York Macpherson grasped the little man by the arm. "Not back yet! Where is she, then?"
"She ain"t; that"s all I know," Ponk responded, flatly. "Yes, yes, yonder she is just soarin" into the avenue up by "Castle Cluny" this minute. Thank the Lord an" that Quaker-colored gadabout!"
"Tell her I"ll see her at the hotel as soon as I get my mail," York said, and he hurried to his office.
A few minutes later Jerry Swaim brought the gray runabout up to the doorway of the garage.
Ponk a.s.sisted her from it and took the livery hire mechanically.
"Thank you, Miss Swaim. Hope you had a safe day. No"m, that"s too much,"
handing back a coin of the change. "That"s regular. Yes"m." Then, as an afterthought, he added, with a bow, "York Macpherson he"s in town again, an" he"s waitin" to see you in the hotel "parlor.""
"Oh!" a gasp of surprise and relief. "Thank you, Mr. Ponk. Yes, I have had a safe day." And Jerry was gone.
The little man stared after her for a full minute. Then he gave a long whistle.
"She"s a Spartan, an" she"s goin" to die game. I"ll gamble on that with Rockefeller. This is the rummiest, b.u.mmiest world I ever lived in," he declared to himself. "Why _the_ d.i.c.kens does the blowouts have to fall on the just as well as the unjust "s what I respectfully rise to ask of the Speaker of all good an" perfect gifts. An" I"m goin" to keep the floor till I get the recognition of Chair."
York Macpherson was standing with his back to the window, so that his face was in the shadow, when Jerry Swaim came into the little parlor.
Her eyes were shining, and the pink bloom on her cheek betokened the tenseness of feeling held in check under a calm demeanor.
"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Macpherson. I"ve been away from town all day and I wanted to get my mail before I came in. I"m a long way from everybody, you know."
There may have been a hint of tears in the voice, but the blue eyes were very brave.
"And you got it?"
That was not what York meant to say. It was well that his face was in the shadow while Jerry"s was in the light. There are times when a man"s heart may be cut to the quick, and because he is a man he must not cry out.
"No, not to-day. I don"t know why," Jerry replied, slowly, with a determined set of her red lips, while the fire in her blue-black eyes burned steadily and the small hands gripped themselves together.
"I haven"t had a word since I left home, and I had hoped that I might find a letter waiting for me here."
"Letters are delayed, and letter-writers, too, sometimes. Maybe they are all busy with Mrs. Darby"s affairs. I remember when I was a boy up on the Winnowoc she could keep me busier than anybody else ever did," York offered.
"It must be that. Of course it must. Aunt Jerry is as industrious as I am idle." Jerry gave a sigh of relief.
After the strain of this day, it was vastly comforting to her to stop thinking _forward_, and just remember how beautiful it must be at "Eden"
now; and Eugene was there, and it was twilight. But like a hot blast the memory of the hot sand-heaps of her landed estate came back.
"Did you want to see me about something?" she asked, suddenly. "Mr. Ponk said you did."
"Yes, Jerry. I came here to see you because my sister and I want you to come out to our house at once, and I have orders from Laura not to come home without you."
"You are very kind. You know where I have been to-day?"
York smiled. Even in her abstraction Jerry felt the genial force of that smile. How big and strong he was, and there was such a sense of protection in his presence.
"Yes. You denied me the privilege of escorting you on this journey. I had written a full description of your property to Cornelius Darby, in reply to some questions of his, but his death must have come before the letter reached Philadelphia. In the ma.s.s of business matters Mrs. Darby may have missed my report."
"She may have," Jerry echoed, faintly. "I cannot say. Then it is my estate that is all covered with sand, barren and worthless as a desert?
I thought I might have been mistaken."
The hope died out of Jerry"s face with the query.
"I wish I could have saved you this surprise," York said, earnestly.
"Come home with me now. "Castle Cluny" must be your castle, too, as long as you can put up with us. And you can take plenty of time to catch your breath. The earth is a big place, and, while most of it is covered with water, very little of it is covered entirely with sand."
How kind his tones were! Jerry remembered again that both his sister and Mr. Ponk had urged her to wait for his coming. But she was not accustomed to waiting for anybody. A faint but persistent self-blame gripped her.
"May I stay with you until I find where I really am? Just now I"m all smothered in bewildering sand-dunes." She smiled up at the tall man before her with a confiding, appealing earnestness.
Many women smiled upon York Macpherson. Many women confided in him. He was accustomed to it.
"Laura will consider it a boon, for you must know that she sometimes gets a trifle lonely in New Eden. We"ll call the compact finished." Only a gracious intuition could have turned the favor so graciously back to the recipient. But that was York"s gift.
In the dining-room at "Castle Cluny" that evening Jerry noticed a silver cup with a quaintly designed monogram on one side.
"That"s an old heirloom," Laura said, as she saw her guest"s eyes fixed on it. "Like everything else in this house, it is coupled up with some old Macpherson clan tradition, as befitting an old bachelor and old maid of that ilk."
"We used to have two of them," York said.
"We have yet somewhere," Laura replied. "I hadn"t missed one from the sideboard before. It must be back in the silver-closet, with other old silver and old memories."
Jerry"s day had been full of changes, up and down, from hope to bitter disappointment, from reality to forgetfulness, from clear conception to bewildered confusion, her mind had run since she had left the oak-grove in the forenoon. When she had occasion to remember that silver cup again, she wondered how she could have pa.s.sed it over so lightly at this time.
Although Jerry"s problem was very real, and she brought to its solution neither experience nor discipline, unselfish breadth nor spiritual trust, there was something in the homey atmosphere of "Castle Cluny"
that seemed to smooth away the long day"s wrinkles for her. Out in the broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.
"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn"t be such a real sunset. It was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was impossible, too. I"ve seen both--land and sky--to-day, and both are greater than the artist painted them."
"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said, meditatively.
"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn"t come to find a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared, watching the tranquil face of her hostess.
"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized that Laura Macpherson"s maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was a very new type to her guest.
"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on, "but we get over a good many little things in the day"s run. And then I have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to me. I have so many interests here, too. You"ll like New Eden when you really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies.
There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."
"And something always interesting in our neighbors. See who approaches."
York, who had just come up the side steps, supplemented his sister"s remark.
"Oh, that is Mrs. Stella Bahrr, the Daily Evening News. Jerry, York can always unhitch your wagon from its star. She really is his black beast, though; but you can"t expect mere men to take an interest in milliners, make-overs, at that, however much interest they take in millinery and what is under it."
"And millinery bills, with or without interest," York interfered again.
"Mrs. Bahrr will want a full report of Jerry, with the blank s.p.a.ces for remarks filled out," Laura went on. "Why, she has changed her course and is tacking away with the wind."