Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 12
XXI: THE WIDOW TO THE RESCUE
Who shall interpret the feelings of a high-minded maid who is bent on wrecking her own and two other lives through a mistaken sense of honor?
Broadly, one might hint at rebellions sternly repressed, at doubts and misgivings, secret tears, agonizings of spirit that affected Lee’s flesh during the next week till her roses paled, eyes grew dark and heavy.
Not that she was altogether unhappy. A woman’s life is her feelings, and if they be sufficiently intense she obtains from their exercise a certain mournful satisfaction – akin, no doubt, if a little paler, to the ecstasies of a martyr. But into these innermost recesses, innocent springs of the woman soul whence flow endless capacities for devotion and self-sacrifice, into these it is not given to the eternally masculine to enter. Accordingly, during the following week Gordon perceived only a surface resignation that manifested itself toward him in a quiet, sisterly manner.
A blunt male, his psychology was much more simple, fluctuating between desperation, depression, determination, and despair, the composite of which showed on the surface as a decided case of the sulks. Yes, it has to be set down that he followed the customary and unheroic masculine precedent, returning for Lee’s sisterly solicitude more than the average brotherly brusqueness.
Nature having neglected to insert a compensating balance in the feelings of the eternally masculine, the poor fellow was utterly miserable. Despite the fact that, up to a week ago, he had regarded Lee with neutral friendliness, he now desired more desperately than ever to place her in a certain Java forest adorned with the regalia of a honeymoon. What is more to the point, under his sulks he was determined to do it.
Summing them, he sulked and she grieved up to the moment that a mozorode in, one day, with a package from Ramon.
Though it held only a single flower, she easily read the message, “May I come?” and though she returned a single line, “I’m coming to see Isabel next week,” the flower had done its work.
The concrete fact behind its bloom emerged from mists of procrastination and stared her boldly in the face. Its reflection set such misery in her eyes that, without understanding, Gordon’s sulks gave place to pity. Bull, who knew even less, was moved to send a mozo with a note to the widow.
Straight to the point the epistle ran:
Dear Ma’am, – The young man, he’s a-moping like a moulting chicken an’ Miss Lee’s that peaked and pale and down-hearted you’d hardly know her. T’other day a mozo brought her some sort of a package from Ramon, and ever since she’s looked wild-eyed and scared as a canary in fear of a cat. There’s something queer going on. It wouldn’t take you more’n a minute to find it out, and you owe us about a dozen visits, anyway. Couldn’t you take a day off and come?
She came, of course, the good, kind soul, with Betty, under guard of Terrubio and the bandit reputation which gained so much from his weird eyes. The gods and goddesses willed it that they fell in with Gordon returning to the hacienda at the close of his day’s work, and the widow seized the opportunity like a skilful general. After permitting Betty and Terrubio to ride on beyond earshot over the slopes that were dyed a glowing apricot by the low sun, she opened on Gordon.
“Now tell me all about it, young man.”
He looked at her, surprised, then laughed. “You mean all that I would have said if I hadn’t been ordered home that morning? All right. Of course I don’t have to tell you that I love you madly, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Bull would wring my neck, I should propose at once. Really – ”
“Nice boy!” She laughed merrily. “To comfort your poor mother. It was simply disgraceful the way you flirted with me, almost compromised me with my own offspring. ‘I was just ashamed of your dreadful behavior, mama,’ Betty told me, afterward, ‘trying to take poor Lee’s beau from her.’ Nevertheless, I found it very encouraging.”
“My mother?” He achieved an excellent example of that species of cachinnation known as the “horse laugh.” Then, with sincerity of accent and feeling that caused her a little blush, he ran on: “My mother, madam, is more than twenty-eight. Yes, I said twenty-eight. Add to that eyes as clear and young as – ”
“Make it Lee’s.”
“As Betty’s. A fine, soft skin, pretty nose, figure – um! just right. Why – ”
“Yes! yes!” She held up her hand, laughing. “But we mustn’t waste time. You know I’m on your side. Tell me – what happened?”
“That’s easy – she’s engaged herself to Ramon.”
“What?” Her shriek of horror and surprise caused Betty and Terrubio to look back. Her next question showed the keenness of her intuition. “Why, whatever did you do to her?”
He told – of his anger, jealousy, pique, attempt to soothe his ruffled vanity by flirting with Felicia. He told all with candor and humorous insight into his own feelings that robbed the narrative of conceit. He told even of the kiss and that Lee had seen it. “Though I don’t see how that could have anything to do with her engagement, for she announced it the next second.”
“She sent him off within the next hour – with only a kiss of her hand – hasn’t seen him since – nor communicated with him till the other day – has looked like a frightened bird ever since.” She told off the items with amused contempt. “How stupid men are! Why, it is plain as day. He asked her to marry him, yes, on the way. How could she escape after the way she had flirted? But she had either refused or held him off. But when she saw you kiss – ”
“My God!” It burst on him. “What a fool I am! Why did I – ”
“Don’t blame, yourself. She was more in fault. The question is – not what is done, but what to do.”
“I had thought, at first, of quitting this to join Valles. It would be lots of fun and I was so darned mad – ”
“And leave her to him?” She looked a little scornful. “Why – ”
But he cut in. “You bet I won’t! He’ll never marry her – if I have to carry her off.”
“And I’d help you do it,” she warmly declared. “At present Ramon is all right, and if you could put up, like preserves, so he’d keep, it wouldn’t be so bad. Yes, he’s all right – but, so are the young of any kind, a lamb or kid, little frog, tiny snake, and there’s nothing cuter in the whole world than a baby pig. But after it grows up – good Lord deliver us!
“And it’s the same with Mexicans. They are the prettiest babies; nice young men. Ramon, with his fine color and wonderful eyes, is too handsome to live just now. But after a while he’ll grow stout and lazy from over-feeding and acquire pimples and blotches till his face looks like a scorched hide. Right now he’s so romantic he’d twang a guitar all night under Lee’s window. After a while she wouldn’t be able to sleep for his snores. Now he’d fly at her bidding. Later, she’d fly at his. She would live behind bars while she was young; go without love in her middle age, be tyrannized and bulldozed all the time.”
“But do you think she would really do it?”
“Indeed, yes! She’s highly idealistic, and was trained by her father in the old ideas. Now that she has given her word, it will take wild horses to pull her from it – or wild men.”
After a sidelong glance that gave her the hard glint of his eyes above the firm mouth, set jaw, she went on, with a little satisfied nod: “Now listen! Ramon will be easier to handle. Being Mexican, he’s sensitive as a tarantula, irritable as a scorpion, jealous as a cat. Now that she’s promised, he will look upon her as his, body and soul, and if her glance so much as strays in any one else’s direction, he’ll be ready to kill. It ought to be quite easy to provoke him to the point where he will either break the engagement or give her cause. In other words, you must force him to play your hand.”
She continued, with a little deprecatory laugh: “I know it’s a low-down trick, but it may stave off something worse. Before he would let Lee marry Ramon, I feel sure Mr. Perrin would kill him.”
A mischievous grin broke up Gordon’s grimness. “So we are not altogether disinterested. We could never stand to see Bull get in bad.”
She laughed softly, happily, looking away, and lapsed into silence which endured while they rode up and over the last slope that laid thehacienda at their feet.
Its walls and courts, patio, painted adobes, lay, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the rich red brush of the setting sun. The glossy crests of the shading cottonwoods flamed a deep apricot under a sky that spread its glories of saffron, and cinnabar purple, and umber, down over the horizon. All about them the pastures laid an undulating carpet, violet in the hollows, crimson on the hills. From the stubby chimneys soft smoke pennons trailed away till lost in the smoldering dusk of the east. Up through the clear air came a soft cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild.
The widow lowered her voice in harmony with the peace of it all. “It is a great prize.”
He nodded. “It’s beautiful, but – I’d love her as much in rags.”
Noting the honest eyes, the widow believed, yet could not refrain from teasing. “Yet – a week ago you hardly gave her a thought.”
He looked at her in naive wonder. “Isn’t it queer – how sudden it gets you?”
She nodded. “That’s the beauty of it.”
XXII: LEE, TOO, IS CONFESSED
As, in the seclusion of Lee’s bedroom that night, she and the widow sat side by side, talking at each other in the wide mirror while making their night toilets, a “movie-man” would have given his head to reproduce the scene with its witcheries in the way of unbound hair, filmy white, glimpses of polished shoulders. But in his absence these may be left where they belong – behind the secure guard of Lee’s oaken door. Sufficient for the present is their conversation.
“So we’ve engaged ourself, have we?” As with Gordon, Mrs. Mills went straight to the bat.
“Why – ” Pausing with comb and one yellow curl held in midair, Lee looked her utter surprise at the smiling face in the glass. “Mary Mills!whoever told you?”
“This and these would be enough.” The widow touched the girl’s pale cheeks and shadowed eyes. “But I caught your young man, coming in, and made him confess. So we got mad – because he kissed another girl, and took it out of him by engaging ourself on the spot? Oh, you little fool!”
Dropping the curl, Lee straightened and stiffened till she looked in the filmy nightrobe like a cold and classic marble. “If it had been Phyllis or Phœbe Lovell, or any other nice girl, I wouldn’t have cared. But – a peona.”
“Well, what of it?” Assured, now, of the truth of her surmises, the widow went confidently forward. “She’s mighty pretty.”
“But a peona! And you know her.”
“Yes, and I know him– better than you do. Now look here, my dear – ” Followed a little lecture on the creature, Man, that showed she had profited by her married experience. “A man is a man and there’s no sense in trying to have him anything else. When a girl loves, she excludes, for the time at least, all others from her life. But a man – while he may love one girl with all his strength, he can still see beauty in others. Nature made him that way and we have simply got to stand for it. Now if Gordon had been ten years older, I’d have allowed you real reason. After thirty a man’s kisses mean something. But at Gordon’s age they are thistledown and light as air, belong to vanity rather than love. A young fellow is so proud of having kissed a pretty girl that he swells up like a turkey gobbler and struts in his self-esteem without thought for anything else. Then, you, yourself, are mostly to blame. Why – ”
Next a little lecture on the sin of flirting, with appropriate personal applications which were, however, interrupted by the person. “Youdidn’t flirt with him, of course.”
“Goodness, child! don’t bite me! I couldn’t see the poor boy crushed into the face of the earth. Now listen.” After detailing Gordon’s confession, of the injured pride, anger, pique that he had tried to solace in Felicia’s smiles, she concluded, “But you – after driving him to desperation go and make the vital mistake of your life.”
“And you think that was the way of it? That he didn’t really meananything?”
“Didn’t he tell me so himself?”
“Well – ” she pondered, looking at the widow in the glass, then suddenly collapsed on the other’s warm shoulder. “Oh, I’m so glad! I – I hatehim!”
The widow, being a woman, quite understood these contradictions. “Of course you do.” She gently fondled the fair head. “How much?”
The head rose in order to execute a vehement nod. “I hate him so much I – I could just kill any other girl that tried to take him!” With a wild sob the face burrowed again into the soft shoulder.
“Well, they’ll try, all right.”
The head rose again, startled eyes, big and brown, staring from the glass. “Do you – really think so?”
“What do you expect – a nice boy like that to mope and pine for the rest of his life with ten million girls of marriageable age running loose in the United States? What brought him here, anyway – bolting to escape one girl’s noose. Take my advice and rope him quick.”
“But I’m promised, now, to Ramon.”
“Call it off.”
“Oh no.” Sitting up straight, she shook her head. “I cannot ruin his life.”
“Hum!” The widow coughed. “You cannot ruin his life? So you intend to bless it by devoting to his service affections that belong to another? Also to cut him off from the greatest thing in the world – the real love of some other woman? Ruin his life, indeed? Lee, I always credited you with a little sense.”
“There is something in that.” She snatched at the hope. “The best thing is to tell him I don’t love him and leave it to him to decide.”
“And he’ll do it, have no fear!” The widow tossed her head. “Ramon’s nice, but he cannot rise above his race, and you know very well there’s neither reason nor justice nor the instinct of fairness in it. Fancy a Mexican giving up a girl because she loves another! He’d resent even the suggestion, take his revenge after marriage.”
The gleam of hope had died. She sighed. “I can try.”
“Oh, you little fool!” In her irritation the widow bestowed a smart slap on the girl’s shoulder. But she spoiled the moral effect the next second by gathering her in her arms. “Don’t you know that up in the States girls take on a new beau every Saturday night and break the engagement the following Sunday?”
But the precedent produced only a second envious sigh. “I wish I could do it. I guess I wasn’t brought up right.”
“’Tisn’t training; it’s heredity. You’re your father over again; will go your own way. I wash my hands of you.”
That charitable process known as “washing one’s hands of anybody” was, however, the last thing Mrs. Mills was capable of. The assertion simply marked a change of plan which, rising early next morning, she inaugurated when she caught Bull on his way to the stables.
Though he had sat next to her during the long pleasant evening that followed supper last night, the others’ presence had debarred private communications. Content to hear her voice running with Lee’s in happy chatter – so content, indeed, that he forgot for the time being the impending trouble – Bull had smoked furiously in the dusk till they retired to bed.
He listened, now, in silence while the widow told of Lee’s engagement. But the sudden lowering of his black brows was far more dangerous than any threat. She laid her hand on his arm in sudden alarm.
“Easy, my friend. Don’t be too quick. She isn’t married yet, and won’t be – if you leave it to me.”
More powerful than the plea was her gentle pressure. Apart from certain accidental contacts, before mentioned, which had caused him such pleasurable embarrassment, it was the first time she had actually touched him. Big, burly, black giant that he was, he still trembled like a school-girl; trembled so violently that she felt it and dropped both her hand and her eyes. Transferring the embarrassment to herself, that helped him mightily. He was the first to break a confused but happy silence.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing, just now, except to let Gordon ride with me a piece of the way home.”
It was impossible to overlook his sudden disappointment. With characteristic frankness she did not wait for him to tell it. “I’d rather have you; there are so many things I want to consult you about. Dear me!” Her little vexed face was very comforting; it expressed such sincere feeling. “These young folks certainly do make one a lot of trouble. Betty wanted you so badly at my party – and so did I; but we just had to ask Gordon to help Lee out. But I’m going to settle this business right quick. And when it is all over – you will come and make us a real visit, won’t you?”
Wouldn’t he? His nod and effulgent grin expressed happiness in the prospect beyond the powers of his slow tongue. Satisfied, she proceeded.
“So let me have him this once. Lee is going to ride a few miles with us, and before she comes back – ”
But the matter of her communication is covered by her talk with Gordon, whom she caught coming out of the bunk-house five minutes later.
“I argued with her half the night,” she told him, walking along at his side. “Goodness me, young man, you don’t know what you are up against! Such obstinacy! Lucky for you that it is balanced by a sweet temper and strong sense of justice. All I gained was her promise to beg off from Ramon. She plans to go over and see him some time this week, and if she does – well, with Isabel loving her to death, the old man tendering sage advice, and Ramon passionately pleading his cause, they’ll have her to the priest and married before she has time to think. She mustn’t go.”
“But if she is so obstinate – ” Gordon began.
“I’ll take care of that. I shall call on Ramon on the way home and explain the true state of his lady’s heart. Of course he’ll raise Cain and probably damn me for a black-hearted liar, but I can stand it. The point is – he will come right over here. In the mean time you must get busy. A declaration in hand is worth two suspected, and though I’ve hinted very strongly that you are not altogether indifferent to her sweet self, it will make Ramon’s task ten times harder if she hears it from your lips. Now listen!”
The rest was plot, dark and devious. Lee had promised to ride with her a few miles on the homeward journey, and Bull would detail him, Gordon, for her escort. Coming back, he would have all the time in the world.
XXIII: IN WHICH THE WIDOW GOES AND SLIVER COMES
As thus arranged, the program was carried out after breakfast. Very artfully Bull waited till the party was almost out of sight before he sent Gordon galloping after. Even then the plot was endangered when, turning at the sound of hoof-beats, Lee saw him coming. Her face clearly expressed her determination to send him back, but in the nick of time the widow spoke.
“Oh, let him come! The poor fellow is suffering enough.”
Lee’s nod and faint smile, riding on, revealed a queer mixture of happiness and apprehension, which was wiped out by amused astonishment when, just as Gordon came up, a lone figure hove in sight, coming from the opposite direction.
“Why – it’s Sliver!”
And Sliver it was – though difficult to recognize by reason of a complex embroidery of scratches, bumps, and bruises. His own broad grin broke through, however, when Lee inquired after his wife.
“She was fine an’ dandy when I seen her last, which, was in the shank of the evening two nights ago.” Lovingly fingering a huge bump that occupied a central position in his altered scenery, he went into the intimate details of his matrimonial venture. “Till then it had all been lovely. She’d sorter cut up a bit, at first, me an her padre having fixed up the match without any of her ’sistance. But after I’d given her a fair larruping with a saddle strap, jest to show who wore the pants, as the saying goes, she come right into camp; snuggled in like a kitten. Sure, she behaved real domestic till Fernando, that hawk-nosed arriero from San Ramon, blew in with his mules two nights gone. I orter ’a’ suspicioned him, he was that free in handing out drinks. But I didn’t – leastways not till Felicia laid me out with one whack of a cordwood stick from behind. The rest I got from the mirror an’ the padre when I woke next morning and found him doctoring my map. She an’ Fernando had gone off together.”
“She’s gone!” Lee gave a little hysterical laugh. “For good?”
“An’ then some – they’re off to the wars.” Gently massaging the bump, Sliver added: “She’ll stay there if she’s wise. It’ll be a ’tarnation sight less risky than coming back. She was for cutting my throat, but neither the padre nor Fernando would stan’ for that, they being afraid of ‘The Black Devil’ an’ ‘The Python,’ which they call Bull an’ Jake. ‘For I knew, señor, that they would follow us to the ends of the earth if any harm came to thee,’ the old fellow tol’. But they made her free of my map, an’, as you see, she done a good job.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I must go back and care for your face.”
With Lee’s exclamation the props trembled beneath the widow’s plot, but Sliver restored their stability. “It’s cheap at the price. Many’s the man up home that gets as bad or worse an’ is stuck, to boot, for lawyer’s fees an’ al’mony. Don’t you bother ’bout me, Lady-girl. All I need is a bit of salve, an’ Maria kin get me that.”
As Sliver rode on, the widow looked at Lee, who returned her meaning glance. Neither looked at Gordon, who discreetly watched Betty. But the thought was the same in the minds of all three. “Thank goodness, she’s gone.”
For a while Lee hesitated and debated whether, after all, she ought not to go back, and she reined in, startled, when a long howl presently drifted over the rise behind which Sliver had disappeared. A coyote, in its death agony, might have equaled the sound. But as, presently, the tortured notes resolved into the opening bars of “The Cowboy’s Lament,” she giggled and rode on for another five miles. Sliver was happy!
While Lee was kissing Betty good-by the widow managed to pass a whisper to Gordon. “Now don’t let her escape! And remember – look out for Ramon to-morrow.”
He nodded and, looking back from behind the crest of the next rise, she saw for herself how well he obeyed. Lee had made to get off at a gallop, but had reined in when he spoke, and now they were riding side by side, deep in earnest conversation.
Nodding, the widow rode on, but stopped again for a last look while she could still see over the rise. She was practically invisible when Lee looked back, protesting, as Gordon grabbed her bridle and pulled her beast alongside. Her pointing finger said, quite plainly:
“They will see!”
The widow gasped, for with one swift reach he snatched Lee out of the saddle and set her before him.
