"Say buyer and seller, ma"am, not neighbors--at least Scriptoorily--nor friends. Well,--now this is where the Speshal Providence comes in,--only this afternoon Jim Briggs, hearin" me speak of Horseley"s offishness"--
"WHOSE offishness?" asked the lady.
"Horseley"s offishness,--Horseley"s the name of the man I"m talkin"
about. Well, hearin" that, he says: "You hold on, Hays, and he"ll climb down. That wife of his has left the stage--got sick of it--and is driftin" round in "Frisco with some fellow. When Horseley gets to hear that, you can"t keep him here,--he"ll settle up, sell out, and realize on everything he"s got to go after her agin,--you bet." That"s what Briggs said. Well, that"s what sent me up to Horseley"s to-night--to get there, drop the news, and then pin him down to that contract."
"It looked like a good stroke of business and a fair one," said the lady in an odd voice. It was so odd that Hays looked up. But she had somewhat altered her position, and was gazing at the ceiling, and with her hand to her face seemed to have just recovered from a slight yawn, at which he hesitated with a new and timid sense of politeness.
"You"re gettin" tired, ma"am?"
"Oh dear, no!" she said in the same voice, but clearing her throat with a little cough. "And why didn"t you see this Mr. Horseley after all? Oh, I forgot!--you said you changed your mind from something you"d heard."
He had turned his eyes to the fire again, but without noticing as he did so that she slowly moved her face, still half hidden by her hand, towards him and was watching him intently.
"No," he said, slowly, "nothin" I heard, somethin" I felt. It mout hev been that that set me off the track. It kem to me all of a sudden that he might be sittin" thar calm and peaceful like ez I might be here, hevin" forgot all about her and his trouble, and here was me goin" to drop down upon him and start it all fresh agin. It looked a little like persecution--yes, like persecution. I got rid of it, sayin" to myself it was business. But I"d got off the road meantime, and had to find it again, and whenever I got back to the track and was pointed for his house, it all seemed to come back on me and set me off agin. When that had happened three times, I turned round and started for home."
"And do you mean to say," said the lady, with a discordant laugh, "that you believe, because YOU didn"t go there and break the news, that n.o.body else will? That he won"t hear of it from the first man he meets?"
"He don"t meet any one up where he lives, and only Briggs and myself know it, and I"ll see that Briggs don"t tell. But it was mighty queer this whole thing comin" upon me suddenly,--wasn"t it?"
"Very queer," replied the lady; "for"--with the same metallic laugh--"you don"t seem to be given to this kind of weakness with your own family."
If there was any doubt as to the sarcastic suggestion of her voice, there certainly could be none in the wicked glitter of her eyes fixed upon his face under her shading hand. But haply he seemed unconscious of both, and even accepted her statement without an ulterior significance.
"Yes," he said, communingly, to the glaring embers of the hearth, "it must have been a special revelation."
There was something so fatuous and one-idea"d in his att.i.tude and expression, so monstrously inconsistent and inadequate to what was going on around him, and so hopelessly stupid--if a mere simulation--that the angry suspicion that he was acting a part slowly faded from her eyes, and a hysterical smile began to twitch her set lips. She still gazed at him. The wind howled drearily in the chimney; all that was economic, grim, and cheerless in the room seemed to gather as flitting shadows around that central figure. Suddenly she arose with such a quick rustling of her skirts that he lifted his eyes with a start; for she was standing immediately before him, her hands behind her, her handsome, audacious face bent smilingly forward, and her bold, brilliant eyes within a foot of his own.
"Now, Mr. Hays, do you want to know what this warning or special revelation of yours REALLY meant? Well, it had nothing whatever to do with that man on the summit. No. The whole interest, gist, and meaning of it was simply this, that you should turn round and come straight back here and"--she drew back and made him an exaggerated theatrical curtsey--"have the supreme pleasure of making MY acquaintance! That was all. And now, as you"ve HAD IT, in five minutes I must be off. You"ve offered me already your horse and sleigh to go to the summit. I accept it and go! Good-by!"
He knew nothing of a woman"s coquettish humor; he knew still less of that mimic stage from which her present voice, gesture, and expression were borrowed; he had no knowledge of the burlesque emotions which that voice, gesture, and expression were supposed to portray, and finally and fatally he was unable to detect the feminine hysteric jar and discord that underlay it all. He thought it was strong, characteristic, and real, and accepted it literally. He rose.
"Ef you allow you can"t stay, why I"ll go and get the horse. I reckon he ain"t bin put up yet."
"Do, please."
He grimly resumed his coat and hat and disappeared through the pa.s.sage into the kitchen, whence, a moment later, Zuleika came flying.
"Well, what has happened?" she said eagerly.
"It"s all right," said the woman quickly, "though he knows nothing yet.
But I"ve got things fixed generally, so that he"ll be quite ready to have it broken to him by this time to-morrow. But don"t you say anything till I"ve seen Jack and you hear from HIM. Remember."
She spoke rapidly; her cheeks were quite glowing from some sudden energy; so were Zuleika"s with the excitement of curiosity. Presently the sound of sleigh-bells again filled the room. It was Hays leading the horse and sleigh to the door, beneath a sky now starlit and crisp under a northeast wind. The fair stranger cast a significant glance at Zuleika, and whispered hurriedly, "You know he must not come with me.
You must keep him here."
She ran to the door m.u.f.fled and hooded, leaped into the sleigh, and gathered up the reins.
"But you cannot go alone," said Hays, with awkward courtesy. "I was kalkilatin""--
"You"re too tired to go out again, dad," broke in Zuleika"s voice quickly. "You ain"t fit; you"re all gray and krinkly now, like as when you had one of your last spells. She"ll send the sleigh back to-morrow."
"I can find my way," said the lady briskly; "there"s only one turn off, I believe, and that"--
"Leads to the stage station three miles west. You needn"t be afraid of gettin" off on that, for you"ll likely see the down stage crossin" your road ez soon ez you get clear of the ranch."
"Good-night," said the lady. An arc of white spray sprang before the forward runner, and the sleigh vanished in the road.
Father and daughter returned to the office.
"You didn"t get to know her, dad, did ye?" queried Zuleika.
"No," responded Hays gravely, "except to see she wasn"t no backwoods or mountaineering sort. Now, there"s the kind of woman, Zuly, as knows her own mind and yours too; that a man like your brother Jack oughter pick out when he marries."
Zuleika"s face beamed behind her father. "You ain"t goin" to sit up any longer, dad?" she said, as she noticed him resume his seat by the fire.
"It"s gettin" late, and you look mighty tuckered out with your night"s work."
"Do you know what she said, Zuly?" returned her father, after a pause, which turned out to have been a long, silent laugh.
"No."
"She said," he repeated slowly, "that she reckoned I came back here to-night to have the pleasure of her acquaintance!" He brought his two hands heavily down upon his knees, rubbing them down deliberately towards his ankles, and leaning forward with his face to the fire and a long-sustained smile of complete though tardy appreciation.
He was still in this att.i.tude when Zuleika left him. The wind crooned over him confidentially, but he still sat there, given up apparently to some posthumous enjoyment of his visitor"s departing witticism.
It was scarcely daylight when Zuleika, while dressing, heard a quick tapping upon her shutter. She opened it to the scared and bewildered face of her brother.
"What happened with her and father last night?" he said hoa.r.s.ely.
"Nothing--why?"
"Read that. It was brought to me half an hour ago by a man in dad"s sleigh, from the stage station."
He handed her a crumpled note with trembling fingers. She took it and read:--
"The game"s up and I"m out of it! Take my advice and clear out of it too, until you can come back in better shape. Don"t be such a fool as to try and follow me. Your father isn"t one, and that"s where you"ve slipped up."
"He shall pay for it, whatever he"s done," said her brother with an access of wild pa.s.sion. "Where is he?"
"Why, Jack, you wouldn"t dare to see him now?"
"Wouldn"t I?" He turned and ran, convulsed with pa.s.sion, before the windows towards the front of the house. Zuleika slipped out of her bedroom and ran to her father"s room. He was not there. Already she could hear her brother hammering frantically against the locked front door.
The door of the office was partly open. Her father was still there.
Asleep? Yes, for he had apparently sunk forward before the cold hearth.
But the hands that he had always been trying to warm were colder than the hearth or ashes, and he himself never again spoke nor stirred.