The Wrong Woman (10 page)

"I suppose so," remarked Mrs. Norton. "But to think of it being
her
.
The low calculating thing!"

Grandma Plympton was out in the dining-room with Virginia sipping a glass of
wine, and having admired an embroidered sideboard scarf, a recent work of
Virginia's, she was now engaged in examining other things as they came forth
from a lower drawer, which creations interested her so much that Virginia went
still deeper into the family treasury and finally brought forth a sampler and
counterpane which her own grandmother had wrought. The examination of these
things, together with reminiscence of her own early achievements, kept Grandma
Plympton so long that by the time she reached the sitting-room the absorbing
topic had subsided from its first exclamatory stage and was being treated in a
more allusive and general way. Grandma soon gathered from the allusions that
Stephen Brown had at last met the lady of his choice.

"Indeed!" she exclaimed. "Now I am sure he will settle down and make an
excellent husband. Not that there was anything bad about him, not at all; but he
was rather wild when he was a boy, and gave his mother a great deal of
worrimentespecially, I mean, when he took his cattle up into the Territory. And
in those days she could hardly keep him from joining the Rangers. But now he is
older and more sensible and has had responsibilities; and I am su-u-u-ure it
will be a fine match for any young lady."

It is hardly in human nature to shatter such illusions. Thereafter, the
subject of the evening was more guardedly treated, pending her departure.
Grandma Plympton, valiant as she was in the social cause, could seldom stay up
for more than the first few numbers of a dance, and she could never, of late,
remain to the end of an evening party. Before a great while she signified her
readiness to go, and after her usual courtly leave-taking she went away on the
arm of her daughter-in-law.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Dix, "I hardly felt like saying anything before her.
She is so old and innocent."

"Is n't she!" said Mrs. Osgood.

Virginia, much exercised over the health of Aberdeen Boy, had gone out to the
barn to have a talk with Uncle Israel, who, with a peacock fly-fan moving
majestically back and forth, was sitting up with eighteen hundred pounds of sick
bull. Aberdeen Boy, a recent importation, and one of the noblest of those who
were to refine the wild-eyed longhorns of Texas, was having no more trouble with
acclimation than his predecessors; he manifested his illness simply by lying
down and looking more innocent than usual, and heaving big sighs which wrung
Virginia's heart.

In the sitting-room the study of Steve Brown went forward prosperously again,
but especially now in regard to the woman in the case. If the one they named was
anywhere within range of psychic influence, it is safe to say her left ear
burned that evening. And when, finally, it was all over, the guests, departing,
paused at the gate and turned their thoughts to the rocks there assembled.

"What will we do? I would n't carry mine for anything," said Mrs. Norton.

"Why, leave them here. We 'll have Jonas Hicks come and get them," said Mrs.
Harmon.

Janet caught her breath and looked about her. It was the same shack on a
hillock, the same gully and sheep-pen and dog, likewise the same Mr. Brown.
Under the circumstances, it was natural for her to try to say something, and she
did the best she could. When he had gathered, from her rather unexplanatory
remarks, just what had happened, the first thought that crossed his mind was
that he had eaten the last piece of fruit-cake which she left behind. If there
is anything embarrassing to a man, it is to have company come unexpectedly when
there is not a thing fit to eat in the house. He had finished up the cake a
short while before, together with the remainder of crackers and a dill pickle.

"I have eaten up all the good stuff," he explained. "Do you like beans?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Janet, who was truly hungry.

He lifted the lid of the box and produced a small iron pot of boiled beans.
They were beans of the Mexican variety, a kind which look nice and brown because
they are that color before you cook them. When he had put some bacon into the
frying-pan and given it time to heat, he scraped the beans in and stirred them
up. He had made bread for supper by the usual method of baking soft dough in a
skillet with the lid on; there was left of this a wedge big enough to split the
stoutest appetite; and when he had placed this where it would warm up, he turned
his attention to the coffee-pot.

"Oh, you do not need to do that. I can make my own coffee," offered Janet.

"You had better let me get supper," he answered. "You 're tired."

Several times during the day she had pondered upon his high-handed way of
taking charge of her affairs. Submitting to this further dictation, she spread
her slicker before her place at table, as indicated by the bare spot of ground,
and sat down. Mr. Brown took a bucket and disappeared in the gully. Evidently he
had gone to get fresh water. Janet now put her feet out farther toward the fire.

When he returned, he made some remarks upon the weather and put on the
coffee; then he turned about and went into the shack. As on the previous
evening, everything came tumbling pell-mell out of the door. Janet, having
nothing else to do, looked up and gave her attention to a big sixteen-carat
star.

Shep, the dog, came and planted himself at the very edge of the bare spot.
Without giving her so much as a glance, he sat there primly and looked straight
off the end of his nose at the sugar bowl in the middle. Not till this moment
had Janet realized what a beautiful, intelligent-looking collie dog Mr. Brown
had. His brown-buff coat, of just the right shade, seemed slightly veiled with
black; his full out-arching front was pure white.

"Shep," said Janet.

His fine eyebrow rose as he gave her a looka very short one, however. When
she addressed him again she could see his interest rising a degree; finally he
came and sat down beside her. Encouraged by this show of friendship, Janet put
her hand on him.

When her host had got through with the more violent exercises of practical
courtesy,which sounded somewhat like trouble in a barroom,he came out bearing
a jug marked MOLASSES; this he set down before her, and then, finding the coffee
done, he proceeded to serve up the viands.

"That is n't much of a supper," he remarked, sitting down opposite.

"It tastes very good," said Janet.

It hardly did seem the right thing to set before such a guest. But Janet, as
good as her word, steadily made way with the
frijole
beans and did full
justice to the hot bread; and soon, inspirited by his powerful coffee, she
continued the story of how she was frightened by the steer and baffled by the
brook, and how she was foolish enough to think she was going straight forward
all the time.

He had a way, whenever she came to a pause, of enticing her to go on.
Sometimes he primed the conversation by repeating the last thing she had said;
again, an apt word or two summed up the whole spirit of the matter
encouragingly; or there would be just a composed waiting for her to resume.

Not that he had any difficulty in finding something to say. He evidently
liked to hear her talk, and so he rather deferred to her. Whether it was that
she now had a feeling of this, or that there was something in the influence of
his presence, his voice and manner, which removed all constraint, Janet had not
the least difficulty in talking. She told him how the teacher at the school
"boarded round," what an unnecessary number of classes Miss Porter had for so
small a number of pupils,although it was difficult to remedy the matter by
"setting back" certain children, because their proud mothers would object to
such a leveling,and how the Blodgett children, four of them, all came to school
on the back of one buckskin pony, the youngest having to hold on tight to keep
from slipping off at the tail. "Buckskin,"; it seemed, had won quite a place in
Janet's affections, although he was the worst behaved horse that came to school.
He used to graze in the yard till school was out,the other horses being staked
out on the prairie,and he had become so familiar that he would sometimes go so
far as to put his head in at the window in hope of being fed. And Janet could
not see, considering that Texas horses were used to being staked out, what
reason there had been for building a fence around a school that stood out on
open prairie, unless it was, perchance, that the Texans thought they ought to
have a corral to herd the children in.

While she was thus going on, there came from the corral a bleat in the
awe-inspiring tone of
Fa
, and this was followed by a succession of bleats
which reminded her of nothing so much as a child getting its hands on the
keyboard of an organ. Steve, as if suddenly admonished of something, rose to his
feet, excused himself, and disappeared in the direction of the corral.

With the place before her temporarily vacant, and unable to see out of her
circle of light except by looking upward, Janet instinctively lifted her eyes to
the scene above. Thousands and thousands of stars made the night big and
beautiful. They were so clear and so lively, as if they took joy in their
shining. A mild southern breeze gave the night motion and perfume. Janet took a
deep breath which was hardly a sigh; it was rather a big drink of air and the
final suspiration of all her worries. As she took in more deeply the
constellated heavens and the free fresh spirit of the roaming air, she began to
feel that she would rather like to be a sheep-herder herself. From looking at so
many, her mind turned back to her selected star, the "captain jewel" of them
all, and her eye sought its whereabouts again. In others she could see tremulous
tinges of red and blue; but this seemed to be the pure spirit of light.
Unconsciously she had put her arm around the dog, as if to hold on to this
earth, and Shep, whose affection had been steadily growing, nudged up closer and
gave her a sense of warm companionship.

When Steve returned from his mysterious errand, he looked at her a moment and
then fetched an armful of wood. The fire, to serve better the purposes of
cooking, had been allowed to burn down to coals, and the smouldering embers now
gave so little light that the face and figure of his guest were losing
themselves in obscurity. As this state of affairs hardly suited him, he piled on
the dry mesquite brush and fanned it with his hat into leaping flames. When
Janet was lit up to his satisfaction, he put down the hat and resumed his
earthen lounge.

As he stretched himself out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested, the
atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of safety. His
deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the slowness of a drawl, was
the natural voice of that big starry world so generous of time. Occasionally he
made a remark which ought to have been flattery, but which, coming from him, was
so quiet and true that one might float on it to topics of unknown depth. He was
so evidently interested in everything she said, and his attention was so
single-minded and sincere, that Janet was soon chatting again upon the subject
of her recent circumnavigation of the prairie, which, as she now saw it in the
light of the present, seemed more and more a sea of flowersas the Past always
does. Indeed, the whole recent course of her experience was such a noveltythe
trip to Texas was her first real adventure in the worldthat she saw things with
the new vision of a traveler; and the present situation, turning out so happily,
put the cap-sheaf on that dream which is truly Life. Janet, recently delivered
from all danger, and yet sitting right in the middle of her adventures, had a
double advantage; she was living in the present as well as the past, breathing
the sweetness of the air, looking up at the big flock of stars and seeing in
them all nothing less than the divine shepherding.

"But, of all the wonderful things I ever saw," she exclaimed. "Why, it was
worth walking all day to see it."

"What was it?" he asked.

"Sensitive plants. And when I came they all lowered their branches to their
sides likewell, slowly, like this"

She held her right arm out straight and lowered it slowly and steadily to her
side. And a most graceful and shapely arm it was.

"I would n't have been so much surprised," she continued, "to just see leaves
fold together, like clover. You know clover leaves all shut up at night and go
to sleep. But these plants were quite large and they actually
moved
. And
of course the leaves shut together, too; they were long like little tender
locust leaves, and each one folded itself right in the middle."

She placed her hands edge to edge and closed them together to show him.

"But, you know, while they were doing that, they were folding back against
their long stems, and the stems were folding back against the branches, and the
straight branches were all folding downwards against the main stalk. What I mean
is that everything worked together, like this"

Janet extended both arms with her fingers widely spread; then, as her arms
gradually lowered, her fingers closed together.

"It was something like that," she added, "but not exactly; it was ten times
as muchsomething like the ribs of an umbrella going down all around, with stems
and rows of locust leaves all along them closing together. And every little leaf
was like a rabbit laying back its ears."

"Yes; I know what you mean," said Steve. "They are a kind of mimosa. Some
people call them that."

"Well," said Janet, "I sat and watched one. I just touched it with a hatpin
and it did that. A person would almost think it had intelligence. And after a
whilewhen it thought I was gone, I supposeit began to open its leaves and
stems and put its arms out again."