The Reclaimers Part 8

York shifted his chair into line with the street.

"It's the fair Philadelphian and her pompous gentleman in waiting," York declared.

"Look at little Brother Ponk strut, would you? 'A charge to keep I have.' But, York, Miss Swaim appears a bit too Philadelphian for our New Eden scenery!" Laura exclaimed.

"She is a type all her own, I would say. Jim Swaim's determined chin and Lesa's dreamy eyes. She will be an interesting study, at least. I wonder which parent will win in her final development," York replied, as the two approached the house.

"I have brought the young lady to call on you," Mr. Ponk said, presenting his companion with a flourish, as if she were a trophy cup or a statue just unveiled. "Sorry I can't stay to visit with you, but my clerk is out to-night. They'll take care of you beautiful, Miss Swaim.

No, thank you, no. I'll just soar back to the hotel."

He waved off the seat York had proffered him, and bowed himself away as gracefully as a short, round man can bow.

Laura Macpherson had an inborn gift of hospitality, but she realized at once that this guest brought an unusual and compelling interest. She was conscious, too, in a vague way, of the portent of some permanent change pending. What she saw clearly was a very pretty girl with a soft voice and a definite, forceful personality.

"Miss Swaim, you must be tired after your long journey," Laura began, courteously.

"Please don't call me that. I am so far from home I'll be 'Miss Swaimed'

enough, anyhow."

The appeal in the blue eyes broke down all reserve.

"Then I'll call you 'Jerry,' as I did when you were a little girl and I was beginning to think about getting grown up," Laura exclaimed.

"And since you are far from home, we hope you may find a home welcome in our house, and that you will come at once and be our guest indefinitely," York added, with his winning smile that ought to have sent him to Congress years ago.

Something about Jerry Swaim had caught Laura Macpherson in a moment. She hoped that York had the same feeling. But York was one of the impenetrable kind when he chose. And he certainly chose that evening to prove his impenetrability.

"You are very kind," Jerry said, looking at York with earnest eyes, void of all coquettishness. Then, turning to York's sister, she went on:

"I am not tired now. But the last part of my journey was frightful. The afternoon was hot, and the wind blew terrifically. They had to close the windows to keep out the dust. Then we were delayed in what they told me was called a 'blowout.'" Her eyes were sparkling now, but her emphasis on the term seemed to cut against York Macpherson's senses like burning sand-filled wind as he sat studying her face.

"All the 'blowouts' I ever heard of were in the tires of our limousine car," she continued, musingly. "And my cousin, Gene Wellington, of Philadelphia, didn't know what to do about them at all. He is an artist, and artists never do take to practical things. Gene was more helpless when anything went wrong with the car than ever I was, and awfully afraid of taking a risk or anything."

And that, it seemed to the Macphersons, must have been helpless indeed.

For as she sat there at ease in the shadowy dimness of the summer evening, York Macpherson thought of Carlyle's phrasing, "Her feet to fall on softness; her eyes to light on splendor," a creature fitted only to adorn the upholstered places of life.

"Did you ever see that dreadful 'blowout' thing?" Jerry asked, coming back from the recollection of limousine cars and Cousin Gene of Philadelphia.

"No, I have only been here a short time myself, and the country is almost as new to me as it is to you," Laura Macpherson replied.

"Oh, it is _such_ an awful place!" Jerry continued. "Everywhere and everywhere one can see nothing but great sand-waves all over the land.

They have almost buried the palisades that protect the railroad. It just seemed like the Red Sea dividing to let the Israelites go through, only this was red-hot sand held back to let the train pa.s.s through a deep rift. And to-day the wind had filled up the tracks so it couldn't go through until the sand was cleaned out. There is only one kind of shrub, a spiny looking thing, growing anywhere on all those useless acres. It is a perfectly horrid country! Why was such land ever made?" Jerry turned to York with the question.

"I can't tell you," York said, "but there are some good things here."

"Yes, there is my claim," Jerry broke in. "It's all I have left, you know. Cousin Gene tried to persuade me it would be better off without me, but I'm sure it must need the owner's oversight to make it really profitable. There was no record, in settling up the estate, of its having produced any income at all. I certainly need the income now.

Taking care of myself is a new experience for me."

All the vivacity and hopefulness of youth was in her words. But the dreamy expression on her face that came and went with her moods soon returned.

"Cousin Gene Wellington is not my real cousin, you know. He is Uncle Darby's relative, not Aunt Jerry's. He is an artist, but without any income right now, like myself. Both of us have to learn how to go alone, you see, but I'm not going back to Philadelphia now, no matter what Aunt Jerry Darby may say."

This was no appeal for sympathy. Taking care of oneself seemed easy enough to Lesa Swaim's child, to whom the West promised only one grand romantic adventure. There was something, too, in the tone in which she p.r.o.nounced the name of Gene Wellington that seemed to set it off from every other name. And she p.r.o.nounced it often enough to trouble York Macpherson. No other name came so easily and so frequently and frankly to her lips.

"We hope you will like the West. The Sage Brush isn't so bad when you get acclimated to its moods," York a.s.sured her. "But don't expect too much at first, nor too definite a way of securing an income."

Only Laura Macpherson caught the same minor chord of anxiety in her brother's voice that she recalled had been in it when he told her of Jerry's claim. It seemed impossible, however, that anything could refuse to be profitable for this charming, blossomy kind of a girl who must thrive on easy success or perish, like a flower.

"Oh, land always means an income, my father used to say. Aunt Jerry has only two hundred acres, but it is a fortune to her," the girl declared.

"I'm not uneasy. As soon as I get a real hold on my property here I'll be all right. It is getting late. I must go now. No, I am going by myself," she declared, prettily, as York prepared to accompany her back to the hotel. "It is straight up this light street and I am going to try it alone from the very beginning. That's why I didn't go to your office as soon as I got here to-day. I told Cousin Gene I could take care of myself and make my own way out here, just as he is making his own way in the East, working in his studio. No, you shall not go with me. Thank you so much. No. Good-by." This to York Macpherson, who was wise enough to catch the finality of her words.

The twilight was almost gone, but a young moon in the west made the street still light as the two on the porch watched the girl going firm-footed and unafraid, unconscious of their anxiety for what lay in the days before her.

"Is it courage, or contempt for the West, that makes her fearless where one would expect her to be timid? She seems a combination of ignorance and a.s.sertiveness and a plea for sympathy all in one," Laura Macpherson declared.

"She is the child of two different temperaments--Jim one, and Lesa another; a type all her own, but taking on something of each parent,"

York a.s.serted, as he watched until the girl had disappeared at the door of the Commercial Hotel, far up the street.

The next day was an unusual one for four people in New Eden. The wind came from the east, driving an all-day rain before it, and York Macpherson did not go to the upper Sage Brush country. Instead, he worked steadily in his office all day. Some files he had not opened for months were carefully gone over, and township maps were much in evidence. Every now and then he glanced toward the upper windows of the Commercial Hotel. Mr. Ponk had said that Jerry had No. 7, the room he had occupied for several years. He wondered if this rain was making her homesick for the Winnowoc Valley and "Eden" and that wonderful Cousin Gene, blast him! There was a smile in York's eyes whenever he looked across the street. When he turned to his work again his face was stern.

What he thought was a determination not to be bothered by rainy-day loafers coming into his office, what made him set his teeth and grip to his work, was really the fight with a temptation to go over to the hotel and look after a homesick girl.

Meantime Jerry Swaim, snug in a filmy gray kimona with pink facings and soft gray slippers, was enjoying the day to the full limit. Secure from strangers, relaxed from the weariness of travel, she slept dreamlessly, and wakened, pink and rested, to watch the cool, life-giving rains and dream her wonderful day-dreams wherein new adventure, victory over obstacles, and Eugene each played a part. Jerry was in love with life.

Sunshine and rain, wind and calm, every season, were made to serve her, all things in nature to bring her interest and pleasure--all except _sand_. That hot hour and a half between sand-leaguered palisades seared her memory. But that was all down-stream now, with the junction station, and the country Thelma, and the tow-headed woman and flabby flopping baby, and the little old Teddy Bear humping his yellow-brown fuzziness against the swirl of cinders and prairie dust. The recollection of it all was like the touch of a live coal on the cool surface of her tranquil soul, a thing abhorred that yet would not be uncreated nor forgotten.

"To-morrow will be Sunday." The little pagan would have one more idle day. "I'll get a letter from Eugene on Monday. On Monday," dreamily, "I'll beg into live here, not stay here. What charming folks the Macphersons are! and--so different."

There was a difference. Jerry did not know, nor care to a.n.a.lyze it, nor explain to herself, why these two people had in themselves alone begun to make New Eden worth while for her. She for whom things, human and otherwise, had heretofore been created--all except _sand_.

The third New-Edenite who had some special interests on this rainy day was Junius Brutus Ponk. Often an idler in the Macpherson Company's office, he was always interesting to York. There were never created two of his kind. That in itself made him worth while to the big, strong man of many affairs. And, much as York wanted to be alone to-day, he welcomed the coming of Ponk. In the long, serious conversation that followed, their usual bantering had no place. And when the little man went slowly out, and slowly crossed the street to the hotel, indifferent to the steady fall of rain, York Macpherson's eyes followed him earnestly.

"He'll almost forget to strut if that girl stays here--but she won't stay. And he will strut. He's made that way. But down under it all he's a man, G.o.d bless him--a man any woman could trust."

Up at "Castle Cluny" the rainy day brought one caller whom "chilling winds nor poisonous breath" could never halt--Mrs. Stellar Bahrr, otherwise--"the Big Dipper"--the town gossip.

Mrs. Stellar Bahrr was a married, widowed-by-divorce, old-maid type, built like a sky-sc.r.a.per, of the lean, uncertain age just around sixty, with the roundness of youth all gone, and the plump beauty of matronliness all lacking, wrinkled with envy and small malice, living on repeating what New Eden wanted kept untold. Hiding what New Eden should have known of her, she maintained herself on a pension from some one, known only to York Macpherson, and the small income derived just now from tr.i.m.m.i.n.g over last year's hats "to make them look like four-year-olds," York declared.

The real milliner of the town was a brisk, bright business woman who had Stellar Bahrr on her trail in season and out of season. Mrs. Bahrr herself could not have kept up a business of any kind for a week, for she changed callings almost with the moon's phases.

No more unwelcome caller could have intruded on the homey, delicious, rainy-day seclusion of "Castle Cluny."

"I jis' run in to see the hat again you're goin' to wear to-morrow, Miss Laury. I 'ain't got more 'n a minute. Ye ain't alone this dreary day, are ye? The Lenwells was sayin' last night your brother was goin' to the upper Sage Brush on some business with the Posers. But they're in town, rainy as it is, an' all. Did he go?"

"No, he put it off till Monday," Laura replied, wondering what interest York's going or coming could be to Stellar Bahrr.

"As I was sayin', the Posers is in town. Come to meet Nell and her baby.

They come in on the freight yesterday. The biggest, bald-headest young un you ever see. Nell wants her hat fixed over, and nothin' on the livin' earth to fix it with, ner money to pay for it. I'll make ol'

Poser do that, though. Lemme see your hat, so's I can get an idy or two.

You've got some 'commodation, if that blamed millinery-store hain't.