XII
MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE
Every resident except the cronies of Pete Leddy considered it a duty,once a day at least, to look over the Galway hedge and ask how SenorDon't Care was doing. That is, everyone with a single exception, whichwas Mary. Jack had never seen her even pass the house. It was as if hisvery existence had dropped out of her ken. The town remarked the anomaly.
"You have not been in lately," Mrs. Galway reminded her.
"My flowers have required a lot of attention; also, I have been ridingout to the pass a good deal," she answered, and changed the subject togeraniums, for the very good reason that she had just been weeding hergeranium bed.
Mrs. Galway looked at her strangely and Mary caught the glance. Sheguessed what Mrs. Galway was thinking: that she had been a littleinconsiderate of a man who had been wounded in her service.
"Probably it is time I bore tribute, too," she said to herself.
That afternoon she took down a glass of jelly from the pantry shelves andset forth in the line of duty, frowning and rehearsing a presentationspeech as she went. With every step toward the Galway cottage she wasincreasingly confused and exasperated with herself for even thinking of aspeech. As she drew near she heard a treble chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!"and saw Jack on the porch surrounded by children.
"It's dinosaur foolishness again!" she thought, pungently.
He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side andlowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuringthe effect of his words. She thought of that face when he called toLeddy, "I am going to kill you!" and felt the pulse of inquiry beat overall that lay in this man's repertory between the two moods.
"Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this," he wassaying, "that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree onthe big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in hislittle, old woman's voice. Every orange hit him right on the bridge ofhis nose, and he was saying: 'You know I never could bear yellow! Itfusses me so.'"
"He doesn't need any jelly! I am going on!" Mary thought.
Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile underhair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead. Mary might have been a unitof marching infantry. The story stopped abruptly.
"Yes--and--and--go on!" cried the children.
Jack held up his hand for silence.
"How do you do?" he called, and she caught in his tone and in her firstglimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed nopoints for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in takingher by surprise with his greeting. This put her on her mettle with thequickness of a summons to fence. She was as nonchalant as he.
"And you are doing well, I learn," she answered.
"Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold! It's the best one yet!" criedBelvedere Smith. "And--and--"
"And--and--" began the chorus.
Mary went to the hedge. She dropped the glass of jelly on the thickcarpet of the privet.
"I have just brought my gift. I'll leave it here. Belvy will bring itwhen the story is over. I am glad you are recovering so rapidly."
"And--and--" insisted the chorus.
"You oughtn't to miss this story. It's a regular Jim dandy!"Belvedere shouted.
"Yes, won't you come in?" Jack begged in serious urgency. "I pridemyself that it is almost intellectual toward the close."
"I have no doubt," she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand,which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyesin the shadow. "But I am in a hurry."
And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as sheturned away.
"Did you make the jelly yourself?" he called.
"Yes, I am not afraid of the truth--I did!" she answered with a backwardglance and not stopping.
"Oh, bully!" he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected astrain of what she classified as impudence.
"But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his greenhandkerchief. You know the dwarf did not like green. It fussed him justas much as yellow fussed the giant. But it was a narrow pocket, so narrowthat he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep. So, you see--"and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of thestreet, where she turned around and came back across the desert andthrough the garden.
On the way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a humanexhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivershad clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on thepass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion ofreal life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimenunder a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were abronze or an ivory statuette.
1. In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravaganceof phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio wasdevoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indianto any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color,his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and,mostly, by his latent savagery--which she would hardly have been willingto apply to Ignacio's worshipful attachment to herself.
2. Against him: Everything of any importance, except in the eyes ofchildren and savages; everything in logic. He would not stand analysis atall. He was without definite character. He was posing, affected, pleasedwith himself, superficial, and theatrical, and interested in people onlyso long as they amused him or gratified his personal vanity.
"I had the best of the argument in leaving the jelly on the hedge, andthat is the last I shall hear of it," she concluded.
Not so. Mrs. Galway came that evening, a bearer of messages.
"He says it is the most wonderful jelly that ever was," said Mrs. Galway."He ate half the glass for dinner and is saving the rest forbreakfast--I'm using his own words and you know what a killing way he hasof putting things--saving it for breakfast so that he will have somethingto live through the night for and in the morning the joy of it will notbe all a memory. He wants to know if you have any more of the same kind."
"Yes, a dozen glasses," Mary returned. "Tell him we are glad of theopportunity of finishing last year's stock, and I send it provided heeats half a glass with every meal."
"I don't know what his answer will be to that," said Mrs. Galway,contracting her brow studiously at Mary. "But he would have one quick. Healways has. He's so poetic and all that, we're planning to go to thestation to see him off and pelt him with flowers; and Dr. Patterson isgoing to fashion a white cat out of white carnations, with deep red onesfor the black stripes, for the children to present."
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mary blithely, and went for the jelly.
She was spared further bulletins on the state of health of the woundeduntil her father returned from his daily call the next morning. She wasin the living-room and she knew by his step on the porch, vigorous yetlight, that he was uplifted by good news or by the anticipation of theexploitation of some new idea--a pleasure second only to that of theidea's birth. Such was his elation that he broke one of his own rules bytossing some of the books loaned to Jack onto the broad top of the tableof the living-room, which was sacred to the isolation of the ivorypaper-knife.
"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train!It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the earlyhistory of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with thefreedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modernsymbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offerit to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the twohemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will begreat fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that youwrite some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the wholenonsensical business."
"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated tohim?" she demanded.
/> "Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Orsomeone will read it for you."
He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had receivedall his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensicgrandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: whichwas, indeed, barely interested.
"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses,"she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall notbe there."
"Not be there! People will remark your absence!"
"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her."No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to rideout to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak."
"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and wavedthem back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you arestubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to worknow. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those ofdarkness and the hot midday.
For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town.Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like thebabbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and thestored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with noother relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke intosong; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only bythe sheer happiness that brought on the attack.
Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her roomrather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutterson the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden,peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an innerworld. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of thepoplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain orSouthern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy.
And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine,with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the passgradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistressof her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. Shewould hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulledout, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor ofstridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she wouldsmile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile athim, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told ofthe dinosaur.