The Spenders Part 7

After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anch.o.r.ed firmly in Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track.

Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon, cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my child in your keeping."

Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon being a.s.sured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him.

Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a hundred miles away," he told her.

Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above, lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to the eye were all of s.p.a.cious distances and large ma.s.ses--of the room and stuff for unbounded action.

"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these alt.i.tudes."

"One _has_ to breathe more air here--there's less oxygen in it, and you must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started.

There, now, there are your colours, see--"

Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the mountain phlox, pink and red.

"There are your eyes and your cheeks."

"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!"

On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white flowers.

"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may become able to do more--more capable. I am thinking of your grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he is."

"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of yours--social and moral."

"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here, would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about it."

"Ah, but think of what there is in the East--and you are there. To think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of you--such a funny little lot as they were--to think that this morning I awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't predicted.

"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly--because they've proved it so often--that if you want a thing hard enough and keep wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you."

A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four mules. As they stood aside to let it pa.s.s he scanned her face for any sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining team.

"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road.

She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness.

"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly; that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a _very_ Eastern person doesn't even accept herself--himself--very trustingly; she--he--finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself."

The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them.

"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak.

"Stand so,"--she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step nearer almost to touch her arm,--"and feel the round little earth turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn.

See--you can actually _see_ it move--whirling along like a child's ball because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through s.p.a.ce, and who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying; and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how many ways, or where they shall fetch us?"

"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses."

"No relation whatever; we're the same person--he was I."

"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as by a setting star, by watching a sun rise--"

"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect candour and friendliness.

They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk.

As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he blended his voice with hers:

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went."

"With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow, And with my own hand wrought to make it grow; And this was all the Harvest that I reaped--'

I came like Water and like Wind I go.'"

"I shall look forward to seeing you--and your mother and sister?--in New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more to say when we're better known to each other."

"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than the substance of any other to me,--you must know how it will be now, when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream to come true."

"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like this at home, I a.s.sure you. I've really been thoughtful."

From up the canon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the Shepler car.

The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, "'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and be it good and hard. Get action early and often."

Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the infirmities of neither."

The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the canon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the last, but still looking steadily toward him--almost wistfully, it seemed to him once.

"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter.

"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of h.e.l.l than in the place that turns 'em out. They rile me--that talk about 'people in the humbler walks of life.' Of course I _am_ humble, but then, son, if you come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so _d.a.m.ned_ humble!"

CHAPTER IX.

Three Letters, Private and Confidential

From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City.

On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night.

Dear Sis:--When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you next, here goes.

One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was running. It's a rowdy little place--a music hall--but nice people go there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent.

_She_ was in a box with two men--one old and one young--and an older woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the s.p.a.ce, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to sit up and ask what hit me.