CHAPTER VI
ATTRACTION AND REPULSION
THERE were three days more of incessant rain and wind, and then the storm ceased, and the sun shone brightly. On the morning of the second fine day, a waggon drove up to Hilda’s house, and Holles got off, leaving Ben in charge of the horses.
“We called in to see if we could do anything for you in the village,” he said, when Hilda opened the door to him.
“I should be ever so much obliged if you would bring me a sack of flour,” she said; “I have just come to the end of my supply. Robert did not want to send our horses in yet. He says the roads are not safe.”
“No, I don’t suppose they are,” said Holles. “But if you had been living on preserved pine-apples and empty coal-oil tins for the last week or ten days, you would be willing to risk a good deal for the sake of some flour or a piece of Porter House steak. We fellows over the river have been starving. Empty coal-oil tins and preserved pine-apples are not very fattening, are they? But there, I mustn’t grumble. We managed to get over to Ben one day, and he gave us one of his skinniest fowls in exchange for a large jar of my best marmalade. There was nothing on the fowl; but there never is anything on Ben’s fowls, so we weren’t disappointed. Only for goodness’ sake don’t tell that to him. He’s awfully touchy on the subject!”
Hilda laughed, and asked about the damages done by the storm on the other side of the river.
“Graham has come off very badly,” Holles answered. “His house was taken clean away, and three acres of his best olives are completely ruined. We have some fearful cuts on our land, and the poor devil of a Chinaman who had his kitchen-garden half a mile away from our place has lost everything, cabbages, asparagus, pig-tail, and all. Graham is living with us just now, and he says he must have something to eat to keep up his spirits. So I said I would risk my valuable life for the good of the whole community. The waggon and horses are Ben’s. After I got across the river, I went and stormed at him until he hitched up. He did not want to come with me, and began swearing at me in that poetical fashion of his, until I referred casually to the skinny fowls raised on his ranch, and then he said: ‘Hold hard, Jesse, I’ll come with you.’ So we are off together, and if you do not hear anything more of us, you will know that we have found a muddy grave!”
“Good-bye,” Hilda said. “I hope you will come safely back, bringing my flour, and the mail. And some day I want you to tell me about your experiences with the ear-trumpet lady.”
“All right,” sang out Holles, cheerily. “Good-bye.”
He stood for a moment, looking down like a shy boy.
“We fellows are all so sorry about the reservoir,” he said kindly. “If there is anything we can do to help old Bob, we’re all ready and willing.”
He was off quickly after that, and Hilda watched him jump into the waggon and take possession of the reins. Then he cracked the big black snake, and started away in grand style.
“Confound you, Holles!” Ben said, as they rattled over the roads. “Do drive carefully. You will be landing us in one of those holes; I’ll take the lines. I don’t want the waggon smashed up, and the horses lamed.”
“I’m sorry, old man,” Holles replied cheerfully. “I’ll promise to be careful, but I cannot possibly let you drive. I always feel like going to my own funeral when you handle the whip. Here, get up, boys. Don’t be frightened of the mud. We’re not going to stick yet. Get up, boys! But, by Jove, Ben, the roads are heavy.”
“They are not fit for travelling yet,” Ben answered. “But you worried me into coming. It is better to give in to you and have peace.”
“Grumble away as much as you like,” Holles answered; “I would rather have any amount of your grumblings than one of your fowls. What on earth do you do to your fowls to turn them out so thin? You might make your fortune by exhibiting them. They’re quite unique!”
“Don’t chatter so much, and look out where you are going,” said Ben, pretending not to notice Jesse’s chaff.
Holles laughed, and drove on silently for a few minutes. Then he said:
“That’s a bad piece of luck about Bob Strafford’s reservoir. Poor fellow! He will take it dreadfully to heart. And I am sorry for her too. It must be lonely for her in this part of the country.”
Ben made no answer.
“I can’t for the life of me understand about women,” Holles continued. “If I were a fine girl like that, nothing on earth would induce me to come out to this kind of existence. Any one can see that she is out of place here.”
“The women have a bad time of it in a new country,” Ben said slowly. “If you talk to any one of them, it is nearly always the same story, home-sickness and desolation, desolation and home-sickness. I remember last year up north meeting such a handsome woman. Her husband had made quite a good thing out of Lima beans, and they had everything they wanted. But she told me that she did not know how to live through the first ten years of home-sickness.”
“That’s a cheerful prospect for Mrs. Strafford,” said Holles.
“She will probably work her way through, as they all do,” answered Ben. “Women are wonderful creatures.”
“You always have something to say for women,” said Holles. “You ought to go back to the old country, and help them get the suffrage and all that sort of thing. You are lost to them out here. How my maiden aunt, who only lives for the Cause, as she calls it, would adore you!”
Ben smiled, and then said quietly:
“Robert’s ranch has been put back at least three years. I don’t suppose Mrs. Strafford realises that yet. But it is very hard on her, and cruel for him. He has worked untiringly, poor chap, and used every means in his power to reach success. Well, I simply cannot speak of it, Jesse. It chokes me. Look out now. There’s something ahead. Don’t go an inch out of the road, or we shall get mired.”
As they came nearer, they saw that a cart, heavily laden with large bales of hay, had stuck in the mud. Two men were leading the horses away.
“Can we pass?” Ben asked of them.
“There’s just enough room to manage it,” one of them answered.
“We’ll try for it,” said Holles. “Get up, boys!”
They might have been able to creep past in safety, but that one of the team shied at the bales of hay, and swerved about three feet from the road. In an instant, the horses were plunging in the mud, and the spring-waggon had sunk up to the hubs. Ben took the black snake, and whipped up the poor brutes, and, together with Holles, shouted, coaxed, and swore.
But they had gone down so deep that they could not free themselves. They plunged and paddled and struggled hard to drag out the waggon, until at last one of them, more faint-hearted than the other, gave up trying, and began nibbling the grass.
Ben and Holles jumped down, and walked very gingerly over the soft ground, which, in the neighbourhood of the horses’ hoofs, was precisely like pea-soup. They unhitched the animals, who then sprang forward and gained firm footing once more. There they stood tired and panting, their long tails looking like house-painter’s brushes steeped in rich brown colouring.
“I won’t be worried again into bringing my team out so soon after a storm,” said Ben, half humorously, as he stroked both the horses. “They don’t care about a mud bath.”
“It won’t hurt them,” answered Holles. “In fact it is a capital thing for the health. My maiden aunt used to go every year to Karlsbad for the mud baths, and after the tenth season she really began to feel the benefit of them. All the same, Ben, I am glad we had not to dig out the horses. That is the very devil. Now for the waggon. I have a brilliant idea.”
He saw a rope in the hay cart, and at once possessed himself of it. He fastened it to the pole of their own waggon, and attached it to the horses. Then once more Ben cracked the black snake, and the horses, being now on solid ground, tugged and tugged, and at last pulled out the waggon.
“You ought to thank your stars you had me with you,” said Holles, as they started on their way again. “I’m so wonderfully ingenious.”
He drove into the village in grand style, much elated that he and Ben had come off so easily. A great many men were gathered together at the grocery-store, which was also the post-office, and horses and buggies of every description were crowding the road: most of the horses looked as though they had been mired, and several of them wore an air of depression born of wounded pride. Others obviously did not care whether or not their appearance was changed for the worse, and received with stolid indifference the various uncomplimentary remarks bestowed on their tails.
This was the first time of meeting since the great storm, and every one had something to tell about his own experiences. There was anxiety expressed about the enormous earth dam of the Nagales reservoir which supplied the Flume. If it had burst, as some one reported, untold-of damage would have been done; and moreover, the whole water-supply for the summer months’ irrigating would have been wasted. This was a terrible prospect, and especially so after a long drought of exceptional severity. But the postmaster, who was busy distributing the accumulation of several days’ mail, said there was no truth in the report.
“I wish there was no truth in the news about poor old Strafford’s dam,” said some one. “Can’t you contradict it, Overleigh?”
Ben shook his head.
“It is only too true,” he said sorrowfully.
“Well, it’s a miserable thing to happen, and so soon after his marriage,” said the postmaster. “Are you taking his mail, Mr. Holles?”
“Yes,” answered Holles. “Great powers! Is this cart-load for him? Oh, I see, it’s mostly for his wife. What a stunning lot of papers! By Jove! I wish my people would send me some. The only thing I ever get from the old country is ‘The Young Christian at Home.’ And Lauderdale gets ‘The Christian Household.’ No wonder we are always depressed. Here, stay a moment, Ben. I’m not through with the shopping. I’ve nearly forgotten Mrs. Strafford’s sack of flour. And I want a tin of oysters. Graham is so upset about losing his three acres of olives, that he says the only possible thing to help him is boiled oysters on toast. Well, now I am about ready.”
With a greeting here and a nod there, the two friends drove off. Ben took the reins, and Holles sorted the mail, and seemed greatly interested in the outsides of Mrs. Strafford’s newspapers and magazines, and in their insides too, for he held each one up to the light, looking through it as though through a telescope.
“Well, I wish they were for me,” he said, as he pushed them away and lit his pipe. “But I don’t grudge them to her. I daresay she is terribly home-sick for old England: and the mail will cheer her up. Somehow or other I feel sorry for her—don’t you, Ben? What do you think of her?”
“I don’t know,” said Ben, slowly.
And he spoke the truth. He had thought of her constantly ever since his long walk and talk with her. He recalled her fierce distress, her sudden breaking down of the barrier of reserve, her cry of relief at being able to speak openly about the isolation and unattractiveness of the life and land. He remembered every word she had said; he remembered every gesture. In turning the whole matter over in his mind, he was torn by several conflicting feelings: sympathy with her suffering, indignation with himself for being able to sympathise at all with her, resentment against her for her cold criticism of Robert in the very midst of his distress, a growing suspicion that her nature had nothing to offer of tender love and passionate devotion, and an uneasy consciousness that in spite of all this, and in spite of his loyal and long attachment to poor old Bob, there was something about her personality which attracted him immensely, something gallant in her bearing, and something irresistible in her appearance. He could not but admire her, and he hated himself for it.
He did not listen to Jesse Holles’s chatter, and he looked with indifference at the country smiling now in serene sunshine, and at the softened lights on the mountains. Holles tried to draw his attention to a few blades of grass springing up on the roadside, and as they neared Robert’s house, he glanced down into the valley and exclaimed with delight when he saw the river glistening like gold. But Ben, usually so susceptible to the beauties of nature, and so enthusiastic about the varying charms of this wild expanse of scenery which he greatly loved, noticed nothing.
Then the sound of a harsh voice recalled him from his musings, and there stood Hilda.
“So you are back safely,” she said brightly.
“Yes,” said Holles, as he handed out her letters and papers. “We were badly mired going; but the marvel is that we did not sink up to our very eyes coming back, owing to the heavy weight of your mail. But, oh, how I envy it! How I should enjoy those papers! This is not a hint. It is merely an emotional observation, which I regret already.”
“You need not regret it,” laughed Hilda. “I hope you will all read my papers.”
“We will try,” said Holles, quaintly. “And here is the sack of flour. I will just lift it into the house. It is a perfectly lovely day. Spring has come!”