A Touch of Sun and Other Stories Part 21

II

Camp at the Thousand Springs. A little gra.s.s 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-gra.s.s, and tall reeds,--the gra.s.ses enormous, like j.a.panese decorations,--crossing the darks of the opposite sh.o.r.e 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, fis.h.i.+ng 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 t.i.tle, 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 G.o.d"--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.