"And if you don"t?" Laura asked.
The answer was lost, for Mrs. Bahrr turned and fled across lots, by alley gate and side walk-way and vacant yard, to her own rear door. One of Mrs. Bahrr"s strong points was that of being more ready than her antagonist and her habit of thought had made her world an antagonistic one.
York was curious to see how Jerry would meet her Waterloo, for that was what this encounter would become, and he was glad that she had asked him to go with her instead of running off alone, as she had done when she wanted to see her estate.
Seated in the little front parlor, Jerry took her time to survey the place before she came to her errand. It was a very humble home, with a rag carpet, windows without draperies, but with heavy blinds; chairs that became unsettled if one rocked in them; cheap, unframed chromos tacked up on the walls; an old parlor organ; and a stand with a crazy-quilt style of cover on which rested a dusty Bible. York saw a look of pity in Jerry"s eyes where three months before he felt sure there would have been only disdain.
Very simply and frankly the girl told the purpose of her call, ending with what might have been a command, but it was spoken in the clear, soft voice that had always won her point in any argument.
"Whether these stories came from you or not you will be sure not to repeat them."
Stella Bahrr bristled with anger. Whatever might have been said behind her back, n.o.body except York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk had ever spoken so plainly to her face before. And they had never spoken in the presence of a third party. And here comes a pretty, silly young thing with a child"s Sunday-school talk to her, right in York"s presence, in her own house. Jerry Swaim would pay well for her rudeness.
"I don"t know as it"s up to me to keep still when everybody"s talkin". I won"t promise nothin". An" I "ain"t got nothin" to be afraid of." Mrs.
Bahrr hooked her eyes viciously into her caller.
"I"m afraid of a good many things, but I"m not so very much afraid of people. I was a little afraid of you the first time I saw you. You remember where that was, of course."
Jerry looked straight at Mrs. Bahrr with wide-open eyes. Something in her face recalled Jim Swaim"s face to York Macpherson, and he forgot the girl"s words as he stared at her.
"When I was a child," Jerry continued, "they used to say to me, "The goblins "ll git you ef you don"t watch out." Now I know it is the Teddy Bear that gits you ef you don"t watch out."
Mrs. Bahrr"s lips seemed to snap together and her eyes tore their way out of Jerry and turned to the window. Jerry stepped softly across to her chair and, laying a hand on her shoulder, said, with a smile:
"Hereafter it will be all right between us."
And it was--apparently.
As they walked slowly homeward York and Jerry said little. The girl"s mind was busy with thoughts of her new work--the only work she had ever attempted in her life; and York"s thoughts were busy with--Jerry.
That night York sat alone on the porch of "Castle Cluny" until far toward morning, beginning at last to fight out with himself the great battle of his life. The big, kindly, practical man of affairs, arrow-proof, bullet-proof, bomb-proof to all the munitions of Cupid, courted and flattered and admired and looked up to by a whole community, seemed hopelessly enmeshed now in the ripples of golden-brown hair, held fast by the beautiful dark-blue eyes of a young lady whose strength to withstand what lay before her he very much doubted.
"If I speak to her now, she"ll run away from us and leave Laura lonely.
She can"t go to the hotel, because I know Ponk has tried and failed. I"m one degree behind him in that. Where would she go? And how would the Big Dipper act? I"ve no faith in her keeping still if Jerry did use some magic on her to-night. n.o.body will ever Rumpelstilskin her out of herself. I"ll be a man, and wait and befriend my little girl whenever I can, although I"m forced every day to see how she is growing to take care of herself. When nothing else can decide events, time is sure to settle them."
All this happened at the beginning of the three years whose ending came in a June-time on the Kansas plains. Summer and winter, many a Sabbath afternoon saw the hotel-keeper and the pretty mathematics-teacher strolling out to the cemetery "to call on mother." The quaint, firm faith of the pompous little man that "mother knew" had no place in Jerry Swaim"s code and creed. But she never treated his belief lightly, and its homely sincerity at length began to bear fruit.
Not without its lasting effect, too, was the silent influence of Laura Macpherson upon her guest. The bright, happy life in spite of a hopeless lameness, the cheerful giving up of what that lameness denied the having, all unconsciously wrought its beauty into the new Jerry whom the "Eden" of an earlier day had never known. n.o.body remembered when the guest and friend of the Macphersons began to be a factor in the New Eden church life, but everybody knew at the close of the third year that the churches couldn"t do without her. And neither the Baptist minister, holding tenaciously to salvation by immersion, nor the Presbyterian, clinging to the doctrine of infant d.a.m.nation, nor the Methodist, demanding instantaneous revival-meeting conversion from sin, asked once that the fair Philadelphian should "become united with the church." That would necessitate the query, "Which church?" And that would mean a loss to two and a gain to only one. As far as the blowout sand differed from "Eden" on the Winnowoc, so far Jerry"s religious faith now differed from the disbelief that followed the death of her father. In Kansas where the artistic Eugene Wellington had declared his own faith would perish, she had learned for the first time how to pray.
Letters had long since ceased to come from Aunt Jerry Darby to her niece, although in a friendly and patiently expectant form Eugene Wellington wrote beautiful missives breathing more and more of commercialized ideals and less and less of esthetic dreams, and not at all of the faith that had marked the spiritual refinement of his young manhood.
The third spring brought busy, trying days. A sick teacher made it necessary for the well ones to do double work. The youngest Lenwell boy, leader of the Senior cla.s.s, started the annual and eternally trivial and annoying Senior-cla.s.s fuss that seems fated to precede most high-school commencements. For two years it had been Jerry Swaim, whose mathematical mind seemed gifted with a wonderful generalship, who had managed to bring the cla.s.s to harmony with an ease never known in the New Eden High School before. This year Clare Lenwell was perfectly irreconcilable, and Jerry, overworked, as willing teachers always are, was too busy to bring the belligerents to time before the bitterness of a town-split was upon the community. When she did come to the rescue of the superintendent, his own inefficiency to cope with the case became so evident that he at once turned against the young woman who "tried to run things," as he characterized her to the school board.
That caused an explosion of heavy artillery from the "Commercial Hotel and Garage," which made one member of the board, an uncle of young Lenwell, to rise in arms, and thus and so the fires of dissension crisscrossed the town, threatening to fulmine over the whole Sage Brush Valley. To make the matter more difficult, the town trouble-maker, Stellar Bahrr, for once seemed to have been innocently drawn into the thing, and everybody knew it was better to have Stellar Bahrr"s good-will than to start her tongue.
York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk both felt sure that Stellar had really stirred up the Lenwells, for whom she was constantly sewing; and, besides, a distant relative of theirs had married into the Bahrr family back where Stellar came from, "which must have been the Ark," Ponk declared, "and the other one of the pair died of seasickness." Anyhow, the local school row became the local town row, and it was a very real and bitter row.
In these days of little foxes that were threatening the whole vineyard, Jerry turned more and more to Joe Thomson. All of New Eden was tied up in the fuss, took sides, and talked it, except the Macphersons and a few of their friends, and they talked it without taking sides because the thing was in the air constantly. Jerry could not find even in "Castle Cluny" a refuge from what was uninteresting to her and thoroughly distasteful in itself. Ponk, being by nature a rabid little game-c.o.c.k, was full of the thing, and was no more companionable than the Macphersons. But when the quiet ranchman came up from the lower Sage Brush country, his dark eyes glowing with pleasure and his poised mind unbiased by neighborhood failings, he brought the breath of sweet clover with his coming. When Jerry came home from their long rides up-stream--they never rode toward the blowout region--she felt as if she had a new grip on life and energy and ambition for her work. Joe was becoming, moreover, the best of entertainers, and the comradeship was the one thing Jerry had learned to prize most in her new life in the Middle West.
When the spring had slipped into early May Joe"s visits grew less frequent, on account of his spring work. And once or twice he came to town and hurried away without even seeing Jerry. It comforted her greatly--she did not ask herself why--that he did drop a note into the post-office for her, telling her he was in town and regretting that he must hurry out without calling.
It was during this time that Thelma Ekblad came up to New Eden to do some extensive shopping and spend a week with the Macphersons. There were other guests at "Castle Cluny," and Thelma and Jerry shared the same room.
Back in "Eden" the heir apparent would never have dreamed of sharing anything with a Winnowoc grub. How times change us! Or do we change them?
Thelma was sunny-natured, spotlessly neat in her dress, and altogether vastly more companionable to Jerry than the Lenwell girls, who would persist in pleading their little high-school Senior brother"s cause; or even the a.s.sociate teachers, who were troubled and tired and overworked like herself.
Jerry had met Thelma often, and thought of her oftener, in the three years since they had come upon the Sage Brush branch of the local freight together one hot, sand-blown June day, three summers before. She had woven a romance about Thelma. Romances seemed now to belong to other people. They never came to her. She was glad, however, when Thelma"s shopping was done and she went back to the farm down the Sage Brush, and her brother Paul, and the growing, joyous Belkap child who filled the plain farm-house with interest.
Stellar Bahrr, in Jerry"s presence, had spoken ill of no one since the memorable call three years ago. On the evening after Thelma left town she cork-screwed over to "Castle Cluny" for a friendly chat with Laura.
"I run in to see Thelmy Ekblad. She "ain"t gone home, is she? Got her shopping all done a"ready? Some girls can buy their weddin" finery quicker "n scat. Did she say who was to make that new white dress she was buyin" yesterday at the Palace Emporium?" This straight at Jerry, who was resting lazily in the porch swing after an unusually annoying day.
"Not to me," Jerry replied, sliding another pillow behind her shoulders and leaning back comfortably.
"Well, well! I s"posed girls always told them things to each other.
"Specially if they slep" together. She"s gettin" a mighty fine man, though--Thelmy is--at least, folks says she"s gettin" him. He"s there a lot, "specially "long this spring. His farm"s right near her and Paul"s.
And she"s one prince of a girl. Don"t you say so, Miss Swaim?"
Jerry smiled in spite of herself, saying: "Yes, she"s a prince of a girl. I like her." And then, because she was tired that night, both of Stellar and her topic, and the whole Sage Brush Valley, she turned away that neither Laura nor Stellar might see how much she wanted to cry.
But turning was futile. Mrs. Bahrr"s eyes went right through the girl and she knew her shaft had hit home.
Joe had not been to town for weeks. It didn"t matter to Jerry. Yet the next day after Stellar"s call lacked something--and the next and the next. Not a definite lack, for Jerry"s future was settled forever.
Down on the Sage Brush ranches Joe Thomson was trying to believe that things wouldn"t matter, too, if they failed to go his way. These were lonely days for the young ranchman, who saw little of Jerry Swaim because every possible minute of his time was given to wrestling with the blowout.
There were many more lonely days, also, for Jerry, who now began to miss Joe more than she thought it could be possible to miss anybody except Gene Wellington, idealized into a sad and beautiful memory that kept alive an unconscious hope. And, with all her energy and her determination, many things combined to make her school-room duty a hard task to one whose training had been so unfitting for serious labor. The flesh-pots of the Winnowoc came temptingly to her memory, and there were weary hours when the struggle to be sure and satisfied was greater than her friends could have dreamed.
The third winter of her stay had seen an unusual snowfall for the Sage Brush, and this spring following was an unusually rainy one. Everywhere rank vegetation flourished, prairies reveled in luxurious growths, and cultivated fields were burdened with the promise of record-breaking harvests.
York Macpherson"s business had begun to call him to the East for prolonged trips, and he had less knowledge than formerly of the details of the affairs of New Eden and its community.
One day not long after Thelma"s shopping trip Joe Thomson dropped into the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.
"How"s the blowout?" This had become York"s customary greeting.
"Never gentler." Joe"s face was triumphant and his dark eyes were shining with hope. "This rainy season and the good old steam-plows are doing their perfect work. You haven"t had any sand-storms lately, maybe you have noticed. Well, wheat is growing green and strong over more than half of that land now. There"s not so much sand to spare as there used to be."
"You don"t mean it!" York exclaimed, incredulously.
"Go and look at it yourself, you doubting old Missourian who must be shown," Joe retorted. "There"s a stretch on the northeast toward the bend in the Sage Brush that is low and baked hard after the rains, and shifty and infernally stubborn in the dry weather."
York meditated awhile, combing his heavy hair with his fingers. "The river runs by your place?" he asked, at length.
"Yes, my house is right at the bend, and there is no sand across the Sage Brush," Joe replied.
"Well, the blowout will never stop till it gets up to the south bank of the bend. As I"ve told you already, you"ll have to take the Lord Almighty into partnership to work a miracle. Otherwise this creeping up from behind and beyond the thing will be a never-ending job of time and money and labor. You"ll never catch up with it. It"s just too everlastingly big, that"s all. You"ll be gray-bearded, and bald-headed, and deaf, and dim-sighted before you are through."