A Phyllis of the Sierras. Bret Harte
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that Miss Macy had availed herself of his absence to run to the end of the veranda, mischievously try to lift the discarded knapsack to her own pretty shoulder, but, failing, heroically stagger with it into the passage and softly deposit it at his door. This done, she pantingly rejoined her cousin in the kitchen.
“Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, emphatically. “DID you ever? Walking fifteen miles for pleasure—and with such lungs!”
“And that knapsack!” added Louise Macy, pointing to the mark in her little palm where the strap had imbedded itself in the soft flesh.
“He’s nice, though; isn’t he?” said Mrs. Bradley, tentatively.
“Yes,” said Miss Macy, “he isn’t, certainly, one of those provincial fine gentlemen you object to. But DID you see his shoes? I suppose they make the miles go quickly, or seem to measure less by comparison.”
“They’re probably more serviceable than those high-heeled things that Captain Greyson hops about in.”
“But the Captain always rides—and rides very well—you know,” said Louise, reflectively. There was a moment’s pause.
“I suppose Jim will tell us all about him,” said Mrs. Bradley, dismissing the subject, as she turned her sleeves back over her white arms, preparatory to grappling certain culinary difficulties.
“Jim,” observed Miss Macy, shortly, “in my opinion, knows nothing more than his note says. That’s like Jim.”
“There’s nothing more to know, really,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a superior air. “He’s undoubtedly the son of some Englishman of fortune, sent out here for his health.”
“Hush!”
Miss Macy had heard a step in the passage. It halted at last, half irresolutely, before the open door of the kitchen, and the stranger appeared with an embarrassed air.
But in his brief absence he seemed to have completely groomed himself, and stood there, the impersonation of close-cropped, clean, and wholesome English young manhood. The two women appreciated it with cat-like fastidiousness.
“I beg your pardon; but really you’re going to let a fellow do something for you,” he said, “just to keep him from looking like a fool. I really can do no end of things, you know, if you’ll try me. I’ve done some camping-out, and can cook as well as the next man.”
The two women made a movement of smiling remonstrance, half coquettish, and half superior, until Mrs. Bradley, becoming conscious of her bare arms and the stranger’s wandering eyes, colored faintly, and said with more decision:—
“Certainly not. You’d only be in the way. Besides, you need rest more than we do. Put yourself in the rocking-chair in the veranda, and go to sleep until Mr. Bradley comes.”
Mainwaring saw that she was serious, and withdrew, a little ashamed at his familiarity into which his boyishness had betrayed him. But he had scarcely seated himself in the rocking-chair before Miss Macy appeared, carrying with both hands a large tin basin of unshelled peas.
“There,” she said pantingly, placing her burden in his lap, “if you really want to help, there’s something to do that isn’t very fatiguing. You may shell these peas.”
“SHELL them—I beg pardon, but how?” he asked, with smiling earnestness.
“How? Why, I’ll show you—look.”
She frankly stepped beside him, so close that her full-skirted dress half encompassed him and the basin in a delicious confusion, and, leaning over his lap, with her left hand picked up a pea-cod, which, with a single movement of her charming little right thumb, she broke at the end, and stripped the green shallow of its tiny treasures.
He watched her with smiling eyes; her own, looking down on him, were very bright and luminous. “There; that’s easy enough,” she said, and turned away.
“But—one moment, Miss—Miss—?”
“Macy,” said louise.
“Where am I to put the shells?”
“Oh! throw them down there—there’s room enough.”
She was pointing to the canyon below. The veranda actually projected over its brink, and seemed to hang in mid air above it. Mainwaring almost mechanically threw his arm out to catch the incautious girl, who had stepped heedlessly to its extreme edge.
“How odd! Don’t you find it rather dangerous here?” he could not help saying. “I mean—you might have had a railing that wouldn’t intercept the view and yet be safe?”
“It’s a fancy of Mr. Bradley’s,” returned the young girl carelessly. “It’s all like this. The house was built on a ledge against the side of the precipice, and the road suddenly drops down to it.”
“It’s tremendously pretty, all the same, you know,” said the young man thoughtfully, gazing, however, at the girl’s rounded chin above him.
“Yes,” she replied curtly. “But this isn’t working. I must go back to Jenny. You can shell the peas until Mr. Bradley comes home. He won’t be long.”
She turned away, and re-entered the house. Without knowing why, he thought her withdrawal abrupt, and he was again feeling his ready color rise with the suspicion of either having been betrayed by the young girl’s innocent fearlessness into some unpardonable familiarity, which she had quietly resented, or of feeling an ease and freedom in the company of these two women that were inconsistent with respect, and should be restrained.
He, however, began to apply himself to the task given to him with his usual conscientiousness of duty, and presently acquired a certain manual dexterity in the operation. It was “good fun” to throw the cast-off husks into the mighty unfathomable void before him, and watch them linger with suspended gravity in mid air for a moment—apparently motionless—until they either lost themselves, a mere vanishing black spot in the thin ether, or slid suddenly at a sharp angle into unknown shadow. How deuced odd for him to be sitting here in this fashion! It would be something to talk of hereafter, and yet,—he stopped—it was not at all in the line of that characteristic adventure, uncivilized novelty, and barbarous freedom which for the last month he had sought and experienced. It was not at all like his meeting with the grizzly last week while wandering in a lonely canyon; not a bit in the line of his chance acquaintance with that notorious ruffian, Spanish Jack, or his witnessing with his own eyes that actual lynching affair at Angels. No! Nor was it at all characteristic, according to his previous ideas of frontier rural seclusion—as for instance the Pike County cabin of the family where he stayed one night, and where the handsome daughter asked him what his Christian name was. No! These two young women were very unlike her; they seemed really quite the equals of his family and friends in England,—perhaps more attractive,—and yet, yes, it was this very attractiveness that alarmed his inbred social conservatism regarding women. With a man it was very different; that alert, active, intelligent husband, instinct with the throbbing life of his saw-mill, creator and worker in one, challenged his unqualified trust and admiration.
He had become conscious for the last minute or two of thinking rapidly and becoming feverishly excited; of breathing with greater difficulty, and a renewed tendency to cough. The tendency increased until he instinctively put aside the pan from his lap and half rose. But even that slight exertion brought on an accession of coughing. He put his handkerchief to his lips, partly to keep the sound from disturbing the women in the kitchen, partly because of a certain significant taste in his mouth which he unpleasantly remembered. When he removed the handkerchief it was, as he expected, spotted with blood. He turned quickly and re-entered the house softly, regaining the bedroom without attracting attention. An increasing faintness here obliged him to lie down on the bed until it should pass.
Everything was quiet. He hoped they would not discover his absence from the veranda until he was better; it was deucedly awkward that he should have had this attack just now—and after he had made so light of his previous exertions. They would think him an effeminate fraud, these two bright, active women and that alert, energetic man. A faint color came into his cheek at the idea, and an uneasy sense that he had been in