I find her?"
+
+"Willy, I am a perjured woman! I have been making mischief steadily for two
+days."
+
+"You might as well go on, mater." Willy beamed gravely upon his mother's
+career of dissimulation.
+
+"Don't, for pity's sake, be hopeful! She said she would not see you for
+worlds."
+
+"Then she hasn't gone."
+
+Willy took a quick survey of the premises. He had long gray eyes and a set
+mouth. He saw most things that he looked at, and when he aimed for a thing
+he usually got somewhere near the mark.
+
+"She is not in the house," he decided; "she is not on the hill--remains the
+garden."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Thorne stood alone, meditating on Miss Benedet's trust in her. She saw
+her husband, her stool of repentance and her mercy-seat in one, plodding
+toward her contentedly across the soft garden ground, stepping between the
+lettuces and avoiding the parsley bed. He knocked off a huge fat kitchen
+weed with his cane.
+
+"Where is that girl?" he said. "It's time you got your things on. We ought
+to be starting in ten minutes."
+
+"If you can find Willy you'll probably find 'that girl'!" Mrs. Thorne
+explained, and then proceeded to explain further, as she walked with her
+husband back to the house.
+
+"Well," he summed up, "what is your opinion of the universe up to date? Got
+any faith in anything left?"
+
+
+
+
+THE MAID'S PROGRESS
+
+
+From the great plateau of the Snake River, at a point that is far from any
+main station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might have
+scooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot.
+Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheel
+tracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaring
+and troubling above.
+
+One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, with
+camp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into this
+hollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand.
+The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place.
+
+"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man beside
+him. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on the
+back seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and a
+veiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision of
+their fellow travelers.
+
+"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it," the teamster urged on the
+point in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would have
+made a clean-up of them."
+
+"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim
+Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front,
+who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face
+and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,--eyes that saw
+everything and told nothing.
+
+"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney about
+it," he said.
+
+Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with the
+road, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country;
+but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowance
+the testimony of any one man of merely local information.
+
+"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself,
+since the stage was pulled off. What was here then wouldn't be here
+now--not if it could be eat up or burnt up."
+
+"So you think this is the place?" the old gentleman repeated. His face was
+quite pale; he looked about him shrinkingly, with a latent, apprehensive
+excitement strangely out of keeping with the void stillness of the
+hollow,--a spot which seemed to claim as little on the score of human
+interest or association as any they had passed on their long road hither.
+
+"Well, it's just this way, Mr. Withers: here's the holler, and here's the
+stomped place where the sheep have camped, and the cattle trails getherin'
+from everywheres to the water, and the young rabbit brush that's sprung up
+since the plains was burnt over. If this ain't Pilgrim Station, we're lost
+pilgrims ourselves, I guess. We hain't passed it; it's time we come to it,
+and there ain't no road but this. As I put it up, this here has got to be
+the place."
+
+"I believe you, Mr. Kinney," the old man solemnly confirmed him. "Something
+tells me that this is the spot. I might almost say," he added in a lower
+tone to his companion, while a slight shiver passed over him in the hot
+sunlight, "that a voice cries to us from the ground!"
+
+Those in front had not heard him. After a pause Mr. Thane looked round
+again, smiled tentatively, and said, "Well?"
+
+"Well, Daphne, my dear, hadn't we better get out?" Mr. Withers conjoined.
+
+She who answered to this pretty pagan name did so mutely by rising in
+her place. The wind had moulded her light-colored veil close to her
+half-defined features, to the outline of her cheeks and low-knotted hair;
+her form, which was youthful and slender, was swathed in a clinging
+raw-silk dust-cloak. As she stood, hesitating before summoning her cramped
+limbs to her service, she might have suggested some half-evolved conception
+of doubting young womanhood emerging from the sculptor's clay. Personality,
+as yet, she had none; but all that could be seen of her was pure feminine.
+
+Thane reached the side of the wagon before the veiled young woman could
+attempt to jump. She freed her skirts, stepped on the brake bar, and
+stooping, with his support made a successful spring to the ground. Mr.
+Withers climbed out more cautiously, keeping his hand on Thane's arm for
+a few steps through the heavy sand. Thane left his fellow pilgrims to
+themselves apart, and returned to help the teamster take out the horses.
+
+"It looks queer to me," Mr. Kinney remarked, "that folks should want to
+come so far on purpose to harrer up their feelin's all over again. It ain't
+as if the young man was buried here, nor as if they was goin' to mark the
+spot with one of them Catholic crosses like you see down in Mexico, where
+blood's been spilt by the roadside. But just to set here and think about
+it, and chaw on a mis'able thing that happened two years and more ago!
+Lord! I wouldn't want to, and I ain't his father nor yet his girl. Would
+you?"
+
+"Hardly," said Thane. "Still, if you felt about it as Mr. Withers does,
+you'd put yourself in the place of the dead, not the living; and he has a
+reason for coming, besides. I haven't spoken of it, because I doubt if the
+thing is feasible. He wants to see whether the water, of the spring can be
+brought into the hollow here--piped, to feed a permanent drinking trough
+and fountain. Good for evil, you see--the soft answer."
+
+"Well, that's business! That gits down where a man lives. His cattle kin
+come in on that, too. There's more in that, to my mind, than in a bare
+wooden cross. Pity there won't be more teamin' on this road. Now the stage
+has hauled off, I don't expect as many as three outfits a year will water
+at that fountain, excusin' the sheep, and they'll walk over it and into it,
+and gorm up the whole place."
+
+"Well, the idea has been a great comfort to Mr. Withers, but it's not
+likely anything more will ever come of it. From all we hear, the spring
+would have to run up hill to reach this hollow; but you won't speak of it,
+will you, till we know?"
+
+"Gosh, no! But water might be struck higher up the gulch--might sink a
+trench and cut off the spring."
+
+"That would depend on the source," said Thane, "and on how much the old
+gentleman is willing to stand; the fountain alone, by the time you haul the
+stone here, will foot up pretty well into the thousands. But we'll see."
+
+"Hadn't you better stay round here with them till I git back?" Kinney
+suggested; for Thane had taken the empty canteens from the wagon, and
+was preparing to go with him to the spring. "You kin do your prospectin'
+later."
+
+"They would rather be by themselves, I think," said Thane. But seeing Mr.
+Withers coming towards him, as if to speak, he turned back to meet him.
+
+"You are going now to look for the spring, are you not?" the old gentleman
+asked, in his courteous, dependent manner.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Withers. Is there anything I can do for you first?"
+
+"Nothing, I thank you." The old gentleman looked at him half expectantly,
+but Thane was not equal, in words, to the occasion. "This is the place, Mr.
+Thane," he cadenced, in his measured, clerical tones. "This is the spot
+that last saw my dear boy alive,--that witnessed his agony and death."
+He extended a white, thin, and now shaking hand, which Thane grasped,
+uncovering his head. Mr. Withers raised his left hand; his pale eyes
+blinked in the sunlight; they were dim with tears.
+
+"In memory of John Withers," he pronounced, "foully robbed of life in this
+lonely spot, we three are gathered here,--his friend, his father, and his
+bride that should have been." Thane's eyes were on the ground, but he
+silently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guide
+as we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgive
+as we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thou
+knowest it is hard."
+
+"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, each
+leading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by its
+strap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers the
+first rising ground to riverward of the hollow. "Thought he seemed to be
+makin' a prayer or askin' a blessin' or somethin', when he had holt of you
+there by the flipper; kind of embarrassin', wa'n't it?"
+
+"That's as one looks at it," said Thane. "Mr. Withers is a clergyman; his
+manner may be partly professional, but he strikes one as always sincere.
+And he hasn't a particle of self-consciousness where his grief for his
+son is concerned. I don't know that he has about anything. He calls on
+his Maker just as naturally as you and I, perhaps, might take his name in
+vain."
+
+"No, sir! I've quit that," Mr. Kinney objected. "I drawed the line there
+some years ago, on account of my wife, the way she felt about it, and the
+children growin' up. I quit when I was workin' round home, and now I don't
+seem to miss it none. I git along jest as well. Course I have to cuss
+a little sometimes. But I liked the way you listened to the old man's
+warblin'. Because talkin' is a man's trade, it ain't to say he hasn't got
+his feelin's."
+
+As the hill cut off sounds of retreating voices and horseshoes clinking
+on the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon the
+hollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil,
+and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteady
+hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled
+suggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as he
+had hopes; afterwards--but even then it was a matter of temperament. There
+were those who remembered it all the more keenly for its daring deviations
+and provoking shortcomings.
+
+It could not have been said of Daphne that her grief was without
+self-consciousness. Still, much of her constraint and unevenness of manner
+might have been set down to the circumstances of her present position. Why
+she should have placed herself, or have allowed her friends to place her,
+in an attitude of such unhappy publicity Thane had asked himself many
+times, and the question angered him as often as it came up. He could only
+refer it to the singularly unprogressive ideas of the Far West peculiar to
+Far Eastern people. Apparently they had thought that, barring a friend or
+two of Jack's, they would be as much alone with their tragic memories in
+the capital city of Idaho as at this abandoned stage-station in the desert
+where their pilgrimage had ended. They had not found it quite the same.
+Daphne could, and probably did, read of herself in the "Silver Standard,"
+Sunday edition, which treats of social events, heralded among the prominent
+arrivals as "Jack Withers's maiden widow." This was a poetical flight of
+the city reporter. Thane had smiled at the phrase, but that was before he
+had seen Daphne; since then, whenever he thought of it, he pined for a
+suitable occasion for punching the reporter's head. There had been more of
+his language; the paper had given liberally of its space to celebrate this
+interesting advent of the maiden widow with her uncle, "the Rev. Withers,"
+as the reporter styled him, "father of the lamented young man whose
+shocking murder, two years ago, at Pilgrim Station, on the eve of his
+return to home and happiness, cast such a gloom over our community, in
+which the victim of the barbarous deed had none but devoted friends and
+admirers. It is to be hoped that the reverend gentleman and the bereaved
+young lady, his companion on this sad journey, will meet with every mark of
+attention and respect which it is in the power of our citizens to bestow,
+during their stay among us."
+
+Now, in the dead, hot stillness, they two alone at last, Daphne sat beside
+her uncle in the place of their solemn tryst; and more than ever her
+excitement and unrest were manifest, in contrast to his mild and chastened
+melancholy. She started violently as his voice broke the silence in a
+measured, musing monotone:
+
+  "'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray
+  For the poor soul of Sibyl Grey,
+  Who built this cross and well.'
+
+"These lines," he continued in his ordinary prose accent, "gave me my first
+suggestion of a cross and well at Pilgrim Station, aided, perhaps, by the
+name itself, so singularly appropriate; not at all consistent, Mr. Thane
+tells me, with the usual haphazard nomenclature of this region. However,
+this is the old Oregon emigrant trail, and in the early forties men of
+education and Christian sentiment were pioneers on this road. But now that
+I see the place and the country round it, I find the Middle Ages are not
+old enough to borrow from. We must go back, away back of chivalry and
+monkish superstition, to the life-giving pools of that country where the
+story of man began; where water, in the language of its people, was justly
+made the symbol of their highest spiritual as well as physical needs and
+cravings. 'And David longed, and said, Oh, that one would give me drink
+of the water of the well of Beth-lehem, that is at the gate!' It is a far
+cry here to any gate but the gate of sunset, which we have been traveling
+against from morning to evening since our journey began, yet never
+approaching any nearer. But this, nevertheless, is the country of David's
+well,--a dry, elevated plain, surrounded by mountains strangely gashed
+and riven and written all over in Nature's characters, but except for the
+speech of a wandering, unlettered people, dumb as to the deeds of man. Mr.
+Thane tells me that if the wells on this road were as many as the deaths
+by violence have been, we might be pasturing our horses in green fields at
+night, instead of increasing their load with the weight of their food as
+well as our own. Yes, it is a 'desolate land and lone;' and if we build our
+fountain, according to my first intention, in the form of a cross, blessing
+and shadowing the water, it must be a rude and massive one, such as humble
+shepherds or herdsmen might accidentally have fashioned in the dark days
+before its power and significance were known. It will be all the more
+enduring, and the text shall be"--
+
+"Uncle," cried Daphne in a smothered voice, "never mind the text! _I_ am
+your text! Listen to me! If your cross stood there now, here is the one
+who should be in the dust before it!" She pressed her open hand upon her
+breast.
+
+The gesture, her emphasis, the extreme figure of speech she had used, were
+repellent to Mr. Withers over and above his amazement at her words. As he
+had not been observing her, he was totally unprepared for such an outburst.
+
+"Daphne, my dear! Do I understand you? I cannot conceive"--
+
+But Daphne could not wait for her meaning to sink in. "Uncle John," she
+interrupted, taking a quick breath of resolution, "I have read somewhere
+that if a woman is dishonest, deep down, deliberately a hypocrite, she
+ought to be gently and mercifully killed; a woman not honest had better not
+be alive. Uncle, I have something to say to you about myself. Gently and
+mercifully listen to me, for it ought to kill me to say it!"
+
+Mr. Withers turned apprehensively, and was startled by the expression of
+Daphne's face. She was undoubtedly in earnest. He grew quite pale. "Not
+here, my dear," he entreated; "not now. Let our thoughts be single for
+this one hour that we shall be alone together. Let it wait for a little,
+this woeful confession. I think you probably exaggerate your need of
+it, as young souls are apt to who have not learned to bear the pain
+of self-knowledge, or self-reproach without knowledge. Let us forget
+ourselves, and think of our beloved dead."
+
+"Uncle, it must be here and now. I cannot go away from this place a liar,
+as I came. Let me leave it here,--my cowardly, contemptible falsehood,--in
+this place of your cross. I am longing, like David, for that water they
+have gone to find, but I will not drink at Pilgrim Station, except with
+clean lips that have confessed and told you all."
+
+Mr. Withers shrank from these unrestrained and to him indecorous statements
+of feeling; they shocked him almost as much as would the spectacle of
+Daphne mutilating her beautiful hair, casting dust upon her head, and
+rending her garments before him. He believed that her trouble of soul was
+genuine, but his Puritan reserve in matters of conscience, his scholarly
+taste, his jealousy for the occasion which had brought them to that spot,
+all combined to make this unrestrained expression of it offensive to him.
+However, he no longer tried to repress her.
+
+"Uncle, you don't believe me," she said; "but you must. I am quite myself."
+
+"Except for the prolonged nervous strain you have been suffering; and I
+am afraid I have not known how to spare you as I might the fatigue, the
+altitude perhaps, the long journey face to face with these cruel memories.
+But I will not press it, I will not press it," he concluded hastily, seeing
+that his words distressed her.
+
+"Press it all you can," she said. "I wish you could press it hard enough
+for me to feel it; but I feel nothing--I am a stone. At this moment," she
+reiterated, "I have no feeling of any kind but shame for myself that I
+should be here at all. Oh, if you only knew what I am!"
+
+"It is not what you are, it is who you are, that brings you here, Daphne."
+
+"Yes, who I am! Who am I? What right had I to come here? I never loved him.
+I never was engaged to him, but I let you think so. When you wrote me that
+sweet letter and called me your daughter, why didn't I tell you the truth?
+Because in that same letter you offered me his money--and--and I wanted the
+money. I lied to you then, when you were in the first of your grief, to
+get his money! I have been trying to live up to that He ever since. It has
+almost killed me; it has killed every bit of truth and decent womanly pride
+in me. I want you to save me from it before I grow any worse. You must take
+back the money. It did one good thing: it paid those selfish debts of mine,
+and it made mother well. What has been spent I will work for and pay back
+as I can. But I love _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there."
+
+"This is the language of sheer insanity, Daphne, of mental excitement that
+passes reason." Mr. Withers spoke in a carefully controlled but quivering
+voice--as a man who has been struck an unexpected and staggering blow,
+but considering the quarter it came from, is prepared to treat it as an
+accident. "The facts, John's own words in his last letter to me, cannot be
+gainsaid. 'I am coming home to you, dad, and to whom else I need not say.
+You know that I have never changed, but she has changed, God bless her!
+How well He made them, to be our thorn, our spur, our punishment, our
+prevention, and sometimes our cure! I am coming home to be cured,' he said.
+You have not forgotten the words of that letter, dear? I sent it to you,
+but first--I thought you would not mind--I copied those, his last words.
+They were words of such happiness; and they implied a thought, at least, of
+his Creator, if not that grounded faith"--
+
+"They were hopes, only hopes!" the girl remorsefully disclaimed. "I allowed
+him to have them because I wanted time to make up my wretched, selfish
+mind. I had never made him a single promise, never said one word that could
+give me the right to pose as I did afterwards, to let myself be grieved
+over as if I had lost my last hope on earth. I had his money all safe
+enough."
+
+"Daphne, I forbid you to speak in that tone! There are bounds even to
+confession. If you think well to degrade yourself by such allusions, do not
+degrade me by forcing me to listen to you. This is a subject too sacred to
+be discussed in its mercenary bearings; settle that question with yourself
+as you will, but let me hear no more of it."
+
+Daphne was silenced; for the first time in her remembrance of him she had
+seen her uncle driven to positive severity, to anger even, in opposition to
+the truth which his heart refused to accept. When he was calmer he began to
+reason with her, to uphold her in the true faith, against her seeming self,
+in these profane and ruthless disclosures.
+
+"You are morbid," he declared, "oversensitive, from dwelling too long on
+this painful chapter of your life. No one knows better than myself what
+disorders of the imagination may result from a mood of the soul, a passing
+mood,--the pains of growth, perhaps. You are a woman now; but let the
+woman not be too hard upon the girl that she was. After what you have been
+through quite lately, and for two years past, I pronounce you mentally
+unfit to cope with your own condition. Say that you did not promise him in
+words; the promise was given no less in spirit. How else could he have been
+so exaltedly sure? He never was before. You had never before, I think,
+given him any grounds for hope?"
+
+"No; I was always honest before," said Daphne humbly. "When I first refused
+him, when we were both such children, and he went away, I promised to
+answer his letters if he would let _that_ subject rest. And so I did. But
+every now and then he would try me again, to see if I had changed, and that
+letter I would not answer; and presently he would write again, in his usual
+way. As often as he brought up the old question, just so often I stopped
+writing; silence was always my answer, till that last winter, when I made
+my final attempt to do something with my painting and failed so miserably.
+You don't know, uncle, how hard I have worked, or what it cost me to
+fail,--to have to own that all had been wasted: my three expensive winters
+in Boston, my cutting loose from all the little home duties, in the hope of
+doing something great that would pay for all. And that last winter I did
+not make my expenses, even. After borrowing every cent that mother could
+spare (more than she ought to have spared; it was doing without a girl
+that broke her down) and denying myself, or denying her, my home visit at
+Christmas; and setting up in a studio of my own, and taking pains to have
+all the surroundings that are said to bring success,--and then, after all,
+to fail, and fail, and fail! And spring came, and mother looked so ill, and
+the doctor said she must have rest, total rest and change; and he looked at
+me as if he would like to say, 'You did it!' Well, the 'rest' I brought her
+was my debts and my failure and remorse; and I wasn't even in good health,
+I was so used up with my winter's struggle. It was then, in the midst of
+all that trouble and shame and horror at myself, his sweet letter came. No,
+not sweet, but manly and generous,--utterly generous, as he always was. I
+ought to have loved him, uncle dear; I always knew it, and I did try very
+hard! He did not feel his way this time, but just poured out his whole
+heart once for all; I knew he would never ask me again. And then the fatal
+word; he said he had grown rich. He could give me the opportunities my
+nature demanded. You know how he would talk. He believed in me, if nobody
+else ever did; I could not have convinced him that I was a failure.
+
+"It was very soothing to my wounds. I was absolutely shaken by the
+temptation. It meant so much; such a refuge from self-contempt and poverty
+and blame, and such rest and comfort it would bring to mother! I hope that
+had something to do with it. You see I am looking for a loophole to crawl
+out of; I haven't strength of mind to face it without some excuse. Well, I
+answered that letter; and I think the evil one himself must have helped me,
+for I wrote it, my first careful, deliberate piece of double-dealing, just
+as easily as if I had been practicing for it all my life. It was such a
+letter as any man would have thought meant everything; yet if I had wanted,
+I could have proved by the words themselves that it meant nothing that
+couldn't be taken back.
+
+"I said to myself, If I can stand it, if I can hold out as I feel now, I
+will marry him; then let come what may. I knew that some things would come,
+some things that I wanted very much.
+
+"Then came the strange delay, the silence, the wretched telegrams and
+letters back and forth. Ah, dear, do I make you cry? Don't cry for him; you
+have not lost him. Cry for me, the girl you thought was good and pure and
+true! You know what I did then, when your dear letter came, giving me all
+he had, calling me your daughter, all that was left you of John! I deceived
+you in your grief, hating myself and loving you all the time. And here I
+am, in this place! Do you wonder I had to speak?"
+
+"Your words are literally as blows to me, Daphne," Mr. Withers groaned,
+covering his face. After a while he said, "All I have in the world would
+have been yours and your mother's had you come to me, or had I suspected
+the trouble you were in. I ought to have been more observant. My
+prepossessions must be very strong; doubtless some of the readier faculties
+have been left out in my mental constitution. I hear you say these words,
+but even now they are losing their meaning for me. I can see that your
+distress is genuine, and I must suppose that you have referred it to its
+proper cause; but I cannot master the fact itself. You must give me time to
+realize it. This takes much out of life for me."
+
+"Not my love for _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there."
+
+"You could not have spared yourself and me this confession?" the old man
+queried. "But no, God forgive me! You must have suffered grievous things in
+your young conscience, my dear; this was an ugly spot to hide. But now you
+have fought your fight and won it, at the foot of the cross. To say that
+I forgive you, that we both, the living and the dead, forgive you, is the
+very least that can be said. Come here! Come and be my daughter as before!
+My daughter!" he repeated. And Daphne, on her knees, put her arms about his
+neck and hid her face against him.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" he murmured brokenly, "it cannot hurt him now. He has found
+his 'cure.' As a candle-flame in this broad sunlight, so all those earthly
+longings"--The old gentleman could not finish his sentence, though a
+sentence was dear to him almost as the truth from which, even in his love
+of verbiage, his speech never deviated. "So we leave it here," he said at
+last. "It is between us and our blessed dead. No one else need know what
+you have had the courage to tell me. Your confession concerns no other
+living soul, unless it be your mother, and I see no reason why her heart
+should be perturbed. As for the money, what need have I for more than
+my present sufficiency, which is far beyond the measure of my efforts
+or deserts? I beg you never to recur to the subject, unless you would
+purposely wish to wound me. This is a question of conscience purely, and
+you have made yours clean. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"Yes," said Daphne faintly.
+
+"What is the residue? Or is it only the troubled waters still heaving?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps so."
+
+"Well, the peace will come. Promise me, dear, that you will let it come. Do
+not give yourself the pain and humiliation of repeating to any other person
+this miserable story of your fault."
+
+"It was more than a fault; you know that, uncle. Your conscience could not
+have borne it for an hour."
+
+"Your sin, then. A habit of confession is debilitating and dangerous. God
+has heard you, and I, who alone in this world could have the right to
+reproach you, have said to you, Go in peace. Peace let it be, and silence,
+which is the safest seal of a true confession."
+
+"Do you mean that I am never to let myself be known as I am?" asked Daphne.
+Her face had changed; it wore a look of fright and resistance. "Why,
+that would mean that I am never to unmask; to go about all my life in my
+trappings of false widowhood. You read what that paper called me! I cannot
+play the part any longer."
+
+"Are you speaking with reference to these strangers? But this will soon be
+over, dear. We shall soon be at home, where no one thinks of us except as
+they have known us all their lives. It will be painful for a little while,
+this conspicuousness; but these good people will soon pass out of our
+lives, and we out of theirs. Idle speculation will have little to do with
+us, after this."
+
+"There will be always speculation," implored the girl. "It will follow me
+wherever I go, and all my life I shall be in bondage to this wretched
+lie. Take back the money, uncle, and give me the price I paid for it,--my
+freedom, myself as I was before I was tempted!"
+
+"Ah, if that could be!" said the old gentleman. "Is it my poor boy's memory
+that burdens you so? Is it that which you would be freed from?"
+
+"From doing false homage to his memory," Daphne pleaded. "I could have
+grieved for him, if I could have been honest; as it is, I am in danger
+almost of hating him. Forgive me, uncle, but I am! How do you suppose I
+feel when voices are lowered and eyes cast down, not to intrude upon my
+'peculiar, privileged grief? 'Here I and Sorrow sit!' Isn't it awful,
+uncle? Isn't it ghastly, indecent? I am afraid some day I shall break out
+and do some dreadful thing,--laugh or say something shocking, when they try
+to spare my feelings. Feelings! when my heart is as hard, this moment, to
+everything but myself, myself! I am so sick of myself! But how can I help
+thinking about myself when I can never for one moment _be_ myself?"
+
+"This is something that goes deeper," said Mr. Withers. "I confess it is
+difficult for me to follow you here; to understand how a love as meek as
+that of the dead, who ask nothing, could lay such deadly weights upon a
+young girl's life."
+
+"Not his love--mine, mine! Is it truly in his grave? If it is not, why do I
+dare to profess daily that it is, to go on lying every day? I want back
+my word, that I never gave to any man. Can't one repent and confess a
+falsehood? And do you call it confessing, when all but one person in the
+world are still deceived?"
+
+"It is not easy for me to advise you, Daphne," said Mr. Withers wearily.
+"Your struggle has discovered to me a weakness of my own: verily, an old
+man's fond jealousy for the memory of his son. Almost I could stoop to
+entreat you. I do entreat you! So long as we defraud no one else, so long
+as there is no living person who might justly claim to know your heart, why
+rob my poor boy's grave of the grace your love bestows, even the semblance
+that it was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute,
+we will say," the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rude
+hand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessary
+harshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresisting
+dead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Fling
+away even his memory, that casts so thin a shade upon your life, a faint
+morning shadow that will shrink as your sun climbs higher. By degrees you
+will be free. And, speaking less selfishly, would there not be a certain
+indelicacy in reopening now the question of your past relations to one
+whose name is very seldom spoken? Others may not be thinking so much
+of your loss--your supposed loss," the old gentleman conscientiously
+supplied--"as your sensitiveness leads you to imagine. But you will give
+occasion for thinking and for talking if you tear open now your girlhood's
+secrets. Whom does it concern, my dear, to know where or how your heart is
+bestowed?"
+
+Daphne's cheeks and brow were burning hot; even her little ears were
+scarlet. Her eyes filled and drooped. "It is only right," she owned. "It is
+my natural punishment."
+
+"No, no; I would not punish nor judge you. I love you too well. But I know
+better than you can what a safeguard this will be,--this disguise which is
+no longer a deception, since the one it was meant to deceive knows all and
+forgives it. It will rebuke the bold and hasty pretenders to a treasure you
+cannot safely part with, even by your own gift, as yet. You are still very
+young in some ways, my dear."
+
+"I am old enough," said Daphne, "to have learned one fearful lesson."
+
+"Do I oppress you with my view? Do I insist too much?"
+
+Perhaps nothing could have lowered the girl in her own eyes more than
+this humility of the gentle old man in the face of his own self-exposed
+weakness, his pathetic jealousy for that self above self,---the child
+one can do no more than grieve for this side the grave. She had come to
+herself only to face the consciousness of a secret motive which robbed
+her confession of all moral value. Repentance, that would annul her base
+bargain now that the costs began to outweigh the advantages, was gilt
+edged, was a luxury; she was ashamed to buy back her freedom on such terms.
+
+"Let it be as you say," she assented; "but only because you ask it. It will
+not be wrong, will it, if I do it for you?"
+
+"I hope not," returned Mr. Withers. "The motive, in a silence of this kind
+that can harm no one, must make a difference, I should say."
+
+So it was settled; and Daphne felt the weight of her promise, which the
+irony of justice had fastened upon her, as a millstone round her neck
+for life; she was still young enough to think that whatever is must
+last forever. They sat in silence, but neither felt that the other was
+satisfied. Mr. Withers knew that Daphne was not lightened of her trouble,
+nor was he in his heart content with the point he had gained. The unwonted
+touch of self-assertion it had called for rested uneasily on him; and he
+could not but own that he had made himself Daphne's apologist, which no
+confessor ought to be, in this disguise by which he named the deception he
+was now helping her to maintain.
+
+After a time, when Daphne had called his attention to the fact, he agreed
+that it was indeed strange their companions did not return; they had been
+gone an hour or more to find a spring said to be not half a mile away.
+
+Daphne proposed to climb the grade and see if they were yet in sight, Mr.
+Withers consenting. Indeed, under the stress of his thoughts, her absence
+was a sensible relief.
+
+From the hilltop looking down she could see the way they had gone; the
+crooked gulch, a garment's crease in the great lap of the table-land,
+sinking to the river. She saw no one, heard no sound but the senseless
+hurry and bluster of the winds,--coming from no one knew where, going none
+cared whither. It blew a gale in the bright sunlight, mocking her efforts
+to listen. She waved her hand to her uncle's lone figure in the hollow, to
+signify that she was going down on the other side. He assented, supposing
+she had seen their fellow travelers returning.
+
+She had been out of sight some moments, long enough for Mr. Withers to have
+lapsed into his habit of absent musing, when Thane came rattling down the
+slope of the opposite hill, surprised to see the old gentleman alone. His
+long, black eyes went searching everywhere while he reported a fruitless
+quest for the spring. Kinney and he had followed the gulch, which showed
+nowhere a vestige of water, save in the path of the spring freshets, until
+they had come in sight of the river; and Kinney had taken the horses on
+down to drink, riding one and leading the other. It would be nearly three
+miles to the river from where Thane had left him, but that was where all
+the deceptive cattle trails were tending. Thane, returning, had made a loop
+of his track around the hollow, but had failed to round up any spring.
+Hence, as he informed Mr. Withers, this could not be Pilgrim Station. He
+made no attempt to express his chagrin at this cruel and unseemly blunder.
+The old gentleman accepted it with his usual uncomplaining deference to
+circumstances; still, it was jarring to nerves overstrained and bruised
+by the home thrust of Daphne's defection. He fell silent and drew within
+himself, not reproachfully, but sensitively. Thane rightly surmised that
+no second invocation would be offered when they should come to the true
+Pilgrim Station; the old gentleman would keep his threnodies to himself
+after this.
+
+It would have been noticeable to any less celestial-minded observer than
+Mr. Withers the diffidence with which Thane, in asking after Miss Daphne
+Lewis, pronounced that young person's name. He did not wait for the old
+gentleman to finish his explanation of her absence, but having learned the
+way she had gone, dropped himself at a great pace down the gulch and came
+upon her unawares, where she had been sitting, overcome by nameless fears
+and a creeping horror of the place. She started to her feet, for Thane's
+was no furtive tread that crashed through the thorny greasewood and planted
+itself, a yard at a bound, amongst the stones. The horror vanished and a
+flush of life, a light of joy, returned to her speaking face. He had never
+seen her so completely off her guard. He checked himself suddenly and
+caught his hat from his head; and without thinking, before he replaced it,
+he drew the back of his soft leather glove across his dripping forehead.
+The unconventional action touched her keenly. She was sensitively subject
+to outward impressions, and "the plastic" had long been her delight, her
+ambition, and her despair.
+
+"Oh, if I could only have done something simple like that!" the defeated,
+unsatisfied artist soul within her cried. "That free, arrested stride, how
+splendid! and the hat crumpled in his hand, and his bare head and strong
+brows in the sunlight, and the damp points of hair clinging to his temples!
+No, he is _not_ bald,--that was only a tonsure of white light on the top
+of his head; still, he must be hard on forty. It is the end of summer with
+him, too; and here he comes for water, thirsting, to satisfy himself where
+water was plentiful in spring, and he finds a dry bed of stones. Call it
+The End of Summer; it is enough. Ah, if I could ever have thought out an
+action as simple and direct as that--and drawn it! But how can one draw
+what one has never seen!"
+
+Not all this, but something else, something more that Daphne could not have
+put into words, spoke in the look which Thane surprised. It was but a flash
+between long lashes that fell instantly and put it out; but no woman whose
+heart was in the grave ever looked at a living man in that way, and the
+living man could not help but know it. It took away his self-possession for
+a moment; he stood speechless, gazing into her face with a question in his
+eyes which five minutes before he would have declared an insult to her.
+
+Daphne struggled to regain her mask, but the secret had escaped: shameless
+Nature had seized her opportunity.
+
+"How did I miss you?" she asked with forced coolness, as they turned up the
+gulch together. For the moment she had forgotten about the spring.
+
+Thane briefly explained the mistake that had been made, adding, "You will
+have to put up with another day of us, now,--perhaps two."
+
+"And where do you leave us, then?" asked Daphne stupidly.
+
+"At the same place,--Decker's Ferry, you know." He smiled, indulgent to her
+crass ignorance of roads and localities. "Only we shall be a day longer
+getting there. We are still on the south side of the river, you remember?"
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Daphne, who remembered nothing of the kind.
+
+"It was a brutal fake, our springing this place on you for Pilgrim
+Station," he murmured.
+
+"It has all been a mistake,--our coming, I mean; at least I think so."
+
+It was some comfort to Thane to hear her say it,--he had been so forcibly
+of that opinion himself all along; but he allowed the admission to pass.
+
+"It must have been a hard journey for you," he exerted himself to say,
+speaking in a surface voice, while his thoughts were sinking test-pits
+through layers of crusted consciousness into depths of fiery nature
+underneath.
+
+She answered in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle
+has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything to
+him."
+
+He took her up with needless probity: "Whatever you do, don't thank me!
+It's bad enough to have Mr. Withers heaping coals of fire on my head. He
+gives me the place always, in regard to his son, of an intimate friend;
+which I never was, and God knows I never claimed to be! He took it for
+granted, somehow,--perhaps because of my letters at first, though any brute
+would have done as much at a time like that! Afterwards I would have set
+him right, but I was afraid of thrusting back the friendly imputation in
+his face. He credits me with having been this and that of a godsend to
+his son, when as a fact we parted, that last time, not even good friends.
+Perhaps you can forgive me for saying it? You see how I am placed!"
+
+This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed to
+command Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, then
+she said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable to
+feel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel." But her home
+application of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which he
+firmly corrected.
+
+"I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other know
+how we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that I
+knew a lot about him,--his thoughts and feelings; that we were immensely
+sympathetic. Perhaps we were, but we didn't know it. We knew nothing of
+each other intimately. He never spoke to me of his private affairs but
+once, the night before he started. It was at Wood River. Some of us gave
+him a little supper. Afterwards we had some business to settle and I was
+alone with him in his room. It was then I made my break; and--well, it
+ended as I say: we quarreled. It has hurt me since, especially as I was
+wrong."
+
+"What can men quarrel about when they don't know each other well? Politics,
+perhaps?" Daphne endeavored to give her words a general application.
+
+"It was not politics with us," Thane replied curtly. Changing the subject,
+he said, "I wish you could see the valley from that hogback over to the
+west." He pointed towards the spine of the main divide, which they would
+cross on their next day's journey. "Will you come up there this evening and
+take a look at the country? The wind will die down at sunset, I think."
+
+There was a studied commonplaceness in his manner; his eyes avoided hers.
+
+"Thanks; I should like to," she answered in the same defensive tone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"To go back to what we were saying," Daphne began, when they were seated,
+that evening, on the hilltop. All around them the view of the world rose
+to meet the sky, glowing in the west, purple in the east, while the pale
+planets shone, and below them the river glassed and gleamed in its crooked
+bed. "I ask you seriously," she said. "What was the trouble between you?"
+Doubtless she had a reason for asking, but it was not the one that she
+proceeded to give. "Had you--have you, perhaps--any claims in a business
+way against him? Because, if you had, it would be most unfair to his
+father"--The words gave her difficulty; but her meaning, as forced meanings
+are apt to be, was more than plain.
+
+Thane was not deceived: a woman who yields to curiosity, under however
+pious an excuse, is, to say the least, normal. Her thoughts are neither in
+the heavens above nor in the grave beneath. His black eyes flashed with the
+provocation of the moment. It was instinct that bade him not to spare her.
+
+"We quarreled," he said, "in the orthodox way,--about a woman."
+
+"Indeed!" said Daphne. "Then you must pardon me."
+
+"And her name," he continued calmly.
+
+"I did not ask you her name."
+
+"Still, since we have gone so far"--
+
+"There is no need of our going any farther."
+
+"We may as well,--a little farther. We quarreled, strangely enough, about
+you,--the first time he ever spoke of you. He would not have spoken then, I
+think, but he was a little excited, as well he might have been. Excuse me?"
+He waited.
+
+"Nothing!" said Daphne. She had made an involuntary protesting sound.
+
+"He said he hoped to bring you back with him. I asked how long since he had
+seen you; and when he told me five years, I remarked that he had better not
+be too sure. 'But you don't know her,' he said; 'she is truth itself, and
+courage. By as many times as she has refused to listen to me, I am sure of
+her now.' I did not gather somehow that you were--engaged to him, else I
+hope I should not have gone so far. As it was, I kept on persisting--like
+a cynic who has no one of his own to be sure of--that he had better
+not be too sure! He might have seen, I thought then, that it was half
+chaff and half envy with me; but it was a nervous time, and I was less
+than sympathetic, less than a friend to him. And now I am loaded with
+friendship's honors, and you have come yourself to prove me in the wrong.
+You punish me by converting me to the truth."
+
+"What truth?" asked Daphne, so low that Thane had to guess her question.
+
+"Have you not proved to me that some women do have memories?"
+
+Daphne could not meet his eyes; but she suspected him of something
+like sarcasm. She could not be sure, for his tone was agitating in its
+tenderness.
+
+"All things considered," she said slowly, "does it not strike you as rather
+a costly conversion?"
+
+"I don't say I was worth it, nor do I see just how it benefits me
+personally to have learned my lesson."
+
+He rose, and stood where he could look at her,--an unfair advantage,
+for his dark face, strong in its immobility, was in silhouette against
+the flush of twilight which illumined hers, so transparent in its
+sensitiveness.
+
+"Is it not a good thing to believe, on any terms?" she tried to answer
+lightly.
+
+"For some persons, perhaps. But my hopes, if I had any, would lie in the
+direction of disbelief."
+
+"Disbelief?" she repeated confusedly. His keen eyes beat hers down.
+
+"In woman's memory, constancy,--her constancy in youth, say? I am not
+talking of seasoned timber. I don't deserve to be happy, you see, and I
+look for no more than my deserts."
+
+If he were mocking her now, only to test her! And if she should answer
+with a humble, blissful disclaimer? But she answered nothing, disclaimed
+nothing; suffered his suspicion,--his contempt, perhaps, for she felt that
+he read her through and through.
+
+A widow is well, and a maid is well; but a maiden widow who trembles and
+looks down--in God's creation, what is she?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the north side of the Snake, after climbing out of the cañon at Decker's
+Ferry, the cross-roads branch as per sign-post: "Thirty miles to Shoshone
+Falls, one mile to Decker's Ferry. Good road." This last assertion must
+be true, as we have it on no less authority than that of Decker himself.
+Nothing is said of the road to Bliss,--not even that there is such a Bliss
+only sixteen miles away. Being a station on the Oregon Short Line, Bliss
+can take care of itself.
+
+At these cross-roads, on a bright, windy September morning, our travelers
+had halted for reasons, the chief of which was to say good-by. They had
+slept over night at the ferry, parted their baggage in the morning, and now
+in separate wagons by divergent roads were setting forth on the last stage
+of their journey.
+
+Daphne had left some necessary of her toilet at the ferry, and the driver
+of Mr. Withers's team had gone back to ask the people at the ferry-house
+to find it. This was the cause of their waiting at the cross-roads. Mr.
+Withers and Daphne were on their devoted way like conscientious tourists,
+though both were deadly weary, to prostrate themselves before the
+stupendous beauty of the great lone falls at Shoshone. Thane, with Kinney's
+team, was prosaically bound down the river to examine and report on a
+placer-mine. But before his business would be finished Mr. Withers and his
+niece would have returned by railroad via Bliss to Boise, and have left
+that city for the East; so this was likely to be a long good-by.
+
+If anything could have come of Mr. Withers's project of a memorial fountain
+at Pilgrim Station, there might have been a future to the acquaintance, for
+Thane was to have had charge of the execution of the design; but nature had
+lightly frustrated that fond, beneficent dream.
+
+Mr. Kinney had offered the practical suggestion that the road should go to
+the fountain, since the fountain could not come to the road. Its course
+was a mere accident of the way the first wagon-wheels had gone. The wheels
+were few now, and with such an inducement might well afford to cross the
+gulch in a new place lower down. But Mr. Withers would have none of this
+dislocation of the unities. There was but one place--the dismal hollow
+itself, the scene of his heart's tragedy--where his acknowledgment to God
+should stand; his mute "Thy will be done!"
+
+Perhaps the whole conception had lost something of its hold on his mind
+by contact with such harsh realities as Daphne's disavowals and his own
+consequent struggle with a father's weakness. He had not in his inmost
+conscience quite done with that question yet.
+
+Thane was touched by the meekness with which the old gentleman resigned
+his dream. The journey, he suspected, had been a disappointment in other
+ways,--had failed in impressiveness, in personal significance; had fallen
+at times below the level of the occasion, at others had overpowered it and
+swept it out of sight. Thane could have told him that it must be so. There
+was room for too many mourners in that primeval waste. Whose small special
+grief could make itself heard in that vast arid silence, the voice of which
+was God? God in nature, awful, inscrutable, alone, had gained a new meaning
+for Mr. Withers. Miles of desert, days of desert, like waves of brute
+oblivion had swept over him. Never before had he felt the oppression of
+purely natural causes, the force of the physical in conflict with the
+spiritual law. And now he was to submit to a final illustration of it,
+perhaps the simplest and most natural one of all.
+
+Daphne was seated at a little distance on her camp-stool, making a drawing
+of the desert cross-roads with the twin sign-posts pointing separate
+ways, as an appropriate finish to her Snake River sketch-book. The sun
+was tremendous, the usual Snake River zephyr was blowing forty miles an
+hour, and the flinty ground refused to take the brass-shod point of her
+umbrella-staff. Mr. Kinney, therefore, sat beside her, gallantly steadying
+her heavy sketching-umbrella against the wind.
+
+Mr. Withers, while awaiting the return of his own team from the ferry, had
+accepted a seat in Thane's wagon. (It was a bag containing a curling-iron,
+lamp, and other implements appertaining to "wimples and crisping-pins,"
+that Daphne had forgotten, but she had not described its contents. One bag
+is as innocent as another, on the outside; it might have held her Prayer
+Book.)
+
+Thane was metaphorically "kicking himself" because time was passing and
+he could not find words delicate enough in which to clothe an indelicate
+request,--one outrageous in its present connection, yet from some points of
+view, definitively his own, a most urgent and natural one.
+
+  "For one shall grasp, and one resign,
+  And God shall make the balance good."
+
+To grasp is a simple act enough; but to do so delicately, reverently,
+without forcing one's preferences on those of another, may not always be so
+simple. Thane was not a Goth nor a Vandal; by choice he would have sought
+to preserve the amenities of life; but a meek man he was not, and the thing
+he now desired was, he considered, well worth the sacrifice of such small
+pretensions as his in the direction of unselfishness.
+
+The founding of a family in its earliest stages is essentially an egoistic
+and ungenerous proceeding. Even Mr. Withers must have been self-seeking
+once or twice in his life, else had he never had a son to mourn. So, since
+life in this world is for the living, and his own life was likely to go
+on many years after Mr. Withers had been gathered to the reward of the
+righteous, Thane worked himself up to the grasping-point at last.
+
+He was never able to reflect with any pride on the way in which he did it,
+and perhaps it is hardly fair to report him in a conversation that would
+have had its difficulties for almost any man; but his way of putting his
+case was something like the following,--Mr. Withers guilelessly opening the
+way by asking, "You will be coming East, I hope, before long, Mr. Thane?"
+
+"Possibly," said Thane, "I may run on to New York next winter."
+
+"If you should, I trust you will find time to come a little further East
+and visit me? I could add my niece's invitation to my own, but she and her
+mother will probably have gone South for her mother's health. However, I
+will welcome you for us both,--I and my books, which are all my household
+now."
+
+"Thanks, sir, I should be very glad to come; though your books, I'm afraid,
+are the sort that would not have much to say to me."
+
+"Come and see, come and see," Mr. Withers pressed him warmly. "A ripe
+farewell should always hold the seeds of a future meeting."
+
+"That is very kindly said," Thane responded quickly; "and if you don't
+mind, I will plant one of those seeds right now."
+
+"So do, so do," the old gentleman urged unsuspiciously.
+
+"Your niece"--Thane began, but could see his way no further in that
+direction without too much precipitancy. Then he backed down on a line of
+argument,--"I need not point out the fact," etc.,--and abandoned that as
+beset with too many pitfalls of logic, for one of his limited powers of
+analysis. Fewest words and simplest would serve him best. "It is hardly
+likely," then he said, "that your niece's present state of feeling will be
+respected as long as it lasts; there will be others with feelings of their
+own. Her loss will hardly protect her all her life from--she will have
+suitors, of course! Nature is a brute, and most men, young men, are natural
+in that respect,--in regard to women, I mean. I don't want to be the first
+fool who rushes in, but there will be a first. When he arrives, sir, will
+you let me know? If any man is to be heard, I claim the right to speak to
+her myself; the right, you understand, of one who loves her, who will make
+any sacrifice on earth to win her."
+
+Mr. Withers remained silent. He had a sense of suffocation, as of waves of
+heat and darkness going over him. The wind sang in his ears, shouted and
+hooted at him. He was stunned. Presently he gasped, "Mr. Thane! you have
+not surely profaned this solemn journey with such thoughts as these?"
+
+"A man cannot always help his thoughts, Mr. Withers. I have not profaned my
+thoughts by putting them into words, till now. I cannot do them justice,
+but I have made them plain. This is not a question of taste or propriety
+with me, or even decency. It is my life,--all of it I shall ever place at
+the disposal of any woman. I am not a boy; I know what I want and how much
+I want it. The secret of success is to be in the right place at the right
+time: here is where I ask your help."
+
+"I do not question that you know what you want," said Mr. Withers
+mildly,--"it is quite a characteristic of the men of this region, I
+infer,--nor do I deny that you may know the way of success in getting it;
+but that I should open the door to you--be your--I might say accomplice,
+in this design upon the affections of my niece--why, I don't know how it
+strikes you, but"--
+
+"It strikes me precisely as it does you,--my part of it," said Thane
+impatiently. "But her part is different, as I see it. If she were sick, you
+would not put off the day of her recovery because neither you nor yours
+could cure her? Whoever can make her forget this shipwreck of her youth,
+heal her unhappiness, let him do so. Isn't that right? Give him the chance
+to try. A man's power in these things does not lie in his deserts. All I
+ask is, when other men come forward I want the same privilege. But I shall
+not be on the ground. When that time comes, sir, will you remember me?"
+
+For once Mr. Withers seized the occasion for a retort; he advanced upon the
+enemy's exposed position. "Yes, Mr. Thane, I will remember you,--better
+than you remember your friends when they are gone."
+
+Thane accepted the reproach as meekly as if his friendship for John Withers
+had been of the indubitable stuff originally that Mr. Withers had credited
+him with. He rather welcomed than otherwise an unmerited rebuke from that
+long-suffering quarter.
+
+But though Thane was silenced as well as answered, there was conscience yet
+to deal with. Mr. Withers sat and meditated sorely, while the wind buffeted
+his gray hairs. Conscience demanded that he give up the secret of Daphne's
+false mourning, which he would have defended with his life. "A silence that
+can harm no one." "So long as we defraud no living person who might claim
+a right to know your heart." The condition was plain; it provided for just
+such cases as the present. Then how could he hesitate? But he was human,
+and he did.
+
+"I have gone too far, I see. Well, say no more about it," said Thane. "Your
+generosity tempted me. From those who give easily much shall be asked.
+Forget it, sir, please. I will look out for myself, or lose her."
+
+"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Mr. Withers. He turned to Thane, placing his hand
+above his faded eyes to shade them from the glare, and looked his companion
+earnestly in the face. Thane sought for an umbrella, and raised it over the
+old gentleman's head; it was not an easy thing to hold it steady in that
+wind.
+
+"Thanks, thanks! Now I can look at you. Yes, I can look you in the eye, in
+more senses than one. Listen to me, Mr. Thane, and don't mind if I am not
+very lucid. In speaking of the affairs of another, and a young woman, I can
+only deal in outlines. You will be able to surmise and hope the rest. I
+feel in duty bound to tell you that at the time of my son's death there was
+a misunderstanding on my part which forced Miss Lewis into a false position
+in respect to her relations to my son. Too much was assumed by me on
+insufficient evidence,--a case where the wish, perhaps, was father to the
+thought. She hesitated at that sore time to rob me of an illusion which she
+saw was precious to me; she allowed me to retain my erroneous belief that
+my son, had he lived, would have enjoyed the blessing of her affection. As
+a fact, she had not given it to him,--could not have given it,--though she
+owns that her mind, not her heart, was wavering. Had she married him, other
+motives than love would have influenced her choice. So death has saved my
+dear boy from a cruel disappointment or a worse mistake, and her from a
+great danger. Had he lived, he must have had many hours of wretchedness,
+either with or without that dearest wish of his heart fulfilled.
+
+"This she confessed to me not many days ago, after a long period of
+remorseful questioning; and I deem it my duty now, in view of what you have
+just told me, to acquaint you with the truth. I am the only one who knows
+that she was not engaged to my son, and never really loved him. The fact
+cut me so deeply, when I learned it first, that I persuaded her, most
+selfishly, to continue in the disguise she had permitted, sustained so
+long,--to rest in it, that my boy's memory might be honored through this
+sacrifice of the truth. Weak, fond old man that I was, and worse! But
+now you have my confession. As soon as I can speak with her alone I will
+release her from that promise. She was fain to be free before all the
+world,--our little part of it,--but I fastened it on her. I see now that I
+could not have invented a crueler punishment; but it was never my purpose
+to punish her. I will also tell her that I have opened the true state of
+the case to you."
+
+"Would you not stop just short of that, Mr. Withers? To know she is free to
+listen to him,--that is all any man could ask."
+
+"Perhaps you are right; yes, she need not know that I have possessed you
+with her secret,--all of it that has any bearing on your hopes. I only
+thought it might save you, in her mind, from any possible imputation of--of
+want of respect for her supposed condition, akin to widowhood; but no doubt
+you will wait a suitable time."
+
+"I will wait till we meet in Boise."
+
+"In Boise!" the old gentleman cried, aghast.
+
+"That will be three days from now," answered Thane innocently. Did Mr.
+Withers imagine that he would wait three years!
+
+"But what becomes of the--the placer-mine?"
+
+"The placer-mine be--the placer-mine will keep! She is shutting up her
+book; the sketch is finished. Will you hold the umbrella, sir, or shall I
+put it down?"
+
+Mr. Withers took hold of the umbrella handle; the wind shook it and nearly
+tugged it out of his grasp. "Put it down, if you please," he murmured
+resignedly. But by this time Thane was half across the road to where
+Daphne, with penknife and finger-tips, was trying to strip the top layer
+of blackened sandpaper from her pencil-scrubber; turning her face aside,
+because, woman-like, she would insist on casting her pencil-dust to
+windward.
+
+Thane smiled, and took the scrubber out of her hands, threw away the soiled
+sheet, sealed up the pad in a clean stamped envelope, which bore across
+the end the legend, "If not delivered within ten days, return to"--"Robert
+Henry Thane," he wrote, with his address, and gave her back her property.
+It was all very childish, yet his hand trembled as he wrote; and Daphne
+looked on with the solemnity of a child learning a new game.
+
+"May I see the sketch?" he asked.
+
+They bent together over her book, while Daphne endeavored to find the
+place; the wind fluttered the leaves, and she was so long in finding it
+that Mr. Kinney had time to pack up her stool and umbrella, and cross the
+road to say good-by to Mr. Withers.
+
+"Here it is," said Thane, catching sight of the drawing. He touched the
+book-holder lightly on the arm, to turn her away from the sun. Her shadow
+fell across the open page; their backs were to the wagon. So they stood
+a full half-minute,--Thane seeing nothing, hearing his heart beat
+preposterously in the silence.
+
+"Why don't you praise my sign-posts?" asked Daphne nervously. "See my
+beautiful distance,--one straight line!"
+
+"I have changed my plans a little," said Thane. Daphne closed the book. "I
+shall see you again in Boise. This is good-by--for three days. Take care of
+yourself." He held out his hand. "I shall meet your train at Bliss."
+
+"Bliss! Where is Bliss?"
+
+"You never could remember, could you?" he smiled. The tone of his voice was
+a flagrant caress. The color flew to Daphne's face. "Bliss," said he, "is
+where I shall meet you again: remember that, will you?"
+
+Daphne drew down her veil. The man returning from the ferry was in sight
+at the top of the hill. Mr. Withers was alighting from Thane's wagon. She
+turned her gray mask towards him, through which he could discern the soft
+outline of her face, the color of her lips and cheeks, the darkness of her
+eyes; their expression he could not see.
+
+"I shall meet you at Bliss," he repeated, his fingers closing upon hers.
+
+Daphne did not reply; she did not speak to him nor look at him again,
+though it was some moments before the wagon started.
+
+Kinney and Thane remained at the cross-roads, discussing with some heat the
+latter's unexpected change of plan. Mr. Kinney had a small interest in the
+placer-mine, himself, but it looked large to him just then. He put little
+faith in Thane's urgent business (that no one had heard of till that
+moment) calling him to Boise in three days. Of what use was it going down
+to the placers only to turn round and come back again? So Thane thought,
+and proposed they drive forward to Bliss.
+
+"Bliss be hanged!" said Mr. Kinney; which shows how many ways there are of
+looking at the same thing.
+
+Thane's way prevailed; they drove straight on to Bliss. And if the
+placer-mine was ever reported on by Thane, it must have been at a later
+time.
+
+
+
+
+PILGRIMS TO MECCA
+
+
+"Notice the girl on your right, Elsie. That is the thing! You have to see
+it to understand. Do you understand, dear? Do you see the difference?"
+
+A middle-aged little mother, with a sensitive, care-worn face, leaned
+across the Pullman section and laid a hand upon her daughter's by way of
+emphasis--needless, for her voice and manner conveyed all, and much more
+than the words could possibly carry. Volumes of argument, demonstration,
+expostulation were implied.
+
+"Can you see her? Do you see what I mean? What, dear?"
+
+The questions followed one another like beads running down a string.
+Elsie's silence was the knot at the end. She opened her eyes and turned
+them languidly as directed, but without raising her head from the back of
+the car-seat.
+
+"I will look presently, mother. I can't see much of anything now."
+
+"Oh, never mind. Forgive me, dear. How is your head? Lie still; don't try
+to talk."
+
+Elsie smiled, patted her mother's hand, and closed her narrow, sweet,
+sleepy blue eyes. Mrs. Valentin never looked at them, when her mind was at
+rest, without wishing they were a trifle larger--wider open, rather. The
+eyes were large enough, but the lazy lids shut them in. They saw a good
+deal, however. She also wished, in moments of contemplation, that she could
+have laid on a little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, and
+continued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, if
+anything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated little
+mouth it was,--reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, though
+the hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, the
+mother sighed, just a touch or two,--and she knew just where to put those
+touches,--and the girl had been a beauty. If nature would only consult the
+mothers at the proper time, instead of going on in her blindfold fashion!
+
+But, after all, did they want a beauty in the family? On theory, no: the
+few beauties Mrs. Valentin had known in her life had not been the happiest
+of women. What they did want was an Elsie--their own Elsie--perfectly
+trained without losing her naturalness, perfectly educated without losing
+her health, perfectly dressed without thinking of clothes, perfectly
+accomplished without wasting her time, and, finally, an Elsie perfectly
+happy. All that parents, situated on the wrong side of the continent for
+art and culture, and not over-burdened with money, could do to that end,
+Mrs. Valentin was resolved should be done. Needless to say, very little was
+to be left to God.
+
+Mrs. Valentin was born in the East, some forty-odd years before this
+educational pilgrimage began, of good Unitarian stock,--born with a great
+sense of personal accountability. She could not have thrown it off and been
+joyful in the words, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves."
+
+Elsie had got a headache from the early start and the suppressed agitation
+of parting from her home and her father. Suppression was as natural to her
+as expression was to her mother. The father and daughter had held each
+other silently a moment; both had smiled, and both were ill for hours
+afterward.
+
+But Mrs. Valentin thought that in Elsie's case it was because she had not
+sent the girl to bed earlier the night before, and insisted on her eating
+something at breakfast.
+
+Herself--she had lain sleepless for the greater part of that night and many
+nights previous. She had anticipated in its difficulties every stage of
+the getting off, the subsequent journey, the arrival, their reception by
+Eastern relatives not seen for years, the introduction of her grown-up
+daughter, the impression she would make, the beginning of life all over
+again in a strange city. (She had known her Boston once, but that was
+twenty years ago.) She foresaw the mistakes she would inevitably make in
+her choice of means to the desired ends--dressmakers, doctors, specialists
+of all sorts; the horrible way in which school expenses mount up; the
+trivial yet poignant comparisons of school life, from which, if Elsie
+suffered, she would be sure to suffer in silence.
+
+After this fatiguing mental rehearsal she had risen at six, while the
+electric lights were still burning and the city was cloaked in fog. It was
+San Francisco of a midsummer morning; fog whistles groaning, sidewalks
+slippery with wet, and the gray-green trees and tinted flower-beds of the
+city gardens emerging like the first broad washes of a water-color laid in
+with a full brush.
+
+She had taken a last survey of her dismantled home, given the last
+directions to the old Chinese servant left in charge, presided haggardly at
+the last home breakfast----what a ghastly little ceremony it was! Then Mr.
+Valentin had gone across the Oakland ferry with them and put them aboard
+the train, muffled up as for winter. They had looked into each other's
+pale faces and parted for two years, all for Elsie's sake. But what Elsie
+thought about it--whether she understood or cared for what this sacrifice
+of home and treasure was to purchase--it was impossible to learn. Still
+more what her father thought. What he had always said was, "You had better
+go."
+
+"But do you truly think it _is_ the best thing for the child?"
+
+"I think that, whatever we do, there will be times when we'll wish we had
+done something different; and there will be other times when we shall be
+glad we did not. All we can do is the best we know up to date."
+
+"But do you think it is the best?"
+
+"I think, Emmy, that you will never be satisfied until you have tried it,
+and it's worth the money to me to have you feel that you have done your
+best."
+
+Mrs. Valentin sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why we do cling to that old
+fetich of the East. Why can't we accept the fact that we are Western
+people? The question is, Shall we be the self-satisfied kind or the
+unsatisfied kind? Shall we be contented and limited, or discontented and
+grow?"
+
+"I guess we shall be limited enough, either way," Mr. Valentin retorted
+easily. He had no hankering for the East and no grudge against fate for
+making him a Western man _malgré lui_. "I've known kickers who didn't
+appear to grow much, except to grow cranky," he said.
+
+Up to the moment of actual departure, Mrs. Valentin had continued to review
+her decision and to agonize over its possibilities of disaster; but now
+that the journey had begun, she was experiencing the rest of change and
+movement. She was as responsive as a child to fresh outward impressions,
+and the hyperbolical imagination that caused her such torture when it
+wrought in the dark hours on the teased fabric of her own life, could
+give her compensating pleasures by daylight, on the open roads of the
+world. There was as yet nothing outside the car windows which they had
+not known of old,--the marsh-meadows of the Lower Sacramento, tide-rivers
+reflecting the sky, cattle and wild fowl, with an occasional windmill
+or a duck-hunter's lodge breaking the long sweeps of low-toned color.
+The morning sun was drinking up the fog, the temperature in the Pullman
+steadily rising. Jackets were coming off and shirt-waists blooming out in
+summer colors, giving the car a homelike appearance.
+
+It was a saying that summer, "By their belts ye shall know them."
+Shirt-waists no longer counted, since the ready-made ones for two dollars
+and a half were almost as chic as the tailor-made for ten. But the belts,
+the real belts, were inimitable. Sir Lancelot might have used them for his
+bridle--
+
+  "Like to some branch of stars we see
+  Hung in the golden galaxy."
+
+Mrs. Valentin had looked with distinct approval on a mother and daughter
+who occupied the section opposite. Their impedimenta and belongings were
+"all right," arguing persons with cultivated tastes, abroad for a summer
+spent in divers climates, who knew what they should have and where to
+get it. A similarity of judgment on questions of clothes and shops is no
+doubt a bond between strange women everywhere; but it was the daughter's
+belt-buckle before which Mrs. Valentin bowed down and humbled herself in
+silence. The like of that comes only by inheritance or travel. Antique,
+pale gold--Cellini might have designed it. There was probably not another
+buckle like that one in existence. An imitation? No more than its wearer, a
+girl as white as a white camellia, with gray eyes and thin black eyebrows,
+and thick black lashes that darkened the eyes all round. There was nothing
+noticeable in her dress except its freshness and a certain finish in lesser
+details, understood by the sophisticated. "Swell" was too common a word
+for her supreme and dainty elegance. Her resemblance to the ordinary
+full-fleshed type of Pacific coast belle was that of a portrait by
+Romney--possibly engraved by Cole--to a photograph of some _reina de la
+fiesta_. This was Mrs. Valentin's exaggerated way of putting it to herself.
+Such a passionate conservative as she was sure to be prejudiced.
+
+The mother had a more pronounced individuality, as mothers are apt to
+have, and looked quite fit for the ordinary uses of life. She was of
+the benignant Roman-nosed Eastern type, daughter of generations of
+philanthropists and workers in the public eye for the public good; a deep,
+rich voice, an air of command, plain features, abundant gray hair, imported
+clothes, wonderful, keen, dark eyes overlapped by a fold of the crumpled
+eyelid,--a personage, a character, a life, full of complex energies and
+domineering good sense. With gold eye-glasses astride her high-bridged
+nose, knees crossed, one large, well-shod foot extended, this mother in
+Israel sat absorbed like a man in the daily paper, and wroth like a man at
+its contents. Occasionally she would emit an impatient protest in the deep,
+maternal tones, and the graceful daughter would turn her head and read over
+her shoulder in silent assent.
+
+"How trivial, how self-centred we are!" Mrs. Valentin murmured, leaning
+across to claim a look from Elsie. "I realize it the moment we get outside
+our own little treadmill. We do nothing but take thought for what we shall
+eat and drink and wherewithal we shall be clothed. I haven't thought of
+the country once this morning. I've been wondering if all the good summer
+things are gone at Hollander's. It may be very hot in Boston the first few
+weeks. You will be wilted in your cloth suit."
+
+"Oh, mammy, mammy! what a mammy!" purred Elsie, her pretty upper lip
+curling in the smile her mother loved--with a reservation. Elsie had her
+father's sense of humor, and had caught his half-caressing way of indulging
+it at the "intense" little mother's expense.
+
+"Elsie," she observed, "you know _I_ don't mind your way of speaking to
+me,--as if I were the girl of sixteen and you the woman of forty,--but I
+hope you won't use it before the aunts and cousins. I shall be sure to
+lay myself open, but, dear, be careful. It isn't very good form to be too
+amused with one's mother. Of course there's as much difference in mothers
+as in girls," Mrs. Valentin acknowledged. "A certain sort of temperament
+interferes with the profit one ought to get out of one's experience. If
+you had my temperament I shouldn't waste this two years' experiment on
+you; I should know that nothing could change your--spots. But _you_ will
+learn--everything. How is your head, dear--what?"
+
+Elsie had said nothing; she had not had the opportunity.
+
+At a flag station where the train was halted (this overland train was a
+"local" as far as Sacramento) Mrs. Valentin looked out and saw a colored
+man in livery climb down from the back seat of a mail-cart and hasten
+across the platform with a huge paper box. It proved to be filled with
+magnificent roses, of which he was the bearer to the ladies opposite. A
+glance at a card was followed by gracious acknowledgments, and the footman
+retired beaming. He watched the train off, hat in hand, bowing to the
+ladies at their window as only a well-raised colored servant can bow.
+
+"The Coudert place lies over there," said Mrs. Valentin, pointing to a mass
+of dark trees toward which the trap was speeding. "They have been staying
+there," she whispered, "doing the west coast, I suppose, with invitations
+to all the swell houses."
+
+"Is your daughter not well?" the deep voice spoke across the car.
+
+As Elsie could not ride backward, her mother, to give her room, and for
+the pleasure of watching her, was seated with her own back to the engine,
+facing most of the ladies in the car.
+
+"She is a little train-sick; she could not eat this morning, and that
+always gives her a headache."
+
+Elsie raised her eyelashes in faint dissent.
+
+"She should eat something, surely. Have you tried malted milk? I have some
+of the lozenges; she can take one without raising her head."
+
+Search was made in a distinguished-looking bag, Mrs. Valentin protesting
+against the trouble, and beseeching Elsie with her eyes to accept one from
+the little silver box of pastils that was passed across the aisle.
+
+Elsie said she really could not--thanks very much.
+
+The keen, dark eyes surveyed her with the look of a general inspecting raw
+troops, and Mrs. Valentin felt as depressed as the company officer who has
+been "working up" the troops. "Won't you try one, Elsie?" she pleaded.
+
+"I'd rather not, mother," said Elsie.
+
+She did not repeat her thanks to the great authority, but left her mother
+to cover her retreat.
+
+"The young girls nowadays do pretty much as they please about eating or not
+eating," observed the Eastern matron, in her large, impersonal way. "They
+can match our theories with quite as good ones of their own." She smiled
+again at Elsie, and the overtures on that side ceased.
+
+"_I_ would have eaten any imaginable thing she offered me," sighed Mrs.
+Valentin, "but Elsie is so hard to impress. I cannot understand how a girl,
+a baby, who has never been anywhere or seen anything, can be so fearfully
+_posée_. It's the Valentin blood. It's the drop of Indian blood away, 'way
+back. It's their impassiveness, but it's awfully good form--when she grows
+up to it."
+
+After this, Mrs. Valentin sat silent for such an unnatural length of time
+that Elsie roused herself to say something encouraging.
+
+"I shall be all right, mother, after Sacramento. We will take a walk. The
+fresh air is all I need."
+
+She was as good as her word. The cup of tea and the twenty minutes' stroll
+made such a happy difference that Mrs. Valentin sent a telegram to her
+husband to say that Elsie's head was better and that she had forgotten her
+trunk keys, and would he express them to her at once.
+
+So much refreshed was Elsie that her mother handed her the letters which
+had come to her share of that morning's mail. There were four or five of
+them, addressed in large, girlish hands, and exhibiting the latest and
+most expensive fads in stationery. Over one of them Elsie gave a shriek of
+delight, an outburst so unexpected and out of character with her former
+self that their distinguished fellow travelers involuntarily looked
+up,--and Mrs. Valentin blushed for her child.
+
+"Oh, mammy, how rich! How just like Gladys! She kept it for a last
+surprise! Mother, Gladys is going to Mrs. Barrington's herself."
+
+The mother's face fell.
+
+"Indeed!" she said, forcing a tone of pleasure. "Well, it's a
+compliment--on both sides. Mrs. Barrington is very particular whom she
+takes, and the Castants are sparing nothing that money can do for Gladys."
+
+"Oh, what fun!" cried Elsie, her face transformed. "Poor Gladys! she'll
+have a perfectly awful time too, and we can sympathize."
+
+"Are you expecting to have an 'awful time,' Elsie,"--the mother looked
+aghast,--"and are you going to throw yourself into the arms of Gladys
+for sympathy? Then let me say, my daughter, that neither Mrs. Barrington
+nor any one else can do much for your improvement, and all the money we
+are spending will be thrown away. If you are going East to ally yourself
+exclusively with Californian girls, to talk California and think California
+and set yourself against everything that is not Californian, we might just
+as well take the first train west at Colfax."
+
+"But am I to be different to Gladys when we meet away from home?" Elsie's
+sensitive eyes clouded. Her brows went up.
+
+"Of course not. Gladys is a dear, delightful girl. I'm as fond of her as
+you are. But you can have Gladys all the rest of your life, I hope. I'm
+not a snob, dear, but I do think we should recognize the fact that some
+acquaintances are more improving than others."
+
+"And cultivate them for the sake of what they can do for us?"
+
+In Elsie's voice there was an edge of resistance, hearing which her mother,
+when she was wise, would let speech die and silence do its work. Her
+influence with the girl was strongest when least insisted upon. She was not
+wiser than usual that morning, but the noise of the train made niceties of
+statement impossible. She abandoned the argument perforce, and Elsie, left
+with her retort unanswered, acknowledged its cheapness in her own quick,
+strong, wordless way.
+
+The dining-car would not be attached to the train until they reached
+Ogden. At twilight they stopped "twenty minutes for refreshment," and the
+Valentins took the refreshment they needed most by pacing the platform up
+and down,--the tall daughter, in her severely cut clothes, shortening her
+boyish stride to match her mother's step; the mother, looking older than
+she need, in a light-gray traveling-cap, with Elsie's golf cape thrown over
+her silk waist.
+
+The Eastern travelers were walking too. They had their tea out of an
+English tea-basket, and bread and butter from the buffet, and were
+independent of supper stations. With the Valentins it was sheer
+improvidence and want of appetite.
+
+"Please notice that girl's step," said Mrs. Valentin, pressing Elsie's arm.
+"'Art is to conceal art.' It has taken years of the best of everything, and
+eternal vigilance besides, to create such a walk as that; but _c'est fait_.
+You don't see the entire sole of her foot every time she takes a step."
+
+"Having a certain other person's soles in view, mammy?"
+
+"I'm afraid I should have them in full view if you came to meet me. Not the
+heel quite so pronounced, dearest."
+
+"Oh, mother, please leave that to Mrs. Barrington! Let us be comrades for
+these few days."
+
+"Dearest, it would be the happiness of my life to be never anything but
+a comrade. But who is to nag a girl if not her mother? I very much doubt
+if Mrs. Barrington will condescend to speak of your boot-soles. She will
+expect all that to have been attended to long ago."
+
+"It has been--a thousand years ago. Sometimes I feel that I'm all
+boot-soles."
+
+"The moment I see some result, dear, I shall be satisfied. One doesn't
+speak of such things for their own sake."
+
+"Can't we get a paper?" asked Elsie. "What is that they are shouting?"
+
+"I don't think it can be anything new. We brought these papers with us on
+the train. But we can see. No; it's just what we had this morning. They are
+preparing for a general assault. There will be heavy fighting to-morrow.
+Why, that is to-day!" Mrs. Valentin held the newspaper at arm's length.
+
+"Is there anything more? I can read only the head-lines."
+
+The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance,
+narrowing her eyelids.
+
+"Mother, there was something else in Gladys's letter. Billy Castant has
+enlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, while
+we were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he--he
+didn't go home; he just enlisted."
+
+"The foolish fellow!" Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition told
+her there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon the
+presumptive cause. "The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But he
+won't work for it. It's easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider."
+
+"I don't think it was easy at Las Guasimas," Elsie said, with a strained
+little laugh. "You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle your
+volunteers?"
+
+Mrs. Valentin listened with a catch in her breath. What did this portend?
+So slight a sign as that in Elsie meant tears and confessions from another
+girl.
+
+"And did you hear of this only just now, from Gladys's letter?"
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"You extraordinary child--your father all over again! I might have known by
+the way you laughed over that letter that you had bad news to tell--or keep
+to yourself."
+
+"I don't call that bad news, do you, mother? He does need an education, but
+he will never get it out of books."
+
+"Well, it's a pretty severe sort of education for his parents--nineteen, an
+only son, and to go without seeing them again. He might at least have come
+home and enlisted from his own State."
+
+They were at the far end of the platform, facing the dark of the pine-clad
+ravines. Deep, odorous breaths of night wind came sighing up the slopes.
+
+"Mother, there was something happened last winter that I never told you,"
+Elsie began again, with pauses. "It was so silly, and there seemed no need
+to speak of it. But I can't bear not to speak now. I don't know if it has
+made any difference--with Billy's plans. It seems disloyal to tell you. But
+you must forget it: he's forgotten, I am sure. He said--those silly things,
+you know! I couldn't have told you then; it was too silly. And I said that
+I didn't think it was for him or for me to talk about such things. It was
+for men and women, not boys who couldn't even get their lessons."
+
+"Elsie!" Mrs. Valentin gave a little choked laugh. "Did you say that? The
+poor boy! Why, I thought you were such good friends!"
+
+"He wasn't talking friendship, mother, and I was furious with him for
+flunking his exams. He passed in only five out of seven. He ought to have
+done better than that. He's not stupid; it's that fatal popularity. He's
+captain of this and manager of that, and they give him such a lot of money.
+And they pet him, too; they make excuses for him all the time. I told him
+he must _do_ something before he began to have feelings. The only feeling
+he had any right to have was shame for his miserable record."
+
+"And that was all the encouragement you gave him?"
+
+"If you call that 'encouragement,'" said Elsie.
+
+"You did very well, my dear; but I suppose you know it was the most
+intimate thing you could have said to him, the greatest compliment you
+could pay him. If he ever does make any sort of a record, you have given
+him the right to come back to you with it."
+
+"He will never come back to me without it," said the girl. "But it was
+nothing--nothing! All idleness and nonsense, and the music after supper
+that went to his head."
+
+"I hope it was nothing more than"--Mrs. Valentin checked herself. There
+were things she said to her husband which sometimes threatened to slip out
+inadvertently when his youthful copy was near. "Well, I see nothing to be
+ashamed of, on your side. But such things are always a pity. They age a
+girl in spite of herself. And the boys--they simply forget. The rebuke does
+them good, but they forget to whom they owe it. It's just one of those
+things that make my girlie older. But oh, how fast life comes!"
+
+Elsie slipped her hand under her mother's cloak, and Mrs. Valentin pressed
+her own down hard upon it.
+
+"We must get aboard, dear. But I'm so glad you told me! And I didn't mean
+quite what I said about Billy's 'going off mad.' He has given all he had to
+give, poor boy; why he gave it is his own affair."
+
+"I hope--what I told you--has made no difference about his coming home.
+It's stupid of me to think it. But hard words come back, don't they,
+mother? Hard words--to an old friend!"
+
+"Billy is all right, dear; and it was so natural you should be tried with
+him! 'For to be wroth with one we'"--Mrs. Valentin had another of her
+narrow escapes. "Come, there is the porter waiting for us."
+
+"Mother," said Elsie sternly, "please don't misunderstand. I should never
+have spoken of this if I had been 'wroth' with him--in that way."
+
+"Of course not, dear; I understand. And it would never do, anyway, for
+father doesn't like the blood."
+
+"Father doesn't like the--what, mother?"
+
+Elsie asked the question half an hour later, as they sat in an adjoining
+section, waiting for their berths to be made up.
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"What did you say father doesn't like--in the Castants?"
+
+"Oh, the blood, the family. This generation is all right--apparently. But
+blood will tell. You are too young to know all the old histories that
+fathers and mothers read young people by."
+
+"I think we are what we are," said Elsie; "we are not our
+great-grandfathers."
+
+"In a measure we are, and it should teach us charity. Not as much can be
+expected of Billy Castant, coming of the stock he does, as you might expect
+of that ancestry," and Mrs. Valentin nodded toward the formidable Eastern
+contingent. (Elsie was consciously hating them already.) "The fountain can
+rise no higher than its source."
+
+"I thought there was supposed to be a source a little higher than the
+ground--unless we are no more than earth-born fountains."
+
+"'Out of the mouth of babes,'" said Mrs. Valentin, laughing gently. "I own
+it, dear. Middle age is suspicious and mean and unspiritual and troubled
+about many things. A middle-aged mother is like an old hen when hawks are
+sailing around; she can't see the sky."
+
+"Yes," said Elsie, settling cosily against her mother's shoulder. "I always
+know when mammy speaks as my official mother, and when she is talking
+'straight talk.' I shall be so happy when she believes I am old enough to
+hear only straight talk."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've got a surprise for you, Elsie," said Mrs. Valentin, a day and a night
+eastward of the Sierras. They were on the Great Plains, at that stage of
+an overland journey which suggests, in the words of a clever woman, the
+advisability of "taking a tuck in the continent."
+
+Elsie's eyebrows seemed to portend that surprises are not always pleasant.
+
+"I've been talking with our Eastern lady, and imagine! her daughter is one
+of Mrs. Barrington's girls too. This will be her second year. So there
+is"--
+
+"An offset to Gladys," Elsie interrupted.
+
+"So there is a chance for you to know one girl, at least, of the type I've
+always been holding up to you, always believed in, though the individuals
+are so rare."
+
+Elsie's sentiments, unexpressed, were that she wished they might be rarer.
+Not that the flower of Eastern culture was not all her mother protested
+she was; but there are crises of discouragement on the upward climb of
+trying to realize a mother's ambitions for one's self, when one is only a
+girl--the only girl, on whom the family experiments are all to be wreaked.
+Elsie suffered in silence many a pang that her mother never dreamed
+of--pangs of effort unavailing and unappreciated. She wished to conform to
+her mother's exigent standard, but she could not, all at once, and be a
+girl too--a girl of sixteen, a little off the key physically, not having
+come to a woman's repose of movement; a little stridulous mentally, but
+pulsing with life's dumb music of aspiration; as intense as her mother in
+feeling, without her mother's power to throw off the strain in words.
+
+"Well, mother?" she questioned.
+
+"She is older than you, and she will be at home. The advances, of course,
+must come from her, but I hope, dear, you will not be--you will try to be
+responsive?"
+
+"I never know, mother, when I am not responsive. It's like wrinkling my
+forehead; it does itself."
+
+Mrs. Valentin made a gesture expressive of the futility of argument under
+certain not unfamiliar conditions.
+
+"'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.' I am
+leading my Pegasus to the fountain of--what was the fountain?"
+
+Elsie laughed. "Your Pegasus is pretty heavy on the wing, mammy. But I will
+drink. I will gorge myself, truly I will. The money shall not be spent in
+vain."
+
+"Oh, the money! Who cares about the money?--if only there were more of it."
+
+They stopped over night in Chicago, and Mrs. Valentin bought some
+shirt-waists; for the heat had "doubled up on them," as a Kansas farmer on
+the train remarked.
+
+Elsie trailed about the shops with her mother, not greatly interested in
+shirt-waists or bargains in French underclothing.
+
+The war pressure seemed to close in upon them as they left the mid-West and
+drew toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbing
+over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering,
+was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the
+irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems,
+freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to
+commercial account,--advertising, in symbols of death and priceless
+devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to
+speak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you could
+deface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to you by
+your bootmaker.
+
+Elsie cast hunted eyes on the bulletin boards. She knew by heart that first
+list after Las Guasimas. One glance had burned it in forever. It had become
+one of the indelible scars of a lifetime. Yet those were the names of
+strangers. If a whiff from an avalanche can fell trees a mile away, how if
+the avalanche strike you?
+
+They returned to their hotel, exhausted, yet excited, by the heat; and Mrs.
+Valentin admonished herself of what our boys must be suffering in that
+"unimaginable climate," and she entered into details, forgetting to spare
+Elsie, till the girl turned a sickly white.
+
+It was then the bishop's card was sent up--their own late bishop, much
+mourned and deplored because he had been transferred to an Eastern diocese.
+There could be no one so invariably welcome, who knew so well, without
+effort, how to touch the right chord, whether in earnest or in jest that
+sometimes hid a deeper earnest. His manner at first usually hovered between
+the two, your own mood determining where the emphasis should rest. He had
+brought with him the evening paper, but he kept it folded in his hand.
+
+"So you are pilgrims to Mecca," he said, looking from mother to daughter
+with his gentle, musing smile. "But are you not a little early for the
+Eastern schools?"
+
+"There are the home visits first, and the clothes," said Mrs. Valentin.
+
+"And where do you stop, and for how long?"
+
+"Boston, for one year, Bishop, and then we go abroad for a year, perhaps."
+
+"Bless me! what has Elsie done that she should be banished from home for
+two years?"
+
+"She takes her mother with her."
+
+"Yes; that is half of the home. Perhaps that's as much as one girl ought to
+expect."
+
+"The fathers are so busy, Bishop."
+
+"Yes; the fathers do seem to be busy. So Elsie is going East to be
+finished? And how old is she now? How does she presume to account for the
+fact that she is taller than her mother and nearly as tall as her bishop?"
+
+Elsie promptly placed herself at the bishop's side and "measured," glancing
+over her shoulder at him in the glass. He turned and gravely placed his
+hand upon her head.
+
+"I thought of writing to you at one time," said Mrs. Valentin, "but of
+course you cannot keep us all on your mind. We are a 'back number.'"
+
+"She thought I would have forgotten who these Valentins were," said the
+bishop, smiling.
+
+"No; but you cannot keep the thread of all our troubles--the sheep of the
+old flock and the lambs of the new. I have had a thousand minds lately
+about Elsie, but this was the original plan, made years ago, when we were
+young and sure about things. Don't you think young lives need room, Bishop?
+Oughtn't we to seek to widen their mental horizons?"
+
+"The horizons widen, they widen of themselves, Mrs. Valentin--very suddenly
+sometimes, and beyond our ken." The bishop's voice had struck a deeper
+note; he paused and looked at Elsie with eyes so kind and tender that the
+girl choked and turned away. "This war is rather a widening business, and
+California is getting her share. Our boys of the First, for instance,--you
+see I still call them _our_ boys,--what were they doing a year ago, and
+what are they doing now? I'll be bound half of them a year ago didn't know
+how 'Philippines' was spelled."
+
+Mrs. Valentin became restless.
+
+"Is that the evening paper?" she asked.
+
+The bishop glanced at the paper. "And who," said he, "is to open the gates
+of sunrise for our Elsie? With whom do you intend to place her in Boston?"
+
+"Oh, with Mrs. Barrington."
+
+Mrs. Valentin was watching the bishop, whose eyes still rested upon Elsie.
+
+"She is to be one of the chosen five, is she? The five wise virgins--of the
+East? But they are all Western virgins this year, I believe."
+
+"If you mean that they are all from the Western States, I think you are
+mistaken, Bishop."
+
+"Am I? Let us see. There is Elsie, and Gladys Castant, perhaps, and the
+daughters of my friend Mr. Laws of West Dakota"--
+
+"Bishop!"
+
+"Of West Dakota; that makes four. And then the young lady who was on the
+train with you, Miss Bigelow, from Los Angeles."
+
+"Bishop! I am certain you are mistaken there. If those people are not
+Eastern, then I'm from West Dakota myself!"
+
+"We are all from West Dakota virtually, so far as Mecca is concerned.
+But Mrs. Barrington offers her young ladies those exceptional social
+opportunities which Western girls are supposed to need. If you want Elsie
+to be with Eastern girls of the East, let her go to a good Boston Latin
+school. Did you not go to one yourself, Mrs. Valentin?"
+
+Mrs. Valentin laughed. "That was ages ago, and I was at home. I had the
+environment--an education in itself. Won't you dine with us, Bishop? We
+shall have dinner in half an hour."
+
+"In half an hour I must be on the limited express. You seem to have made
+different connections."
+
+"'The error was, we started wrong,'" said Mrs. Valentin lightly. "We took
+the morning instead of the evening train. But I was convinced we should be
+left, and I preferred to get left by the wrong train and have the right one
+to fall back on." She ceased her babble, as vain words die when there is a
+sense of no one listening.
+
+Elsie stood at the window looking back into the room. She thought, "Mother
+doesn't know what she is saying. What is she worried about?"
+
+The bishop was writing with a gold pencil on the margin of the newspaper.
+He folded it with the writing on top.
+
+"If you had consulted me about that child,"--he looked at Elsie,--"I should
+have said, 'Do not hurry her--do not hurry her. Her education will come as
+God sends it.' With experience, as with death, it is the prematureness that
+hurts."
+
+His beautiful voice and perfect accent filled the silence with heart-warmed
+cadences.
+
+"Well, good-by, Mrs. Valentin. Remember me to that busy husband."
+
+Mrs. Valentin rose; the bishop took her hand. "Elsie will see me to the
+elevator. This is the evening paper."
+
+He offered it with the writing toward her. Mrs. Valentin read what he had
+written: "Billy Castant was killed in the charge at San Juan. Every man in
+that fight deserves the thanks of the nation."
+
+"Come, Elsie, see me to my carriage," the bishop was saying. He placed the
+girl's hand on his arm and led her out of the room. At the elevator grating
+they waited a moment; the cold draft up the shaft fanned the hair back from
+Elsie's forehead as she stood looking down, watching the ascent of the
+cage.
+
+"It would be a happy thing," said the bishop, "if parents could always go
+with their children on these long roads of experience; but there are some
+roads the boys and the girls will have to take alone. We shall all meet at
+the other end, though--we shall all meet at the end."
+
+Elsie walked up and down the hall awhile, dreading to go back to the room.
+A band in the street below was playing an old war-song of the sixties,
+revived this battle summer of '98,--a song that was sung when the cost of
+that war was beginning to tell, "We shall meet, but we shall miss him."
+Elsie knew the music; she had not yet learned the words.
+
+Next morning Mr. Valentin received one of his wife's vague but thrifty
+telegrams, dated at Chicago, on Sunday night, July 3:
+
+"We cannot go through with it. Expect us home Wednesday."
+
+Mrs. Valentin had spent hours, years, in explaining to Elsie's father
+the many cogent and crying reasons for taking her East to be finished. It
+needed not quite five minutes to explain why she had brought her back.
+
+Strangely, none of the friends of the family asked for an explanation of
+this sudden change of plan. But Elsie envies Gladys her black clothes, and
+the privilege of crying in public when the bands play and the troops go by.
+
+"Such children--such mere children!" Mrs. Valentin sighs.
+
+But she no longer speaks to Elsie about wrinkling her forehead or showing
+her boot-soles. It is eye to eye and heart to heart, and only straight talk
+between them now, as between women who know.
+
+
+
+
+THE HARSHAW BRIDE
+
+
+[Mrs. Tom Daly, of Bisuka in the Northwest, writes to her invalid sister
+spending the summer on the coast of Southern California.]
+
+
+I
+
+You know I am always ready to sacrifice truth to politeness, if the truth
+is of that poor, stingy upstart variety everybody is familiar with and if
+the occasion warrants the expense. We all know politeness is not cheap, any
+more than honesty is politic. But surely I mistook my occasion, one day
+last winter--and now behold the price!
+
+We are to have a bride on our hands, or a bride-elect, for she isn't
+married yet. The happy man to be is rustling for a home out here in the
+wilds of Idaho while she is waiting in the old country for success to crown
+his efforts. How much success in her case is demanded one does not know.
+She is a little English girl, upper middle class, which Mrs. Percifer
+assures us is _the_ class to belong to in England at the present day,--from
+which we infer that it's her class; and the interesting reunion is to
+take place at our house--the young woman never having seen us in her life
+before.
+
+She sailed, poor thing, this day week and will be forwarded to us by her
+confiding friends in New York as soon as she arrives. Meantime she will
+have heard from us from the Percifers: that is something.
+
+Really they were very nice to us in New York, last winter, the
+Percifers--though one must not plume one's self too much. It began as
+a business flirtation down town between the husbands, and then Tom
+confidingly mentioned that he had a wife at his hotel. We unfortunate women
+were dragged into it forthwith, and more or less forced to live up to it.
+I cannot say there was anything riotous in the way she sustained her part.
+She was so very impersonal in fact, when we said good-by, that my natural
+tendency to invite people to come and stay with us, on the spur of any
+moment, was strangled in my throat.
+
+But one must say something by way of retaliation for hospitality one cannot
+reject. So I put it off on any friends of theirs who might have occasion to
+command us in the West. We should be so happy, and so forth. And, my dear,
+she has taken me up on it! She's not impersonal now. She is so glad--for
+dear Kitty's sake--that we are here, and she is sure we will be very
+good to her--such a sweet girl, no one could help being--which rather
+cuts down the margin for our goodness. The poor child--I am quoting Mrs.
+Percifer--knows absolutely no one in the West but the man she is coming
+to marry (?)and can have no conception of the journey she has before her.
+She will be _so_ comforted to find us at the end of it. And if anything
+unforeseen should occur to delay Mr. Harshaw, the fiancé, and prevent his
+meeting her train, it will be a vast relief to Kitty's friends to know that
+the dear brave little girl is in good hands--ours, if you can conceive it!
+
+Please observe the coolness with which she treats his _not_ meeting that
+train, after the girl has traversed half the globe to compass her share of
+their meeting.
+
+Well, it's not the American way; but perhaps it will be when bad times have
+humbled us a little more, and the question is whether we can marry our
+daughters at all unless we can give them dowries, or professions to support
+their husbands on, and "feelings" are a luxury only the rich can afford.
+
+I hope "Kitty" won't have any; but still more I hope that her young man
+will arrive on schedule time, and that they can trot round the corner and
+be married, with Tom and me for witnesses, as speedily as possible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've had such a blow! Tom, with an effort, has succeeded in remembering
+this Mr. Harshaw who is poor Kitty's fate. He must have been years in this
+country,--long enough to have citizenized himself and become a member of
+our first Idaho legislature (I don't believe you even know that we are a
+State!). Tom was on the supper committee of the ball the city gave them.
+They were a deplorable set of men; it was easy enough to remember the nice
+ones. Tom says he is a "chump," if you know what that means. I tell him
+that every man, married or single, is constitutionally horrid to any other
+man who has had the luck to be chosen of a charming girl. But I'm afraid
+Harshaw wasn't one of the nice ones, or I should have remembered him
+myself; we had them to dinner--all who were at all worth while.
+
+Poor Kitty! There is so little here to come for _but_ the man.
+
+Well, my dear, here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kitty has arrived, and _one_
+Mr. Harshaw. Where _the_ Mr. Harshaw is, _quien sabe_! It's awfully late.
+Poor Kitty has gone to bed, and has cried herself to sleep, I dare say, if
+sleep she can. I never have heard of a girl being treated so.
+
+Tom and the other Mr. Harshaw are smoking in the dining-room, and Tom is
+talking endlessly--what about I can't imagine, unless he is giving this
+young record-breaker his opinion of his extraordinary conduct. But I must
+begin at the beginning.
+
+Mrs. Percifer wired us from New York the day the bride-elect started, and
+_she_ was to wire us from Ogden, which she did. I went to the train to meet
+her, and I told Tom to be on the watch for the bridegroom, who would come
+in from his ranch on the Snake River, by wagon or on horseback, across
+country from Ten Mile. To come by rail he'd have had to go round a hundred
+miles or so, by Mountain Home. An American would have done it, of course,
+and have come in with her on the train; but the Percifers plainly expected
+no such wild burst of enthusiasm from him.
+
+The train was late. I walked and walked the platform; some of the people
+who were waiting went away, but I dared not leave my post. I fell to
+watching a spurt of dust away off across the river toward the mesa. It
+rolled up fast, and presently I saw a man on horseback; then I didn't see
+him; then he had crossed the bridge and was pounding down the track-side
+toward the depot. He pulled up and spoke to a trainman, and after that he
+walked his horse as if he was satisfied.
+
+This is Harshaw, I thought, and a very pretty fellow, but not in the
+least like an Idaho legislator. I can't say that I care for the sort
+of Englishman who is so prompt to swear allegiance to our flag; they
+never do unless they want to go in for government land, or politics, or
+something that has nothing to do with any flag. But this youngster looked
+ridiculously young. I simply knew he was coming for that girl, and that
+he had no ulterior motives whatever. He was ashy-white with dust--hair,
+eyebrows, eyelashes, and his fair little mustache all powdered with it;
+his corduroys, leggings, and hat all of a color. I saw no baggage, and I
+wondered what he expected to be married in. He leaned on his horse dizzily
+a moment when he first got out of the saddle, and the poor beast stretched
+his fore legs, and rocked with the gusts of his panting, his sides going
+in and out like a pair of bellows. The young fellow handed him over to a
+man to take to the stables, and I saw him give him a regular bridegroom's
+tip. He's all right, I said to myself, and Tom _was_ horrid to call him
+a "chump." He beat himself off a bit, and went in and talked to the
+ticket-agent. They looked at their watches.
+
+"I don't think you'll have time to go uptown," said the ticket-man.
+
+Harshaw came out then, and _he_ began to walk the platform, and to stare
+down the track toward Nampa; so I sat down. Presently he stopped, and
+raised his hat, and asked if I was Mrs. Daly, a friend of Mrs. Percifer of
+London and New York.
+
+Not to be boastful, I said that I knew Mrs. Percifer.
+
+"Then," said he, "we are here on the same errand, I think."
+
+_I_ was there to meet Miss Kitty Comyn, I told him, and he said so was he,
+and might he have a little talk with me? He seemed excited and serious,
+very.
+
+"Are you _the_ Mr. Harshaw?" I asked, though I hadn't an idea, of course,
+that he could be anybody else.
+
+"Not exactly," he said. "I'm his cousin, Cecil Harshaw."
+
+"Is Mr. Harshaw ill?"
+
+He looked foolish, and dropped his eyes. "No," said he. "He was well last
+night when I left him at the ranch." Last night! He had come a hundred
+miles between dark of one day and noon of the next!
+
+"Your cousin takes a royal way of bringing home his bride--by proxy," I
+said.
+
+"Ah, but it's partly my fault, you know"--he could not quell a sudden
+shamefaced laugh,--"if you'd kindly allow me to explain. I shall have to
+be quite brutally frank; but Mrs. Percifer said"--Here he lugged in a
+propitiatory compliment, which sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it
+fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he
+babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and his
+perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and American
+colloquialisms, not to say slang.
+
+"It's like this, Mrs. Daly. A man oughtn't to be a dog-in-the-manger about
+a girl, even if he has got her promise, you know. If he can't get a move on
+and marry her before her hair is gray, he ought to step out and give the
+other fellows a chance. I'm not speaking for myself, though I would have
+spoken three years ago if she hadn't been engaged to Micky--she's always
+been engaged to him, one may say. And I accepted the fact; and when I came
+over here and took a share in Micky's ranch I meant right by him, and God
+knows I meant more than right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she must
+be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he
+has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad
+with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not
+looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl
+waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass
+I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to
+offer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over his
+natural difficulty--laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, only
+he's slow, and it's hard to get him to look things square in the face.
+It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, that
+I undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a
+----. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say to
+her"--His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level of
+ordinary conversation, with the remark, "It's a facer, by Jove!"
+
+I managed not to smile. If he'd undertaken, I said, to "boom" his cousin's
+marriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit for
+disinterestedness; but so few good acts were ever rewarded in this world! I
+seemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might be
+heroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark.
+
+"Ah," he said feelingly, "it's fierce! I never was so rattled in my life.
+But before you give me too much credit for disinterestedness, you know, I
+must tell you that I'm thinking of--that--in short, I've a mind to speak
+for myself now, if Micky doesn't come up to time."
+
+I simply looked at him, and he blushed, but went on more explicitly. "He
+could have married her, Mrs. Daly, any time these three years if he'd had
+the pluck to think so. He'd say, 'If we have a good season with the horses,
+I'll send for her in the fall.' We'd have our usual season, and then he'd
+say, 'It won't do, Cecy.' And in the spring we are always as poor as
+jack-rabbits, and so he'd wait till the next fall. I got so mad with his
+infernal coolness, and the contrast of how things were and how she must
+think they were! Still, I knew he'd be good to her if he had her here, and
+he'd save twice as much with her to provide for as he ever could alone. I
+used to hear all her little news, poor girl. She had lost her father, and
+there were tight times at home. The next word was that she was going for a
+governess. Then I said, 'You ought to go over and get her, or else send for
+her sharp. You are as ready to marry her now as ever you will be.'
+
+"'I'm too confounded strapped,' said he. I told him I would fix all that if
+he would go, or write her to come. But the weeks went by, and he never made
+a move. And there were reasons, Mrs. Daly, why it was best that any one who
+cared for him should be on the ground. Then I made my kick. I don't believe
+in kicking, as a rule; but if you do kick, kick hard, I say. 'If you don't
+send for her, Micky, I'll send for her myself,' I said.
+
+"'What for?' said he.
+
+"'For you,' said I, 'if you'll have the manliness to step up and claim her,
+and treat her as you ought. If not, she can see how things are, and maybe
+she'll want a change. You may not think you are wronging her and deceiving
+her,' I said, 'but that's what you are; and if you won't make an end of
+this situation' (I haven't told you, and I can't tell you, the whole of it,
+Mrs. Daly), 'I will end it myself--for your sake and for her sake and for
+my own.' And I warned him that I should have a word to say to her if he
+didn't occupy the field of vision quite promptly after she arrived. 'One of
+us will meet her at the train,' said I, 'and the one who loves her will get
+there first.'
+
+"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him at
+the ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it,
+he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I was
+not bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. Then
+I cabled her just the question, Would she come? and she answered directly
+that she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and I
+told Micky what I'd done.
+
+"And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from that
+moment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I haven't a
+blessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, I
+should say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength of
+the situation, seeing it's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rum
+justice in it; but think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake of
+punishing me!
+
+"Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast of
+it, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including the
+fact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and try
+to smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance?
+There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet."
+
+The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of his
+tale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for "Micky."
+
+"If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+I agreed that it would. Then I made the only suggestion it occurred to me
+to offer in the case--that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheon
+or breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet Miss
+Comyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. My
+husband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and after
+dinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactory
+message, he could cast himself into the breach.
+
+"And I'm sorry for you," I said; "for I don't think you will have an easy
+time of it."
+
+"She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that's better than sending
+me friendly little messages in her letters to Micky."
+
+I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of his
+extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good
+faith--as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as
+convincing as a scene in comic opera.
+
+"By the way," said he, "I didn't encumber myself with much luggage this
+trip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in."
+
+I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he as
+recklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thought
+he did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the whole
+of him from head to foot as pale as a plaster cast with dust, except his
+bright blue eyes, which had hard, dark circles around them.
+
+"The train is coming," I warned him.
+
+"_She_ is coming! _À la bonne heure!_" he cried, and was off on a run, and
+whistled a car that was going up Main Street to the natatorium; and I knew
+that in ten minutes he would be reveling in the plunge, while I should be
+making the best of this beautiful crisis of his inventing to Miss Comyn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dear, they are the prettiest pair! Providence, no doubt, designed
+them for each other, if he had not made this unpardonable break. She has
+a spirit of her own, has Miss Kitty, and if she cried up-stairs alone
+with me,--tears of anger and mortification, it struck me, rather than of
+heart-grief,--I will venture she shed no tears before him.
+
+As Mr. Michael Harshaw did not arrive, we gave Mr. Cecil his opportunity,
+as promised, of speech with his victim and judge. He talked to her in the
+little sitting-room after dinner--as long as she would listen to him,
+apparently. We heard her come flying out with a sort of passionate
+suddenness, as if she had literally run away from his words. But he had
+followed her, and for an instant I saw them together in the hall. His
+poor young face was literally burning; perhaps it was only sunburn, but I
+fancied she had been giving him a metaphorical drubbing--"ragging," as Tom
+would call it--worse than Lady Anne gave Richard.
+
+She was still in a fine Shakespearean temper when I carried her off
+up-stairs. Reserves were impossible between us; her right to any privacy
+in her own affairs had been given away from the start; that was one of the
+pleasing features of the situation.
+
+"_Marry_ him! marry _him_!" she cried. "That impertinent, meddlesome boy!
+That false, dishonorable"--
+
+"Go slow, dear," I said. "I don't think he's quite so bad as that."
+
+"And what do I want with _him_! And what do you think he tells me, Mrs.
+Daly? And whether there's any truth in him, how do I know? He declares
+it was not Michael Harshaw who sent for me at all! The message, all the
+messages, were from him. In that case I have been decoyed over here to
+marry a man who not only never asked me to come, but who stood by and let
+me be hoaxed in this shameful way, and now leaves me to be persecuted by
+this one's ridiculous offers of marriage,--as if I belonged to all or any
+of the Harshaws, whichever one came first! Michael may not even know that
+I am here," she added in a lower key. "If Cecil Harshaw was capable of
+doing what he has done, by his own confession, it would be little more to
+intercept my answers to his forgeries."
+
+That was true, I said. It was quite possible the young man lied. She would,
+of course, give Mr. Michael Harshaw a chance to tell _his_ story.
+
+"I cannot believe," said the distracted girl, "that Michael would lend
+himself, even passively, to such an abominable trick. Could any one believe
+it--of his worst enemy!"
+
+Impossible, I agreed. She must believe nothing till she had heard from her
+lover.
+
+"But if Michael did not know it," she mused, with a piteous blush, "then
+Cecil Harshaw must have sent me that money himself--the insolence! And
+after that to ask me to marry him!"
+
+Men were fearfully primitive still, after all that we had done for them, I
+reminded her, especially in their notions of love-making. Their intentions
+were generally better than their methods. No great harm had been done,
+for that matter. A letter, if written that night, would reach Mr. Michael
+Harshaw at his ranch not later than the next night. All these troubles
+could wait till the real Mr. Harshaw had been heard from. My husband would
+see that her letter reached him promptly, and in the mean time Mr. Cecil
+need not be told that we were proving his little story.
+
+I was forced to humor her own theory of her case; but I have no idea,
+myself, that Cecil Harshaw has not told the truth. He does not look like
+a liar, to begin with, and how silly to palm off an invention for to-day
+which to-morrow would expose!
+
+Tom is still talking and talking. I really must interfere and give Mr.
+Cecil a chance to go. It is quite too late to look for the other one. If he
+comes at this hour, there is nothing he can do but go to bed.
+
+... Well, the young man has gone, and Tom is shutting up the house, and I
+hope the bride is asleep, though I doubt it. Have I told you how charming
+she is? Not so discouragingly tall or so classic as the Du Maurier goddess,
+but "comfy," much more "comfy," to my mind. Her nose is rudimentary,
+rather, which doesn't prevent her having a mind of her own, though noses
+are said to have it all to say as to force of character. Her upper lip has
+the most fascinating little pout; her chin is full and emotional--but these
+are emotional times; and there is a beautiful finish about her throat and
+hands and wrists. She looks more dressed in a shirt-waist, in which she
+came down to dinner, her trunk not having come, than some of us do in the
+best we have. Her clothes are very fresh and recent, to a woman of Idaho;
+but she does not wear her pretty ears "cachées," I am glad to say. They are
+very pretty, and one--the left one--is burned pure crimson from sitting
+next the window of her section all the way from Omaha.
+
+But why do I write all this nonsense at twelve o'clock at night, when all
+I need say by way of description is that we want her to stay with us,
+indefinitely if necessary, and let her countrymen and lovers go to--their
+ranch on the Snake River!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What do you suppose those wretches were arguing about in the dining-room
+last night, over their whisky and soda? Sentiment was "not in it," as they
+would say. They were talking up a scheme--a scheme that Tom has had in mind
+ever since he first saw the Thousand Springs six years ago, when he had the
+Snake River placer-mining fever. It was of no use then, because electrical
+transmission was in its infancy, its long-distance capacities undreamed of.
+But Harshaw was down there fishing last summer, and he was able to satisfy
+the only doubt Tom has had as to some natural feature of the scheme--I
+don't know what; but Harshaw has settled it, and is as wild as Tom himself
+about the thing. Also he wants to put into it all the money he can
+recover out of his cousin's ranch. (I shouldn't think the future of that
+partnership would be exactly happy!) And now they propose to take hold of
+it together, and at once.
+
+Harshaw, who, it seems, is enough of an engineer to run a level, will go
+down with Tom and make the preliminary surveys. Tom will work up the plans
+and estimates, and prepare a report, which Harshaw will take to London,
+where his father has influence in the City, and the sanguine child sees
+himself placing it in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+Tom made no secret with me of their scheme, and I fell upon him at once.
+
+"You are not taking advantage of that innocent in your own house!" I said.
+
+"Do you take him for an innocent? He has about as shrewd a business
+head--but he has no money, anyhow. I shall have to put up for the whole
+trip."
+
+To be honest, that was just what I had feared; but it didn't sound well
+to say so. Tom is always putting up for things that never come to
+anything--for us.
+
+He tried to propitiate me with the news that I was to go with them.
+
+"And what do you propose to do with our guest?"
+
+"Take her along. Why not? It's as hard a trip as any I know of, for the
+distance. Her troubles won't keep her awake, nor spoil her appetite, after
+the first day's ride."
+
+"I don't know but you are right," I said; "but wild horses couldn't drag
+her if _he_ goes. And how about the other Harshaw--the one she has promised
+to marry?"
+
+"She isn't going to marry him, is she? I should think she had gone about
+far enough, to meet that fellow halfway."
+
+Even if she wasn't going to marry him, I said, it might be civil to tell
+him so. She had listened to his accuser; she could hardly refuse to listen
+to him.
+
+"I think, myself, the dear boy has skipped the country," said Tom, who is
+unblushingly on Cecil's side. "If he hasn't, the letter will fetch him. She
+will have time to settle his hash before we start."
+
+"Before we start! And when do you propose to start?"--I shouldn't have been
+surprised if he had said "to-morrow," but he considerately gives me until
+Thursday.
+
+The truth is, Lou, it is years and years since I have been on one of these
+wild-goose chases with Tom. I have no more faith in this goose than in any
+of the other ones, but who wants to be forever playing the part of Wisdom
+"that cries in the streets and no man regards her"? One might as well be
+merry over one's folly, to say nothing of the folly of other people. I
+confess I am dying to go; but of course nothing can be decided till the
+recreant bridegroom has been heard from.
+
+This morning, when I went to Kitty's door for her letter, I found she
+hadn't written it. She made me come in while she "confessed," as she said.
+
+"I couldn't submit to the facts last night," she faltered. "I had to
+pretend that I thought he didn't know; but of course he does--he must. I
+wrote him from home before I started, and again from New York. I can't
+suppose that Cecil would intercept my letters. He is not a stage villain.
+No; I must face the truth. But how can I ever tell it to mamma!"
+
+"We will arrange all that by and by," I assured her (but I don't see myself
+how she can tell the truth about this transaction to anybody, her mother
+least of all, who would be simply wild if she knew how the girl has been
+betrayed and insulted, among utter strangers); meantime I begged her to
+promise me that she would not waste--
+
+She interrupted me quickly. "I have wasted enough, I think. No; don't be
+afraid for me, Mrs. Daly, and for Heaven's sake don't pity me!"
+
+I had just written the above when Tom came in and informed me that the
+"regular candidate had arrived," and requested to know if we were to have
+them both to dinner, or if the "dark horse" was to be told he needn't come.
+
+"Of course he can't come!" I screamed; "let him keep himself as dark as
+possible."
+
+"Then you needn't expect me," said Tom. "Cecy and I will dine at the
+Louvre." And I would give a good deal if I could dine there too, or any
+where but with this extraordinary pair of lovers.
+
+I went out to meet the real Harshaw, embarrassed with the guilty
+consciousness of having allowed my sympathies to go astray; for though in
+theory I totally disapprove of Cecil Harshaw, personally I defy anybody not
+to like him. I will except prejudiced persons, like his cousin and the lady
+he is so bent on making, by hook or by crook, _a_ Mrs. Harshaw.
+
+Mr. Harshaw the first (and last to arrive) has shaved his mustache quite
+recently, I should say, and the nakedness of his upper lip is not becoming.
+I wonder if she ever saw him with his mouth bare? I wonder if she would
+have accepted him if she had? He was so funny about his cousin, the
+promoter; so absolutely unconscious of his own asinine position. He argued
+very sensibly that if, after waiting four years for him, she couldn't wait
+one day longer, she must have changed in her feelings very decidedly, and
+that was a fact it behooved him to find out. Better now than later. I think
+he has found out.
+
+Possibly he was nicer four years ago. Men get terribly down at heel,
+mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in these
+out-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily making
+growth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself has
+helped to develop her. It must have been a knot of perpetual doubt and
+self-questioning. No one need tell me that she really loves him; if she
+did, if she had, she could not take his treatment of her like this. Perhaps
+the family circumstances constrained her. They may have thought Harshaw
+had a fortune in the future of his ranch, with its river boundary of
+placer-mines. English girls are obedient, and English mammas are practical,
+we read.
+
+She is practical, and she is beginning to look her situation in the face.
+
+"I shall want you to help me find some way to return that money," she said
+to me later, with an angry blush--"that money which Cecil Harshaw kindly
+advanced me for my journey. I shall hate every moment of my life till that
+debt is paid. But for the insult I never can repay him, never!
+
+"We are a large family at home--four girls besides me, and three boys;
+and boys are so expensive. I cannot ask mamma to help me; indeed, I was
+hoping to help her. I should have gone for a governess if I had not been
+duped into coming over here. Would there be any one in this town, do
+you think, who might want a governess for her children? I have a few
+'accomplishments,' and though I've not been trained for a teacher, I am
+used to children, and they like me, when I want them to."
+
+I thought this a good idea for the future; it would take time to work it
+up. But for the present an inspiration came to me,--on the strength of
+something Tom had said,--that he wished I could draw or paint, because he
+could make an artist useful on this trip, he condescended to say, if he
+could lay his hand on one. All the photographs of the Springs, it seems,
+have the disastrous effect of dwarfing their height and magnitude. There
+is a lagoon and a weedy island directly beneath them, and in the camera
+pictures taken from in front, the reeds and willows look gigantic in the
+foreground, and the Springs--out of all proportion--insignificant. This
+would be fatal to our schemers' claims as to the volume of water they are
+supposed to furnish for an electrical power plant to supply the Silver City
+mines, one hundred miles away. Hence the demand of Science for Art, with
+her point of view.
+
+"Just the thing for her," I thought. "She can draw and water-color, of
+course; all English girls do." And I flew and proposed it to Tom. "Pay her
+well for her pictures, and she'll make your Thousand Springs look like Ten
+Thousand." (That was only my little joke, dear; I am always afraid of your
+conscience.) But the main thing is settled; we have found a way of inducing
+Kitty to go. Tom was charmed with my intelligence, and Kitty, poor child,
+would go anywhere, in any conceivable company, to get even with Cecil
+Harshaw on that hateful money transaction. When I told her she would have
+to submit to his presence on the trip, she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's one of 'life's little ironies,'" she said.
+
+"And," I added, "we shall have to pass the ranch that was to have been"--
+
+"Oh, well, that is another. I must get used to the humorous side of my
+situation. One suffers most, perhaps, through thinking how other people
+will think one suffers. If they would only give one credit for a little
+common sense, to say nothing of pride!"
+
+You see, she will wear no willows for him. We shall get on beautifully,
+I've no doubt, even with the "irony" of the situation rubbed in, as it
+inevitably will be, in the course of this journey.
+
+Tom solemnly assures me that the other Harshaw's name is not Micky, but
+"Denis;" and he explains his having got into the legislature (quite
+unnecessarily, so far as I am concerned) on the theory that he is too lazy
+even to make enemies.
+
+I shall get the governess project started, so it can be working while we
+are away. If you know of anybody who would be likely to want her, and could
+pay her decently, and would know how to treat a nursery governess who is
+every bit a lady, but who is not above her business (I take for granted she
+is not, though of course I don't know), do, pray, speak a word for her.
+I'll answer for it she is bright enough; better not mention that she is
+pretty. There must be a hundred chances for her there to one in Idaho. We
+are hardly up to the resident-governess idea as yet. It is thought to be
+wanting in public spirit for parents not to patronize the local schools.
+If they are not good enough for the rich families, the poor families feel
+injured, and want to know the reason why.
+
+To return to these Harshaws. Does it not strike you that the English are
+more original, not to say queer, than we are; more indifferent to the
+opinions of others--certain others? They don't hesitate to do a thing
+because on the face of it it's perfectly insane. Witness the lengths they
+go, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen to
+set their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have the
+love of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding,
+high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons," who have
+inherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without having
+inherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to be
+responsible for them.
+
+I note what you say about my tendency to slang, and how it "seems to grow
+upon me." It "seems" to, alas! for the simple reason, I fear, that it
+does. I can remember when I used carefully to corral all my slang words in
+apologetic quote-marks, as if they were range-cattle to be fenced out from
+the home herd--our mother-tongue which we brought with us from the East,
+and which you have preserved in all its conscientious purity. But I give
+it up. I hardly know any longer, in regard to my own speech, which are my
+native expressions and which are the wild and woolly ones adopted off the
+range. It will serve all human purposes of a woman irretrievably married
+into the West. If the worst come to the worst, I can make a virtue of
+necessity and become a member of the "American Dialect Society"--a member
+in good standing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the morning of our glorious start. I am snatching a few words with
+you while the men are packing the wagon, which stands before the door.
+What a sensation it would make drawn up in front of--Mrs. Percifer's, for
+instance, in Park Avenue! Here no one turns the head to look at it.
+
+I told Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to have
+two fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without any
+fuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending,
+make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinking
+themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony
+ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of
+course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls of blankets.
+We don't go out of our way to be uncomfortable; that is the tenderfoot's
+pet weakness. The "kitchen-box" and the "grub-box" sit shoulder to shoulder
+in the back of the wagon. The stovepipe, tied with rope in sections, keeps
+up a lively clatter in concert with the jiggling of the tinware and the
+thumps and bumps of the camp-stove, which has swallowed its own feet, and,
+by the internal sounds, doesn't seem to have digested them.
+
+I spent last evening covering the canteens with canvas. The maiden was
+quite cheerful, sorting her drawing-materials and packing her colors and
+sketch-blocks. She laughs at everything Tom says, whether she sees the
+point or not, and most when there is none to see. Tom will be cook, because
+he prefers his own messing to any of ours, and we can't spare room in the
+wagon for a regular camp chef. Mr. Harshaw is the "swamper," because he
+makes himself useful doing things my lord doesn't like to do. And Kitty is
+not Miss Co-myn, as we called it, but Miss "Cummin," as they call it,--"the
+Comin' woman," Tom calls her. Mr. Billings, the teamster, completes our
+party.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sept.--Never mind the date. This is to-morrow morning, and we are at
+Walter's Ferry. It seems a week since we left Bisuka. We started yesterday
+on the flank of a dust-storm, and soon were with the main column, the wind
+pursuing us and hurling the sweepings of the road into the backs of our
+necks. The double-sides raised us out of the worst of the dust, else I
+think we should have been smothered. It was a test of our young lady's
+traveling manners. She kept her head down and her mouth shut; but when I
+shrieked at her to ask how she was standing it, she plucked her dusty veil
+from between her lips and smiled for answer.
+
+We two have the back seat, Tom sits in front with Billings, and the
+"swamper" sits anywhere on the lumps and bumps which our baggage
+makes, covered by the canvas wagon-sheet. He might have ridden his
+horse--everybody supposed he would; but that would have separated him from
+the object of his existence; the object sternly ignoring him, and riding
+for miles with her face turned away, her hand to her hat, which the wind
+persistently snatched at. It was her wide-brimmed sketching-hat--rather a
+daring creation but monstrously becoming, and I had persuaded her to wear
+it, the morning being delusively clear, thinking we were to have one of
+our midsummer scorchers that would have burned her fair English face to a
+blister.
+
+Mr. Harshaw thought she would be tired, wearing her hand continually in the
+air, and suggested various mechanical substitutes,--a string attached to
+the hat-trimming, a scarf tied over her head; but a snubbing was all the
+reward he got for his sympathy.
+
+"When this hand is tired I take the other one," she said airily.
+
+We lunched at Ten Mile, by the railroad track. Do you remember that
+desolate place? The Oregon Short Line used to leave us there at a little
+station called Kuna. There is no Kuna now; the station-house is gone; the
+station-keeper's little children are buried between four stakes on the bare
+hill--diphtheria, I think it was. Miss Kitty asked what the stakes were
+there for. Tom didn't like to tell her, so he said some traveler had made a
+"cache" there of something he couldn't carry with him, and the stakes were
+to mark the spot till his return.
+
+"And will nobody disturb the cache?" asked Miss Kitty. I couldn't bear
+to hear them. "They are graves," I whispered. "Two little children--the
+station-keeper's--all they had." And she asked no more questions.
+
+Mr. Harshaw had got possession of the canteen, and so was able to serve the
+maiden, both when she drank and when she held out her rosy fingers to be
+sprinkled, he tilting a little water on them slowly--with such provoking
+slowness that she chid him; then he let it come in gulps, and she chid
+him more, for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain very
+prettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the game
+to be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestal
+of virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don't
+care to be made the stamping-ground for their little differences.
+
+The horses were longer at their lunch than we, and Miss Kitty requested
+her traveling-bag. "And now," she said, "I will get rid of this fiend of a
+hat," whereas she had steadily protested for miles that she didn't mind it
+in the least. She took out of her bag a steamer-cap, and when she had put
+it on I could see that poor Harshaw dared not trust himself to look at her,
+her fair face exposed, and so very fair, in its tender, soft coloring,
+against that grim, wind-beaten waste of dust and sage.
+
+I shall skip the scenery on the road to Walter's Ferry, partly because we
+couldn't see it for the dust; and if we had seen it, I would not waste it
+upon you, an army woman. But Walter's Ferry was a hard-looking place when
+we crawled in last night out of the howling, dirt-throwing wind.
+
+The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering and
+tugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loaded
+with dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hooted
+and we howled,--the men did,--and the ferry-keeper came out and stared at
+us in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if we
+could have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river,
+which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely to
+sleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp.
+
+The one guest-room at the Ferry that could be called private was given to
+Kitty and me; but we used it as a sitting-room till bedtime, there being
+nowhere else to go but into the common room where the teamsters congregate.
+
+We stood and looked at each other, in our common disguise of dust, and
+tried to find our feet and other members that came awake gradually after
+the long stupor of the ride. There was a heap of sage-brush on the hearth
+laid ready for lighting. I touched a match to it, and Kitty dropped on her
+knees in front of its riotous warmth and glow. Suddenly she sprang up and
+stared about her, sniffing and catching her breath. I had noticed it too;
+it fairly took one by the throat, the gruesome odor.
+
+"What is this beastly smell?" She spoke right out, as our beloved English
+do. Tom came in at that moment, and she turned upon him as though he were
+the author of our misery.
+
+"What _has_ happened in this horrid room? We can't stay here, you know!"
+The proposition admitted of no argument. She refused to draw another breath
+except through her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+By this time I had recognized the smell. "It's nothing but sage-brush," I
+cried; "the cleanest, sterilest thing that grows!"
+
+"It may be clean," said Kitty, "but it smells like the bottomless pit.
+I must have a breath of fresh air." The only window in the room was a
+four-pane sash fixed solid in the top of the outside door. Tom said we
+should have the sweepings of the Snake River valley in there in one second
+if we opened that door. But we did, and the wind played havoc with our
+fire, and half the country blew in, as he had said, and with it came Cecil,
+his head bent low, his arms full of rugs and dust-cloaks.
+
+"You angel!" I cried, "have you been shaking those things?"
+
+"He's given himself the hay-fever," said Tom, heartlessly watching him
+while he sneezed and sneezed, and wept dust into his handkerchief.
+
+"Doesn't the man do those things?" Miss Kitty whispered.
+
+"What, our next Populist governor? Not much!" Tom replied. Kitty of course
+did not understand; it was hopeless to begin upon that theme--of our labor
+aristocracy; so we sent the men away, and made ourselves as presentable as
+we could for supper.
+
+I need not dwell upon it; it was the usual Walter's Ferry supper. The
+little woman who cooked it--the third she had cooked that evening--served
+it as well, plodding back and forth from the kitchen stove to the
+dining-room table, a little white-headed toddler clinging to her skirts,
+and whining to be put to bed. Out of regard for her look of general
+discouragement we ate what we could of the food without yielding to the
+temptation to joke about it, which was a cross to Tom at least.
+
+"Do you know how the farmers sow their seed in the Snake River valley?" he
+asked Miss Kitty. She raised eyes of confiding inquiry to his face.
+
+"They prepare the land in the usual way; then they go about five miles to
+windward of the ploughed field and let fly their seed; the wind does the
+rest. It would be of no use, you see, to sow it on the spot where it's
+meant to lie; they would have to go into the next county to look for their
+crop, top-soil and all."
+
+Now whenever Tom makes a statement Miss Kitty looks first at me to see how
+I am taking it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a fair, pale morning, as still as a picture, after last night's
+orgy of wind and dust. The maiden is making her first sketch on American
+soil--of the rope-ferry, with the boat on this side. She is seated in
+perfect unconsciousness on an inverted pine box--empty, I trust--which
+bears the startling announcement, in legible lettering on its side, that it
+holds "500 smokeless nitro-powder cartridges." Now she looks up disgusted,
+to see the boat swing off and slowly warp over to the other side. The
+picturesque blocks and cables in the foreground have hopelessly changed
+position, and continue changing; but she consoles herself by making
+marginal notes of the passengers returning by the boat,--a six-horse
+freight-team from Silver City, and a band of horses driven by two realistic
+cow-boys from anywhere. The driver of the freight-team has a young wildcat
+aboard, half starved, haggard, and crazed with captivity. He stops, and
+pulls out his wretched pet. The cow-boys stop; everybody stops; they make
+a ring, while the dogs of the ferry-house are invited to step up and
+examine for themselves. The little cat spits and rages at the end of its
+blood-stained rope. It is not a pretty show, and I am provoked with our men
+for not turning their backs upon it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sunday, at Broadlands. From Walter's Ferry, day before yesterday, we
+climbed back upon the main road, which crosses the plateau of the Snake,
+cutting off a great bend of the river, to see it again far below in the
+bottom of the Grand Cañon.
+
+The alkali growth is monotonous here; but there was a world of beauty
+and caprice in the forms of the seed-pods dried upon their stalks. Most
+of these pretty little purses were empty. Their treasure went, like the
+savings of a maiden aunt, when the idle wind got hold of it. There is an
+almost humorous ingenuity in the pains Nature has taken to secure the
+propagation of some of the meanest of her plant-children. The most
+worthless little vagabond seeds have wings or fans to fly with, or
+self-acting bomb-receptacles that burst and empty their contents (which
+nobody wants) upon the liberal air, or claws or prickers to catch on with
+to anything that goes. And once they have caught on, they are harder to get
+rid of than a Canadian "quarter."
+
+"And do you call this a desert?" cries Miss Kitty. "Why, millions of
+creatures live here! Look at the footprints of all the little beasties.
+They must eat and drink."
+
+"That is the cheek of us humans," said Tom. "We call our forests solitudes
+because _we_ have never shown up there before. Precious little we were
+missed. This desert subsisted its own population, and asked no favors
+of irrigation, till man came and overstocked it, and upset its domestic
+economies. When the sheep-men and the cattle-men came with their foreign
+mouths to fill, the wild natives had to scatter and forage for food, and
+trot back and forth to the river for drink. They have to travel miles now
+to one they went before. Hence all these desert thoroughfares."
+
+And he showed us in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and a
+horned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopher
+skipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their own
+broad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break in
+the cañon wall, where the thirsty tracks went down.
+
+We plodded along, and having with much deliberation taken the wrong road,
+we found ourselves about nightfall at the bottom of the cañon, in a perfect
+cul-de-sac. The bluffs ahead of us crowded close to the river, stretching
+their rocky knees straight down into deep water, and making no lap at all
+for our wagon to go over. And now, with this sweet prospect before us, it
+came on steadily to rain. The men made camp in the slippery darkness, while
+we sat in the wagon, warm and dry, and thanked our stars there were still a
+few things left that men could do without our aid or competition. Presently
+a lantern flashed out, and spots of light shifted over them as they
+slaved--pounding tent-pegs, and scraping stones away from places where our
+blankets were to be spread, hacking and hewing among the wet willows, and
+grappling with stovepipes and tent-poles; and the harder they worked the
+better their spirits seemed to be.
+
+"I wish some of the people who used to know Cecil Harshaw in England could
+see him now," said Kitty.
+
+"What did he do in England?" I asked.
+
+"He didn't hammer stovepipes and carry kitchen-boxes and cut fire-wood, you
+know."
+
+"Don't you like to see men use their muscle?" I asked her. "Very few of
+them are reflective to any purpose at his age."
+
+"Why, how old, or how young, do you take him to be?"
+
+"I think you spoke of him as a boy, if I remember."
+
+"If I called him a boy, it was out of charity for his behavior. He's within
+six months of my own age."
+
+"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed.
+
+"It's always 'girls' and 'men,'" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a man
+now, he never will be."
+
+I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. _I_ thought
+Cecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly,
+so very far amiss with his behavior.
+
+"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Daly, to defend him, I am sure. I suppose he
+could do no less than propose to me, after he had brought me out to marry a
+man who didn't appear to be quite ready; and if it had to be done, it was
+best to do it quickly."
+
+So _that_ was what she had been threshing out between whiles? I might have
+tried to answer her, but now the little tent among the willows began to
+glow with fire and candlelight, and a dark shape loomed against it. It was
+Cecil Harshaw, bareheaded, with an umbrella, coming to escort us in to
+supper.
+
+I never saw such a pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night,
+nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance across
+the table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either the
+beginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction.
+
+I shall have to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't go
+on by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawl
+out of the cañon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriously
+to walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk with
+us; and how Kitty made it difficult for him to walk with both of us by
+staving on ahead, with the step of a young Atalanta. I was so provoked with
+her that I let her take her pace and I took mine. Fancy a woman of my age
+racing a girl of her build and constitution seven miles to Broadlands! Poor
+Harshaw was cruelly torn between us, but he manfully stuck to his duty. He
+would not abandon the old lady even for the pleasure of running after the
+young one, though I absolved him many times, and implored him to leave me
+to my fate. I take pride in recording his faithfulness, and I see now why
+I have always liked him. He wears well, particularly when things are most
+harassing.
+
+It certainly was hard upon him when I gave out completely, toiling through
+the sand, and sat down to rest on the door-stone of a placer-miner's
+cabin (cabin closed and miner gone), and nowhere through the hot, morning
+stillness could we catch a sound or a sight of the runaway. I could almost
+hear his heart beat, and his eyes and ears and all his keen young senses
+were on a stretch after that ridiculous girl. But he kept up a show of
+interest in my remarks, and paid every patient attention to my feeble
+wants, without an idea of how long it might be my pleasure to sit there.
+It was not long, however it may have seemed to him, before we heard
+wagon-wheels booming down a little side-cañon between the hills. The team
+had managed to drag the wagon up through a scrubby gulch that looked
+like no thoroughfare, but which opened into a very fair way out of our
+difficulties.
+
+When we had come within sight of Broadlands Ferry, all aboard except Kitty,
+and still not a sign nor a sound of her, our hearts began to soften toward
+that willful girl.
+
+Tom requested Harshaw to jump out and see if he couldn't round up his
+countrywoman. But Harshaw rather haughtily resigned--in favor of a better
+man, he said. Then Tom stood up in the wagon and gave the camp call,
+"Yee-ee-ip! yee-ip, ye-ip!" a brazen, barbarous hoot. Kitty clapped both
+hands to her ears when she was first introduced to it, but it did not fetch
+her now. Tom "yee-iped" again, and as we listened there she was, strolling
+toward us through the greasewood, with the face of a May morning! She
+wouldn't give us the satisfaction of seeing her run, but her flushed
+cheeks, damp temples, and quick, sighing breath betrayed her. She _had_
+been running fast enough.
+
+"Kitty," I said severely, "there are rattlesnakes among those rocks."
+
+"Are there?" she answered serenely. "But I wasn't looking for rattlesnakes,
+you know. See what lovely things I did find! I've got the 'prospecting'
+fever already."
+
+She had filled her pockets with specimens of obsidian, jaspers, and
+chalcedonies, of colors most beautiful, with a deep-dyed opaqueness, a
+shell-fracture, and a satiny polish like jade. And she consulted us about
+them very prettily--the little fraud! Of course she was instantly forgiven.
+
+But I notice that since our arrival at Broadlands, Harshaw has not troubled
+her with his attentions. They might be the most indifferent strangers, for
+all that his manner implies. And if she is not pleased with the change, she
+ought to be, for she has made her wishes plain.
+
+
+II
+
+Camp at the Thousand Springs. A little grass peninsula running out between
+the river and a narrow lagoon, a part of Decker's ranch, two miles by water
+below the Springs and half a mile from Decker's Ferry, set all about with
+a hedge of rose, willow, and wild-currant bushes, sword-grass, and tall
+reeds,--the grasses enormous, like Japanese decorations,--crossing the
+darks of the opposite shore and the lights of the river and sky. Our tents
+are pitched, our blankets spread in the sun, our wagon is soaking its tired
+feet in the river. Tom and Harshaw are up-stream somewhere, fishing for
+supper. Billings is bargaining with Old Man Decker for the "keep" of his
+team. Kitty and I are enjoying ourselves. There is a rip in one of the back
+seams of my jacket, Kitty tells me, but even that cannot move me.
+
+I say we are enjoying ourselves; but my young guest has developed a new
+mood of late which gives poignancy to my growing tenderness for the girl.
+She has kept up wonderfully, with the aid of her bit of a temper, for which
+I like her none the less. How she will stand this idleness, monotony, and
+intimacy, with the accent of beauty pressing home, I cannot say. I rather
+fear for her.
+
+The screws have been tightened on her lately by something that befell at
+the Harshaw ranch. Our road lay past the place, and Harshaw had to stop for
+his surveying instruments, also to pack a bag, he said,--with apologies for
+keeping us waiting.
+
+I think we were all a little nervous as we neared the house. Very few women
+could have spelled the word "home" out of those rough masculine premises. I
+wondered if Kitty was not offering up a prayer of thanksgiving for the life
+she had been delivered from.
+
+Harshaw jumped down, and, stooping under the wire fence, ran across the
+alfalfa stubble to the house as fast as he could for the welcome of a
+beautiful young setter dog--Maisie he called her--that came wildly out to
+meet him. A woman--not a nice-looking woman--stood at the door and watched
+him, and even at our distance from them there was something strange in
+their recognition.
+
+Kitty began to talk and laugh with forced coolness. Tom turned the horses
+sharply, so that the wagon's shadow lay on the roadside, away from the
+house. "Get out, hadn't you better?" he suggested, in the tone of a
+command. We got out, and Kitty asked for her sketching-bag.
+
+"Kitty," I whispered, pointing to the house, "draw _that_, and send it to
+your mother. She will never ask again why you didn't care to live there."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," she retorted coldly. "I would have lived
+there, or anywhere, with the right person."
+
+There was no such person. I couldn't help saying it.
+
+She is very handsome when she looks down, proud and a trifle sullen when
+you "touch her on the raw," as the men say.
+
+"But there _is_ such a person, Kitty," I ventured. I had ventured, it
+seemed, too far.
+
+"You are my hostess. Your house is my only home. Don't be his accomplice!"
+I thought it rather well said.
+
+Now that woman's clothes were hanging on the line (and very common-looking
+clothes they were), so she could not have been a casual guest. Moreover,
+she was pacing the hard ground in front of the house, and staring at us
+with a truculent yet uneasy air. Curiosity was strong, and a sort of anger
+possessed me against the place and everybody connected with it.
+
+When Cecil came out, looking very hot and confused for him, who is always
+so fresh and gay, I inquired, rather shortly perhaps, "Who is your
+visitor?"
+
+"I have no visitor," he answered me, as cool as you please. But there was
+a protest in his eye. I was determined not to spare him or any of the
+Harshaws.
+
+"Your housekeeper, then?"
+
+"I have no housekeeper."
+
+"Who is the lady stopping at your house?"
+
+"I have no house."
+
+"Your cousin's house, then?"
+
+"If you refer to the person I was talking to--she is my cousin's
+housekeeper, I suppose."
+
+Tom gave me a look, and I thought it time to let the subject drop. This was
+in Kitty's presence, though apparently she neither saw nor heard. I walked
+on ahead of the wagon, so angry that I was almost sick. Instantly Harshaw
+joined me, with a much nicer, brighter look upon his face.
+
+"Mrs. Daly," he said, "I want to beg your pardon. I could not answer your
+question before Miss Comyn. The lady, as you were pleased to call her, is
+Mrs. Harshaw, _my cousin_--Micky's wife, you understand."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+"Day before yesterday, she tells me. They were married at Bliss."
+
+"Well, I should say it was 'Bliss' for Kitty Comyn that _she_ is not Mrs.
+Harshaw--too," I was about to add, but that would be going rather far. "And
+what did you want to bring that girl over here for?"
+
+"Mrs. Daly, I have told you,--I thought she loved him."
+
+"And what of his love for her?"
+
+"Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has
+married! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be
+the deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that."
+
+Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what the
+saving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have been
+offered up to that end?
+
+"You leave out one small feature of the case," said Harshaw, with a sick
+and burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love her
+myself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man,
+she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But I
+didn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! I
+couldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smash
+things. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing,
+but I had to do something."
+
+I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I did
+say to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-century
+young Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of his
+simple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was,
+or how promptly she had been succeeded.
+
+"But just now you said you wanted her to know the truth."
+
+"Not the whole truth. Great Scott! she knows enough. No need to rub it in."
+
+"She knows just enough about this to misunderstand, perhaps. In justice
+to yourself--she heard you beating about the bush--do you want her to
+misunderstand you?"
+
+"Oh, hang me! I don't expect her to understand me, or even tolerate me,
+yet. Mine is a waiting race, Mrs. Daly."
+
+"Very well; you can wait," I said. "But news like this will not wait. She
+will be obliged to hear it; you don't know how or where she may hear it.
+Better let her hear it first in as decent a way as possible."
+
+"But there is no decent way. How can I explain to you, or you to her,
+such a measly affair as this? It began with a question of money he owed
+that woman on the ranch. He bought it of her,--and a cruel bad bargain it
+was,--and he never could make his last payment. She has threatened him,
+and played the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. His
+governor would have helped him out; but, you see, Micky has been a rather
+expensive boy, and he has given the old gentleman to understand that the
+place is paid for,--to account for money sent him at various times for that
+ostensible purpose,--and on that basis the bargain was struck, between
+our governors, for my interest in the ranch. My father bought me in, on a
+clear title, as Uncle George represented it, in perfect good faith. I've
+never said a word, on the old gentleman's account; and Micky has never
+dared undeceive his father, who is the soul of honor in business, as in
+everything else. I am sorry to bore you with family affairs; but it's
+rather rum the way Micky's fate has caught up with him, through his one
+weakness of laziness, and perhaps lying a little, when he was obliged to.
+How this affair came about so suddenly I can't say. Didn't like to ask her
+too many questions; and Micky, poor devil, faded from view directly he saw
+us coming. But at a venture: she had heard he was going to be married, and
+came down here to make trouble when he should arrive with his bride; but he
+came back alone, disgusted with life, and found her here. It was easier to
+marry her than--pay her, we'll say. She has been something over-generous,
+perhaps. She would rather have had him, any time, than her money, and now
+was the time. She took advantage of a weak moment."
+
+"A weak and a spiteful moment," I kindly added. "Now if he hastens the news
+to England, and the Percifers hear of it in New York, how pleasant for
+Kitty to have all her friends hear that _he_ is married and _she_ is not!"
+
+"Great Heavens!" said the young fellow, "if she would let me hasten the
+news--that she is married to me!"
+
+"Why don't you appeal to her pride and her spirit now while they are in the
+dust? Why do you bother with sentiment now?"
+
+I liked him so much at that moment that I would have had him have Kitty, no
+matter what way he got her.
+
+"Yes," he said; "why not take advantage of her, as everybody else has
+done?"
+
+"Some people's scrupulousness comes rather late," I said.
+
+"To those who don't understand," he had the brazenness to say. "What is
+done is done. It's a rough beginning--awfully rough on her. The end must
+atone somehow. If I don't win her I shall be punished enough; but if I do,
+it will be because she loves me. And pray God"--He stopped, with that look.
+It is a number of years since a young man has looked at me in that way, but
+a woman does not forget.
+
+It was rather difficult telling to Kitty the story of her old lover's
+marriage, as I took it on myself to do. Not that she winced perceptibly;
+but I fear she has taken the thing home, and is dwelling on it--certain
+features of it--in a way that can do no good. From a word she lets slip now
+and then, I gather that she is brooding over that fancy of hers that Cecil
+Harshaw offered himself by way of reparation, as she was falling between
+two stools,--her own home and her lover's,--to save her from the ground.
+As since that rainy night in the wagon she has never distinctly referred
+to this theory of his conduct, I have no excuse for bringing it up, even
+to attack it. In fact, I dare not; she is in too complicated a mood. And,
+after all, why should I want her to marry either of them? Why should the
+"hungry generations" tread her down? She is nice enough to stay as she is.
+
+Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped to
+confirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw's disinterestedness.
+
+At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many such
+places, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo)
+Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavy
+sand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drank
+with such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, and
+putting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breast
+pocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and the
+river had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick,
+and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. We
+saw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, which
+he caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; and
+precious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on,
+smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwing
+off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to
+follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less
+realized it--his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch;
+the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot
+where the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore.
+
+I am sorry to say that my husband's first words to the man he may be said
+to have saved from death were, "You young fool, what did you do that for?"
+
+"For this," Harshaw panted, slapping his wet breast.
+
+"For a pocket-book! Great Sign! What had you in it? I wouldn't have done
+that for the whole of the Snake River valley."
+
+"Nor I," laughed Harshaw.
+
+"Nor the Bruneau to boot."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"What did you do it for, then?"
+
+"For this," Harshaw repeated.
+
+"For a piece of pasteboard with a girl's face on it, or some such toy, I'll
+be sworn!"
+
+Harshaw did not deny the soft impeachment.
+
+"I didn't know you had a girl, Harshaw," Tom began seductively.
+
+"Well, I haven't, you know," said Harshaw. "There was one I wanted badly
+enough, a few years ago," he added with engaging frankness.
+
+"When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of second
+dentition?"
+
+"Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed."
+
+"Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I'd keep out of that Snake
+River," my husband advised.
+
+Kitty's face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy.
+
+"Do _you_ know who Harshaw's 'girl' was?" I asked her the other night, as
+we were undressing,--without an idea that she wouldn't see where the joke
+came in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtains
+of our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kitty
+worships there awhile every night before she goes to bed.
+
+"No," she said. "I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the families
+that have always known each other." The simple child! She hadn't understood
+him, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can't make out whether
+she is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yet
+the cleverness of a young girl's mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainly
+in spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon that
+precious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty.
+Great good may it do her!
+
+The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facing
+west across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of the
+day and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has no
+use for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does draw
+it; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons,
+and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, in
+moonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will,
+she never can do it.
+
+"Oh, you exquisite, hopeless thing! Why can't I let you alone!" she cries;
+"and why can't you let _me_ alone!"
+
+"It is rather hard, the way the thing doubles up on you," says Tom.
+"The real fall, right side up, is bad enough; but when it comes to the
+reflection of it, standing on its head in the lagoon, I should lie right
+down myself. I wouldn't pull another pound."
+
+("_Lay_ down," he said; but I thought you wouldn't stand it. Tom would
+never spoil a cherished bit of dialect because of shocking anybody with his
+grammar.)
+
+Kitty throws herself back in the dry salt-grass with which the whole of
+our little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains,
+through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sun
+rises long before we see him, above the dark-blue mountains beyond the
+shore.
+
+"Won't somebody repeat
+
+  'There is sweet music here that softlier lies?'"
+
+Kitty asks, letting her eyelashes fall on her sun-flushed cheeks. Her face,
+as I saw it, sitting behind her in the grass, was so pretty--upside down
+like the reflection of the waterfall, its colors all the more wonderfully
+blended.
+
+We did not all speak at once. Then Harshaw said, to break the silence, "I
+will read it to you, if you don't mind."
+
+"Oh, have you the book?" Kitty asked in surprise.
+
+He went to his tent and returned with _a_ book, and sitting on the grass
+where she could hear but could not see him, he began. I trembled for him;
+but before he had got to the second stanza I was relieved: he could read
+aloud.
+
+"Now _there_ is a man one could live on a Snake River ranch with," I felt
+like saying to Kitty. Not that I am sure that I want her to.
+
+When he had finished,
+
+  "O rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more!"
+
+Tom remarked, after a suitable silence, that it was all well enough for
+Harshaw, who would be in London in six weeks, to say, "We will not wander
+more!" But how about the rest of us?
+
+Kitty sat straight up at that.
+
+"Will Mr. Harshaw be in London six weeks from now?" The question was almost
+a cry.
+
+"Will you?" she demanded, turning upon him as if this was the last injury
+he could do her.
+
+"I suppose so," he said.
+
+"And you will see my mother, and all of them?"
+
+"I think so--if you wish."
+
+She rose up, as if she could bear no more. Harshaw waited an instant, and
+then followed her; but she motioned him back, and went away to have it out
+with herself alone.
+
+I took up the book Harshaw had left on the grass. It was "Copp's
+Manual"--"For the use of Prospectors," etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After all, it is not so sure that Harshaw will go to London. There has been
+an engineer on the ground since last summer, when all this water was free.
+He has located a vast deal of it, perhaps the whole. Tom says he can hold
+only just as much as he can use; I hope there will be no difference of
+opinion on that point. There generally is a difference of opinion on points
+of location when the thing located is proved to have any value. The prior
+locator has gone East, they tell us at the ranch, on a business visit,
+presumably to raise capital for his scheme; which, as I understand it,
+is to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for
+irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping
+arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are
+clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing,
+creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was
+pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the plan is perfectly
+feasible.
+
+The wall of the river cañon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each
+story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters
+gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich
+under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that
+sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the
+bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and might
+the next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the pretty
+island between itself and the river. Winter and summer the volume of water
+never varies, and the rate of discharge is always the same, and the water
+is never cold, though I have just said it is. It looks cold until the rocks
+warm it with their gemlike tints, like a bride's jewels gleaming through
+her veil. Back of the bluffs, where it might be supposed to come from,
+there is nothing for a hundred miles but drought and desert plains. I don't
+care for any of their theories concerning its source. It is better as it
+is--the miracle of the smitten rock.
+
+You can fancy what wild presumption it must seem that a mere man should
+think to reverse those torrents and make them climb the bluff or cram them
+into an iron pipe and send them like paid laborers to hoist and pump and
+grind, and light the streets at Silver City, a hundred miles away. And how
+the cataracts will shout while these two pigmies compare their rival claims
+to ownership--in a force that with one stroke could lay them as flat as
+last year's leaves in the bottom of a mill-race!
+
+The particular fall my schemer has located for his own--other claims to be
+discussed hereafter--is called the "Snow Bank." He says he doesn't want the
+earth: this one cataract is enough for him. To look at the whole frontage
+of the springs and listen to their roar, one would think there might be
+water enough for them both, poor children! Hardly what you'd call two bites
+of a cherry!
+
+If the springs were the half of a broken diamond bracelet, the Snow Bank
+would be its brightest gem, lying separate in the case--perhaps the one
+that was the clasp. It is half hidden by the shoulder of a great barren
+bluff which, at a certain angle of the sun, throws a blue shadow over it.
+At other times the fall is almost too bright in its foaming whiteness for
+the eye to endure.
+
+Kitty is painting it with this shadow half across it; but the light shines
+upon it at its source. Tom is doubtful if she is showing the fall to the
+best advantage for his purpose, but he is obliging enough to let the artist
+try it in her own way first.
+
+"Go up there," she says, "and stand at the head of the spring, if you want
+to show by comparison how big it is, or how small you are."
+
+He goes, and gets in position, and Kitty makes some pencil-marks on the
+margin of her sketch. Then she waves her hands to tell him, across the
+shouting current, that she is done with him. She has been so quick that
+he thinks he must have mistaken her gesture. Then Harshaw makes the
+train-conductor's signal for the train to move on.
+
+"You see," she says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder,
+"_that_ would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal
+pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make
+a little black dot like that look like a man."
+
+"In this particular sketch, for his purpose, he'd rather look like a dot
+than a man, I dare say," said Harshaw.
+
+"Well, shall I put him in? I can make a note of it on the margin: 'This
+black dot is Mr. Daly, standing at the spring-head. He is six feet'"--
+
+"But he isn't, you know," Harshaw says. "He's five feet ten--if he's that."
+
+"Ten and a half," I hasten to amend.
+
+Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate it
+under the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into the
+lagoon--not _our_ lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovely
+Sand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves,
+before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by the
+lagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres,
+not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, propping
+up a large hop-vine, showed against a mass of birch and cottonwood on the
+river side of the island.
+
+"What a place for a honeymoon!" said I.
+
+"There is material there for half of a honeymoon," said Tom--"not bad
+material, either."
+
+"Oh, yes," I said; "we have seen her--that is, we have seen her sunbonnet."
+
+"Kitty, you've got a rival," I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre of
+the island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank,
+_our_ Snow Bank, was an artist's big white umbrella.
+
+"Why should I not have, in a place like this?" she said. "If the schemers
+arrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? _We_ shall leave it as we
+find it; we don't intend to carry it away in our pockets." She stopped, and
+blushed disdainfully. "I forgot," she murmured, "my own mercenary designs."
+
+"I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, may
+I ask?" Harshaw had turned on his side on the grass, and half rose on one
+elbow as he looked at her.
+
+"That is strange," mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. "You have always
+been so interested in my affairs!"
+
+"I always shall be," he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness.
+
+"I ought to be so grateful."
+
+"But unfortunately you are not."
+
+"I should be grateful--if you would move a little farther to the right, if
+you please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to water
+her horses again."
+
+Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe,
+and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently,
+as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet,
+the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped to
+drink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pink
+sunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep blue
+sky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon.
+
+There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the other
+note, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnet
+would be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as I
+had seen it.
+
+"_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you see
+the face inside it."
+
+"Have you seen it?"
+
+"Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her,
+as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?"
+
+"As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" I
+requested to be told.
+
+"Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one.
+She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history of
+every live enterprise."
+
+"Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't see
+what his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet.
+
+"I don't say that it's always on business," Tom threw in significantly.
+
+"Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business with
+her?" I demanded.
+
+"I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone," said Tom,
+"inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines.
+She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girl
+who lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was an
+artist--one of the great unappreciated"--
+
+"So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted.
+
+"Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listened
+to my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He had
+made a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with the
+world on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She was
+somebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informality
+about the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They both
+died, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant,
+though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned."
+
+"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"
+
+"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail.' She is the owner of
+something else we do want--this piece of ground,"--he looked about him and
+waved his hand,--"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand.
+And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won't
+lease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of that
+piece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery and
+nonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridge
+the lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there."
+
+"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe
+her off the face of the earth--abolish her and her pretty island at one
+fell swoop?"
+
+"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven't
+approached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch."
+
+"So good of you!" I murmured.
+
+"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house."
+
+"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing
+for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such
+grasping profanation."
+
+"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her,--I wouldn't ask
+him to woo her in cold blood,--it would be a monstrous convenient way to
+settle it."
+
+"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone.
+"They are not pretty things to say, in the first place."
+
+"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it time
+somebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for the
+joys of life on the crumbs of her society."
+
+"Do you suppose she cares whom he talks to, or whom he spends his time
+with?"
+
+"Perhaps she doesn't care. I should like to give her a chance to see if she
+cares, that's all."
+
+Tom's location notice being plain for all eyes to read, the mistress of
+the island naturally inquired what he wanted with the Snow Bank; and he,
+thinking she would see at once the value to her ranch of such a neighboring
+enterprise, frankly told her of his scheme. Nothing of its scientific
+interest, its difficulties, its commercial value, even its benefit to
+herself, appealed to the little islander. To her it was simply an attempt
+to alter and ruin the spot she loved best on earth; to steal her beautiful
+waterfall and carry it away in an ugly iron pipe. Whether the thing could
+be done, she did not ask herself; the design was enough. Never would she
+lend herself, or anything that was hers, to such an impious desecration!
+This was her position, which any child might have taken in defense of a
+beloved toy; but she was holding it with all a woman's force and constancy.
+
+I was glad of it, I said to Tom, and I hoped she would stand them off
+for all she was worth. But I am not really glad. What woman could love
+a waterfall better than her husband's success? There are hundreds of
+waterfalls in the world, but only this one scheme for Tom.
+
+But anent this hitch, it teases me a little, I confess, on Kitty's account,
+when Cecil meanders over to the island at all hours of the day. To be sure,
+it relieves Kitty of his company; but is she so glad, after all, to be
+relieved?
+
+It was last Friday, after one of Harshaw's entirely frank but perfectly
+unexplained absences, that he came into camp and inquired if there was any
+clam-broth left in the kitchen. I referred him to the cook. Finding there
+was, he returned to me and asked if he might take a tin of it to Miss
+Malcolm for her patient.
+
+"Who is Miss Malcolm?" I asked. But of course who could she be but the lady
+of the island, where he spends the greater part of his time? He was welcome
+to the clam-broth, or anything else he thought would be acceptable in that
+quarter, I said. And how was the patient?
+
+"Oh, she's quite bad all the time. She doesn't get about. I wonder if
+you'd mind, Mrs. Daly, if I asked you to look in on her some day? The old
+creature's in a sad way, it seems to me."
+
+Of course I didn't mind, if Miss Malcolm did not. Harshaw seemed to feel
+authorized to assure me of that fact. So I went first with Tom, and then I
+went again alone, leaving Harshaw in the boat with Kitty.
+
+Miss Malcolm's maid or man servant, or both--for she does the work of both,
+and looks in her bed (dressed in a flannel bed-sack, her head tied up in
+an old blue knitted "fascinator") less like a woman than anything I ever
+beheld--appears to have had a mild form of grippe fever, and having never
+been sick in her life before, she thought she was nearing her end. My
+simple treatment, the basis of which was quinine and whiskey, seemed to
+strike old Tamar favorably; and after the second visit there was no need to
+come again to see her. But by this time I was deep in the good books of her
+mistress, who knows too little of illness herself to appreciate how little
+has been done, by me at least, or how very little needed to be done after
+restoring the old woman's confidence in her power to live. (The last time I
+saw her she still wore the blue fascinator, but with a man's hat on top of
+it; she was waddling toward the cow-corral with half a haystack, it looked
+like, poised on a hay-fork above her head. She was certainly a credit to
+her doctor, if not to her _corsétière_, she and the haystack being much of
+a figure.)
+
+Miss Malcolm's innocent gratitude is most embarrassing, really painful,
+under the circumstances, and the poor child cannot let the circumstances
+alone. She imagines I am always thinking about Tom's scheme. It is evident
+that _she_ is; and not being exactly a woman of the world, out of the
+fullness of her heart her mouth speaketh. That would be all right if she
+would speak to somebody else. _I_ don't want to take advantage of her
+gratitude, as she seems determined I shall do.
+
+"You must think me a very strained, sentimental creature," she said to me
+the last time, "to care so much for a few old rocks and a little piece of
+foamy water."
+
+I didn't think so at all, I told her. If I had lived there all my life, I
+should feel about the place just as she did.
+
+Here she began to blush and distress herself. "But think how kind you have
+all been to me! Mr. Harshaw was here every day, after he found how ill poor
+Tamar was. He did so many things: he lifted her, for one thing, and that
+I couldn't have done to save her life. And your two visits have simply
+cured her! And here I am making myself a stumbling-block and ruining your
+husband's plans!"
+
+I said he was quite capable of taking care of himself.
+
+"Does your husband want _all_ the water?" she persisted. "Do I understand
+that he must have it all?"
+
+I supposed she was talking of the Snow Bank, and since she was determined
+we should discuss the affair in this social way, I said he would have
+to have a great deal; and I told her about the distance the power would
+have to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the rest
+of it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got started
+unintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. It
+is a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tom
+pretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the face
+of a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot.
+
+"It shall never go through,--not _that_ scheme--not if"--Then she
+remembered to whom she was talking, and set her lips together, and two
+great shiny drops stood in her eyes.
+
+"Don't, don't, you child!" I said. "Don't worry about their old scheme! If
+it must come it will come; but as a rule, a scheme, my dear, is the last
+thing that ever does go through. There's plenty of time."
+
+"But I can't give in," she said. "No; I _must_ try to hinder it all I
+can. I will be honest with you. I like you all; of all the strangers who
+have come here I never liked any people better. But your husband--must
+_not_--set his heart on _all_ that water! It doesn't belong to him."
+
+"Does it belong to you, dear?"
+
+"The _sight_ of it belongs to me," she said. "I will not have the place
+all littered up with their pipes and power-plants. Look out there! Look at
+that! Has any one the right to come here and spoil such a lovely thing as
+that?"--This is what it is to be the daughter of an artist.
+
+"And how about the other despoiler," I asked--"the young man with the
+pneumatic pipe?"
+
+"The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated.
+
+"'Pump,' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_
+pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that they
+incommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush them
+away as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls."
+
+"I do not own the bluffs," she said in a distant, tremulous voice.
+
+But the true answer to my question, as I surmise, was the sudden, helpless
+flush which rose, wave upon wave, covering her poor little face, blotting
+out all expression but that of painful girlish shame. Here, if I'm not
+mistaken, will be found the heart of the difficulty. Miss Malcolm's
+sympathies are evidently with compressed air rather than with electrical
+transmission. I shall tell Tom he need waste no more arguments on her. Let
+him first compound with his rival of the pump.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I suppose there is just such a low, big moon as this looking in upon you
+where you sit, you little dot of a woman, lost in the piazza perspectives
+of the Coronado; and you might think small things of our present
+habitation--a little tent among the bushes, with wind-blown weeds against
+the moon, shifting their shadow-patterns over our canvas walls. But you'd
+not think small things of our Sand Springs Fall by night, that glimmers on
+the dark cliff opposite--cliff, and mist-like cataract, and the low moon
+throwing the shadow of the bluff across it, all repeated in the stiller,
+darker picture of the lagoon. I shall not inflict much of this sort of
+thing upon you; but the senseless beauty of it all gives one a heartache.
+Why should it be here, where you and I shall never see it together--where
+I shall leave it soon, never to see it again? Tom says we are coming
+back--when the great scheme is under way. Ah, the scheme, the scheme! It
+looks very far away to-night, and so do some other schemes that I had set
+my heart on unaware, foolish old woman that I am. As if there was only one
+way in this--world for young men and women to be happy!
+
+Harshaw brought me your sweet letter yesterday. It was stage-day, and he
+went up over the bluffs to the ferry mail-box at the cross-roads, where the
+road to Shoshone Falls branches from the road to Bliss.
+
+I read to Kitty what you wrote me about the Garretts and their children,
+and the going to New York and then to Paris. (Thank you so much, dear, for
+your prompt interest in my little bride that isn't to be!) She had two
+letters of her own which she had read by herself, and afterward I thought
+she had been crying; but with her it is best not to press the note of
+sympathy. Neither does she like me to handle her affairs with gloves on,
+so to speak. So I plunged into the business in a matter-of-fact tone, and
+she replied in the same. Her objection is to going east to New York, and
+then to the other side. "I had rather stay in California," she said, "or
+anywhere in the West." Naturally; westward lies the way of escape from
+social complications.
+
+She is afraid of the Percifers, and of meeting people she knows in Paris.
+But an offer like this was exceptional in this part of the world, I
+reminded her. A nurse for the boy, a maid, and only two little girls of
+eight and ten on her hands; and such nice people as the Garretts, who have
+been all over the world!
+
+"Well," she said, "I should certainly like to get away from here as soon as
+possible. From _here_, not from _you_!" she added, looking me in the face.
+Her eyes were full of tears. We clasped hands on that.
+
+"What is it? Has anything else happened?" I asked; for I knew by her looks
+that something had.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I should so like to take myself and my troubles
+seriously once in a while. No sooner do I try, but something perfectly
+farcical is sure to happen. If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh.
+It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear!
+I'm so fond of him!"
+
+The "old dear," it seems, is Micky's father--a very superior sort of father
+for such a son to have, but accidents will happen in the best-regulated
+families. He is a gallant widower of fair estate, one of those splendid old
+club-men of London; a very expensive article of old gentleman, with fine
+old-fashioned manners and morals, and a few stray impulses left, it would
+seem by what follows. According to the father's code, the son has not
+conducted himself in his engagement to Kitty Comyn as a gentleman should.
+Thereupon the head of the house goes to Miss Kitty's mother and makes the
+_amende honorable_ by offering his hand and heart and fortune to his son's
+insulted bride! The mother is touched and pleased not a little by this
+prompt espousal of her daughter's cause; and having wiped away all tears
+from _her_ eyes, this gallant old gentleman is coming over to America, for
+the first time in his life, to make his proposal to the bride herself! He
+is not so old, to get down to particulars; sixty-three doesn't look so
+old to some of us as it does to Miss Kitty. He is in fine health, I doubt
+not, and magnificently preserved. Kitty's mother is not at all averse, as
+I gather, to this way of settling her child's difficulties. She rather
+pleadingly assures Kitty that Mr. Harshaw senior has solemnly sworn that
+this is no unpleasant duty he feels called on to perform; not only his
+honor, but his affections are profoundly enlisted in this proposal. Kitty
+has had for years a sacred place in his regard; and from thinking of her as
+a daughter absolutely after his own heart, it is but a step to think of her
+in a still nearer--the nearest--relation. He begs her mother to prepare her
+for no perfunctory offer of marriage, but one that warms with every day's
+delay till he can take the dear child under his lifelong protection. Not to
+punish or to redress does he come, but to secure for himself and posterity
+a treasure which his son had trampled under foot. Somehow we did not feel
+like laughing, after all. Kitty, I think, is a little frightened. She
+cannot reach her mother, even with a cable dispatch, before this second
+champion will arrive.
+
+"He's an awfully grand old fellow, you know. I could never talk to him as I
+do to the boys. If he thinks it his duty to marry me, I don't know if I can
+help myself. Poor Uncle George! I've always called him 'uncle' like his own
+nieces, who are all my friends. I never thought that I should be 'poor-ing'
+Uncle George! But he can't have heard yet of Micky's marriage. Fancy his
+going down to the ranch to stay with Micky and that woman! And then for a
+girl like me to toss him aside, after such a journey and such kindness! I
+don't know how I shall ever have courage to do it. There are fine women in
+London who would jump at the chance of being Mrs. Harshaw--not Mrs. Micky,
+nor Mrs. Stephen, nor Mrs. Sidney, but _Mrs. Harshaw_, you understand?" I
+understood.
+
+"And now," she said, producing the second letter, "you _will_ laugh! And
+you may!"
+
+The envelope contained a notification, in due form, of the arrival from New
+York, charges not paid, of some five hundred pounds of second-class freight
+consigned to Mrs. Harshaw, Harshaw's ranch, Glenn's Ferry (via Bisuka).
+
+"These things belong to me," said Kitty. "They cost me the last bit of
+money I had that was my own. Mrs. Percifer, who is so clever at managing,
+persuaded me I should need them directly on the ranch--curtains and rugs
+and china, and heaven knows what! She nearly killed me, dragging me about
+those enormous New York shops. She said it would be far and away cheaper
+and better to buy them there. I didn't mind about anything, I was so scared
+and homesick; I did whatever she said. She saw to getting them off, I
+suppose. That must have been her idea, directing them to Mrs. Harshaw. She
+thought there would be no Kitty Comyn, no _me_, when these got here. And
+there isn't; _this_ is not the Kitty Comyn who left England--six weeks, is
+it?--or six years ago!"
+
+"How did the letter reach you?" I asked. We examined the envelope. It bore
+the postmark, not of Bisuka, but of Glenn's Ferry, which is the nearest
+post-office to the Harshaw ranch. Micky's wife had doubtless opened the
+letter, and Micky, perceiving where the error lay, had reinclosed, but some
+one else had directed it--the postmaster, probably, at his request--to
+Kitty, at our camp. That was rather a nice little touch in Micky, that last
+about the direction.
+
+"Come, he is honest, at the least," I said, "whether Mrs. Micky would have
+scrupled or not. She could claim the things if she chose."
+
+"She is quite welcome," said Kitty. "I don't know what in the world I shall
+do with them. There'll be boxes and bales and barrels--enough to bury me
+and all my troubles. I might build me a funeral pyre!"
+
+We fell into each other's arms and screamed with laughter.
+
+"Kitty, we'll have an auction," I cried. "There's nothing succeeds like
+an auction out here. We'll sell the things at boom prices--we'll sell
+everything."
+
+"But the bride," said Kitty; "you will have to keep the bride." And without
+a moment's warning, from laughing till she wept, she began to weep in
+earnest. I haven't seen her cry so since she came to us, not even that
+miserable first night. She struggled with herself, and seemed dreadfully
+ashamed, and angry with me that I should have seen her cry. Did she suppose
+I thought she was crying because she wasn't going to be a bride, after all?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Daly, I feel so ill!" were Kitty's first words to me when I woke
+this morning. I looked her over and questioned her, and concluded that a
+sleepless night, with not very pleasant thoughts for company, might be held
+responsible for a good share of her wretchedness.
+
+"What were you lying awake about? Your new champion, Uncle George?" I asked
+her.
+
+She owned that it was. "Don't you see, Mrs. Daly, mamma doesn't leave room
+for the possibility of my refusing him. And if I do refuse him, he'll
+simply take me back to England, and then, between him and mamma, and all of
+them, I don't know what may happen."
+
+"Kitty," I said, "no girl who has just escaped from one unhappy engagement
+is going to walk straight into another with her eyes wide open. I won't
+believe you could be so foolish as that."
+
+"You don't understand," she said, "what the pressure will be at home--in
+all love and kindness, of course. And you don't know Uncle George. He is
+so sure that I need him, he'll force me to take him. He'll take me back to
+England in any case."
+
+"And would you not like to go, Kitty?"
+
+"Ah, wouldn't I! But not in that way."
+
+She sat up in her flannel camp-gown, and began to braid up her loosened
+hair.
+
+"Kitty," I commanded, "lie down. You are not to get up till luncheon."
+
+"I have a plan," she said, "and I must see Cecil Harshaw; he must help me
+carry it out. There is no one else who can."
+
+"You have all day to see him in."
+
+"Not all day, Mrs. Daly. He must be ready to start to-morrow. Uncle George
+will reach Bisuka on the fifteenth, not later. Cecil must meet him there;
+first, to prepare him for Micky's new arrangement, and second, to persuade
+him that he does not owe me an offer of marriage in consequence. Cecil
+will know how to manage it; he must know! I will not have any more of the
+Harshaws offering themselves as substitutes. It will be very strange if I
+cannot exist without them somehow."
+
+It struck me that the poor child's boast was a little premature, as she
+seemed to be making rather free use of one of the substitutes still, as
+a shield against the others; but it was of a piece with the rest of the
+comedy. I kept her in bed till she had had a cup of tea; afterward she
+slept a little, and about noon she dressed herself and gave Cecil his
+audience. But first, at her request, I had possessed him with the main
+facts and given him an inkling of what was expected of him. His face
+changed; he looked as he did after his steeplechase the day I saw him
+first,--except that he was cleaner,--grave, excited, and resolved. He had
+taken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a cause
+like this! I would have left them to have their little talk by themselves,
+but Kitty signified peremptorily that she wished me to stay, with a
+flushed, appealing look that softened the nervous tension of her manner.
+
+"I would do anything on earth for you, Kitty," Cecil said most gently and
+fervently; "but don't ask me to give advice--to Uncle George of all men--on
+a question of this kind--unless you will allow me to be perfectly frank."
+
+"It's a family question," said Kitty, ignoring his proviso.
+
+"I think it would get to be a personal question very soon between Uncle
+George and me. No; I meddled in one family question not very long ago."
+
+"It's very strange," said Kitty restlessly, "if you can't help me out
+of this in some way. I cannot be so disrespectful to him, the dear old
+gentleman! He ought not to be put in such a position, or I either. How
+would you like it if it were your father?"
+
+Cecil reddened handsomely at this home thrust. "I'd have a deuce of a time
+to stop him if he took the notion, you know; it's not exactly a son's or a
+nephew's business. There is only one way in which I can help you, Kitty.
+You must know that."
+
+He had struck a different key, and his face was all one blush to correspond
+with the new note in his voice. I think I never saw a manlier, more
+generous warmth of ardor and humility, or listened to words so simply
+uttered in such telling tones.
+
+"What way is that?" asked Kitty coldly.
+
+"Forgive me! I could tell him that you are engaged to me."
+
+"That would be a nice way--to tell him a falsehood! I should hope I had
+been humiliated enough"--
+
+She snatched her handkerchief from her belt and pressed it to her burning
+face. I rose again to go. "Sit still, pray!" she murmured.
+
+
+"It need not be a falsehood, Kitty. Let it be anything you like. You may
+trust me not to take advantage. A nominal engagement, if you choose, just
+to meet this exigency; or"--
+
+"That would be cheating," cried Kitty.
+
+"The cheat would bear a little harder on me than on any one else, I think."
+
+"You are too good!" Kitty smiled disdainfully. "First you offer yourself to
+me as a cure, and now as a preventive."
+
+"Kitty, I think you ought at least to take him seriously," I remonstrated.
+
+"By all that's sacred, you'll find it's serious with me!" Cecil ejaculated.
+
+"Since when?" retorted Kitty. "How many weeks ago is it that I came out
+here by your contrivance to marry your cousin? Is that the way a man shows
+his seriousness? You sacrificed more to marry me to Micky than some men
+would to win a girl themselves."
+
+"I did, and for that very reason," said Cecil.
+
+"I should like to see you prove it!"
+
+"Kitty, excuse me," I interrupted. "_I_ should like to ask Mr. Harshaw one
+question, if he does not mind. Do you happen to have that picture about
+you, Mr. Harshaw?"
+
+I thought I was looking at him very kindly, not at all like an inquisitor,
+but his face was set and stern. I doubt if he perceived or looked for my
+intention.
+
+"'That picture,' Mrs. Daly?" he repeated.
+
+"The photograph of a young lady that you jumped into the river to
+save--don't you remember?"
+
+Cecil smiled slightly, and glanced at Kitty. "Did I say it was a photograph
+of a lady?"
+
+"No; you did not. But do you deny that it was?"
+
+"Certainly not, Mrs. Daly. I have the picture with me; I always have it."
+
+"And do you think _that_ looks like seriousness? To be making such
+protestations to one girl with the portrait of another in your coat pocket?
+We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by the
+river."
+
+He saw my meaning now, and thanked me with a radiant look. "Here is the
+picture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely _you_ might
+have known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago and have wanted ever
+since; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I tried
+to save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because I
+thought she loved him. Or, if he couldn't be saved, I wanted to expose him
+and save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I was
+for my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself for
+your sake, Kitty."
+
+I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobody
+tried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as the
+little water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees beside
+her, whispering, "I stole it from Micky's room at the ranch. That was no
+place for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?"
+
+I think he will get one--of his own Kitty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our rival schemer, Mr. Norman Fleet, has arrived, and electrical
+transmission has shaken hands with compressed air. The millennium must be
+on the way, for never did two men want so nearly the same thing, and yet
+agree to take each what the other does not need.
+
+Mr. Fleet does not "want the earth," either, nor all the waters thereof;
+but the most astonishing thing is, he doesn't want the Snow Bank! He not
+only doesn't want it himself, but is perfectly willing that Tom should have
+it. In fact, do what we will, it seems to be impossible for us to tread on
+the tail of that young man's coat. But having heard a little bird whisper
+that he is in love, and successfully so, I am not so surprised at his
+amiability. Neither am I altogether unprepared, if the little bird's
+whisper be true, for the fact that Miss Malcolm is becoming reconciled to
+Tom's designs upon her beloved scenery. For the sake of consistency, and
+that pure devotion to the Beautiful, so rare in this sordid age, I could
+have wished that she had not weakened so suddenly; but for Tom's sake I am
+very glad. She is clay in the hands of the potter, now that she knows my
+husband does not want "all the water," and that his success does not mean
+the failure of Mr. Norman Fleet.
+
+Harshaw will take the Snow Bank scheme when he takes Kitty back to London.
+If he promotes it, I tell Tom, after the fashion in which he "boomed"
+Kitty's marriage to his cousin, we're not likely to see either him or the
+Snow Bank again. But "Harshaw is all right," Tom says; and I believe that
+the luck is with him.
+
+
+
+
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