Hope Hathaway Part 22

There at the foot of the first page the girl stopped, a sudden terror coming over her.

"_What have I done!_" she cried, crus.h.i.+ng the letter in her hand. "_What have I done!_" Hysterically she began tearing it into small pieces, throwing them upon the ground.

"Now we can't give it back to him," deplored the twin, recovering from his fright.

"What have I done?" repeated the girl again, softly. Then in an agony of remorse she went down upon her knees in the cool gra.s.s and picked up each tiny sc.r.a.p of paper, putting it all back into the envelope. She stood for a moment looking down the long green slope below, shamed, disgusted--a world of misery showing in her dark eyes. "You're a mighty fine specimen of womanhood!" she exclaimed aloud; then turning about suddenly became aware that her small audience was watching her with some interest.

"You boys get on your ponies and go right straight home!" she exclaimed in a burst of temper. "You're very bad, both of you, and I've a good notion to punish you!" She went into the school-house and slammed the door, while the twins lost no time in leaving the premises. Not far away they met old Jim McCullen.

"Where's your teacher?" he asked, stopping his horse in the road.

"She's back there," said the soft-voiced twin, pointing toward the school-house. "But you'd better stay away, for she's got blood in her eye to-day!"

"No wonder, you young devils!" laughed Jim, riding on.

He knocked at the school-house door and, receiving no answer, walked in.

"Oh, Jim!" exclaimed the girl, rising from the small table at the end of the room. "I thought it was some of the children returning. I'm awfully glad to see you! You've been gone an age. Come, sit down here in this chair, I'm afraid those seats aren't large enough for you."

"I'll just sit on this here recitation bench," replied Jim, "that's what you call it, ain't it? I want to see how it feels to be in school again.

I reckon it'll hold me all right."

He seated himself with some care, while the teacher sank back at her table.

"You don't seem very pert-lookin', Hopie," he continued, noticing her more carefully. "What's the matter?"

She looked down at her papers, then up at him with something of a smile.

"I'm twenty years old," she replied, "and I don't know as much as I did ten years ago."

"You know too much," replied McCullen. "You know too much to be happy, an' you think too much. You wasn't happy at home, so you come up here, an' now your gittin' the same way here. You'll have to git married, Hopie, an' settle down; there ain't no other way."

"Mercy!" exclaimed the girl, "that would settle me sure enough! What a horrible proposition to consider! Just look at my mother--beset with nervousness and unrest; look at that poor Mrs. Cresmond and a dozen others--perfect slaves to their husbands. Look at Clarice--she never knew a moment's happiness until Henry Van Rensselaer died! Yes, I think marriage _settles_ a girl all right! What terrible mismated failures on every hand! It's simply appalling, Jim! I've never yet known one perfectly happy couple, and how any girl who sees this condition about her, everywhere, can dream her own ideal love dream, picture her ideal man, and plan and believe in an ideal life, while she herself is surrounded by such pitiful object-lessons, is a wonder!"

"I ain't much of a philosopher," said old Jim, "but it's always been my notion that most wimmen _don't_ see what's goin' on around 'em. They think their own troubles is worse'n anybody's an' 're so taken up whinin' over 'em that their view is somewhat obstructed. Take the clear-headed person that _can_ see, an' they ain't a-goin' to run into any matrimonial fire, no more'n I'm goin' to head my horse over a cut-bank. They're goin' straight after the happiness they know exists, an' they ain't goin' to make no mistake about it neither, if they've got any judgment, whatever."

"What made my mother marry my father?" asked the girl, lifting up her head and facing old Jim squarely. "That's the worst specimen of ill-a.s.sorted marriages I know of."

Jim McCullen looked perplexed for an instant.

"I don't think that was in the beginning," he replied thoughtfully, "but your mother got to hankerin' after her city life, her b.a.l.l.s an' theaters an' the like o' that. After she got a fall from her horse an' couldn't ride no more she didn't seem to take interest in anything at the ranch, an' kept gettin' more nervous all the time. I reckon her health had something to do with it, an' then she got weaned from the ranch, bein'

away so much. It wasn't her life any more."

"And now even her visits there are torture to her," said Hope bitterly.

"She is drunk with the deadly wine of frivolous uselessness--society!"

Then sadly, "What a wealth of happiness she might have possessed had she chosen wisely!"

"But she was like a s.h.i.+p without a rudder; she didn't have no one to guide her, an' now she thinks she's happy, I reckon," remarked McCullen, adding, after a pause, "If she thinks at all!"

"And poor Clarice was a baby when _she_ married," mused the girl.

"And that Cresmond woman always was a blame fool," concluded Jim. "So there's hope for you yet, don't you reckon there is? That reminds me, here's a letter from O'Hara. There's a nice fellow for you, Hopie."

"Yes, he's a good boy, Larry is," she remarked absently, taking the letter he handed to her.

"Why, he says he is coming over here to stay awhile with Sydney, and he hopes I won't be----" She smiled a little and tucked the letter in her belt. "That'll keep," she said. "Come on, I'm going over to camp with you, Jim."

CHAPTER XIX

"Your horse don't look very tired," remarked the girl as they rode easily up the gulch toward Carter's camp. "When did you start?"

"Left 'bout noon," replied McCullen. "No, he ain't tired; ain't even warm, be you, old man? Just jogged along easy all the way an' took my time. No great rush, anyhow. Cattle 're gittin' pretty well located up here now--good feed, fresh water, an' everything to attract 'em to the place. Never saw any stock look better'n that little bunch o' steers is lookin'. Market's way up now, an' they ought to be s.h.i.+pped pretty soon."

"Why _don't_ you s.h.i.+p them, then?" asked Hope, leaning forward to brush a hornet from her horse's head.

"Oh, you see," said the man lamely, "them cattle ain't in such all-fired good fix but what they might be better, an' I reckon your cousin ain't in any hurry to s.h.i.+p, nohow. Pretty good place to camp up here in summer. Cool--my, but it was blasted hot down at the ranch this mornin', an' the misquitoes like to eat me up! No misquitoes up here to bother, good water, good fis.h.i.+n', good company,--an' who under the sun would want to quit such a camp?"

"I'm willing," said the girl, looking at him with fathomless eyes, "I'm perfectly willing for him to camp here all summer. It's quite convenient to have you all so near. Of course I'm getting used to the grub down there--some, by this time. Don't think I do not appreciate your being here, dear old Jim! But you know I understand, just the same, why you are here! And I think," she added softly, "I couldn't have stood it if he hadn't showed that he cared for me just so."

"Cared!" exclaimed the old fellow. "Cared _for you_! Why, Hopie, your father wors.h.i.+ps the ground you walk on! He's a great, good-hearted man, the best in the world, and you mustn't have no hard feelin's agin' him for any little weaknesses, because the good in him is more'n the good in most men. There ain't no one that's perfect, but he's better'n most of us, I reckon. An' he loves you, an' is so proud of you, Hopie!"

"Oh, I know it, I know it!" exclaimed the girl pa.s.sionately.

"An' your mother's goin' East next month," concluded McCullen. "She's very anxious to get away."

"My poor father!" said Hope softly. Then more brightly: "I suppose Sydney's out with the cattle."

"Them cattle 're gettin' pretty well located," replied McCullen. "Don't need much herdin'. No, I seen him there at Harris' as I come along. He said he was goin' to take you an' that little flaxen-haired girl out ridin', but concluded, as long as you was busy at the school-house, that he'd just take the little one--providin' she'd go. He was arguin' the question with her when I rode by, an' I reckon he's there talkin' to her yet, er else givin' her a ridin' lesson. He'll make a good horsewoman out o' her yet, if her heart ain't buried too deep up there under the rocks."

"Oh, Jim!" rebuked the girl. "It's _dreadful_ to talk like that, and her poor heart is just _crushed_! It's pitiful!"

"I reckon that's just what Sydney thinks about it," replied Jim, his eyes twinkling. "You ain't goin' to blame him for bein' sympathetic, be you, Hopie?"

She laughed, but nervously.

"Louisa's the sweetest thing I ever saw, Jim! She's promised to stay and go back to the ranch with me in the fall when school is over. Isn't it nice to have a sister like that? But goodness, she wouldn't look at Syd--not in ten years!"

She was so positive in this a.s.sertion that it left Jim without an argument. She slowed down her horse to a walk, and he watched her take O'Hara's letter from her belt and read the lengthy epistle from beginning to end. Not a change of expression crossed the usual calm of her face. But for a strange force of beauty and power, by which she impressed all with whom she came in contact, her lack of expression would have been a defect. This peculiar characteristic was an added charm to her strange personality. She was rarely understood by her best friends, who generally occupied themselves by wondering what she was going to do next.

It may be that old Jim McCullen, calmly contemplating her from his side of the narrow trail, wondered too, but he had the advantage of most people, for he knew that whatever she did do would be the nearest thing to her hand. There was nothing variable or fitful about Hope.

She folded her letter and tucked it back in her belt, her only comment being, as she spurred her horse into a faster gait: "Larry says he is coming over here one of these days."

They rode past the camp and on to the flat beyond, where grazed Sydney's two hundred head of steers. These they rode around, while Jim reviewed the news of the ranch and round-up, in which the girl found some interest, asking numerous questions about the recent s.h.i.+pment of cattle, the tone of the market, the prospect for hay, the number of cattle turned on the range, and many things pertaining to the work of the ranch, but never a question concerning the idle New Yorkers who made up her mother's annual house-party. In them she took, as usual, no interest.