CHAPTER XI
PASSION AND LOYALTY
THERE was great sorrow felt when the news spread about that Robert Strafford had died, but there was no surprise, for his friends had long since seen that he was slipping away from them, having reduced himself to the last inch of his strength through overwork and anxiety. It was an old story in Southern California, and one not rightly understood in the old country, but Ben Overleigh explained it in the letter which he wrote to Robert’s father.
“We buried him yesterday,” he wrote, “and his wife and we fellows who had known him and loved him, stood by the grave. He never had much strength, but what he had, he taxed to the uttermost. These last months he worked like one possessed. No delicate frame could stand it, and then he was unhappy about his wife, seeing her so home-sick. That finished matters for him. I remember when I first met him about four years ago, I thought it sheer madness for a frail young fellow like that to come out to a life of physical toil. Ranching is not child’s play, and if you want to succeed, you don’t sit down and watch your trees; you work at them the whole time, and it isn’t light work. To leave a city office, and come and be in the open air during the whole day sounds inviting, but some of those who try it, and have not much physical strength, go under. I wish this could be better understood in the old country. But I expect no one realises, until he tries for himself, what hard work manual labour really is, when one has never been accustomed to it, and knows nothing about it. Two years ago a young English doctor here died in the same way. He knew he had drained himself of strength, and that his heart was worn out. I want you to know we all loved your son, and as for myself, he leaves me bereft indeed. I shall buy his ranch, and work it together with mine. His wife will no doubt return as soon as she can, but at present there is a tremendous railway strike going on, and we are entirely cut off from the Eastern States. But some of the mails get through, and so I will risk it, and send this letter.”
Ben seemed to be quite a broken man, and went about his work as one seeing nothing and caring for nothing. Graham and Lauderdale and Holles tried their best to reach him with their kindness and sympathy; but he seemed unreachable, as though he had climbed to some distant mountain, and had cut himself off from human aid. But he liked to have Jesse Holles near him, remembering always that Jesse had been fond of Robert, and had given him many an hour of willing help. He looked after his ranch as usual, and rode over to Hilda every day without fail. He spent very little of his time with her personally, but worked on Robert’s ranch, finding a melancholy satisfaction in continuing what his friend had begun. He tended the horses, and helped Hilda in many ways. He cultivated, he pruned, and then he came up to the house, and sat down quietly with her, watching her as she prepared tea, watching and wondering and turning over many things in his mind. He was intensely sorry for her, but he had not told her that in words, although he knew she understood it from his deeds. In spite of all that had occurred, he could not help being strongly attracted to her, and sometimes when he was alone at home, he found himself torn in pieces by his great bereavement, by his sympathy with Hilda’s remorse, by his attraction to her, and his repulsion from her. Thus the storm swept furiously over Ben Overleigh. He told her once or twice that he would like to buy Robert’s ranch, and he thought they would not have any difficulty in arranging the matter. She did not make any definite reply, nor did she show any interest in his suggestion. She seemed strangely indifferent about the fate of the ranch, and about her own affairs and plans, which were being held in abeyance by the great railway strike. It was obvious, of course, that she would return home as soon as she could, but she never once spoke of home, and never once referred to the strike as interfering in any way with her own intentions. But she did speak of Robert, and then there was no mistaking the remorse in her manner, and the awe in her voice.
“I can never forget how I wounded him,” she said.
Ben did not answer her on these occasions; and his silence always stung her.
“You condemn me utterly,” she said, almost pleadingly, and she showed by her intensity how much she cared for what this man thought of her. She showed it all the more as the days went on, and, after all, it was natural enough that she should turn to him as her only friend in this distant country, where she was a complete stranger. But the matter did not end there. She was strongly attracted to him, and either she could not or would not hide it. At one moment a thrill of contempt would pass through Ben, and he could have turned from her as from something which soiled his soul; and at another moment a throb of passion would possess him, and he could have thrown up everything for her, his loyalty to his friend, his sense of dignity and fitness, his own estimate of her character—everything he could have swept to the winds. He noticed, too, that as the time went on, she seemed to become more reconciled to the scenery; and indeed the country was looking entrancingly beautiful. All Robert’s promises to her had come true: the foothills were powdered with gold; some of the slopes were arrayed in bright attire of orange-coloured poppies, and others had chosen for themselves a luxurious garment of wild mustard. Then there was the dazzling green grass, and the vast expanse of grain-fields, and in the distance yonder there were patches of purple and yellow flowers, reminding one of the gorse and heather in the old country. The grim barren mountains looked down indulgently on all this finery, like old people who have had their days of vanity, and are content to watch the young bedeck themselves so gaily. And the air was laden with the heavy fragrances of the flowers and the orange and lemon blossoms. Hilda drove out every day, and brought back endless treasures: wild lilac, wild azalea, and maiden-hair from some distant cañon. Her one consolation was to be out of the house: she drove, or she rode the pretty little mare which Robert had chosen so lovingly for her, and sometimes she strolled, taking with her a stout stick in case she came across any snakes. Nellie, the pointer, who had fretted piteously since Robert’s death, went with her, and whatever she did, the dog was always to be seen following her. Hilda’s health had not suffered from the shock which she had sustained, but she often looked anxious and desolate, and some of the people who saw her, thought she had changed sadly. They said that was not to be wondered at, considering the sad circumstances of her husband’s death, and the long continuance of the railway strike, which made it impossible for her to join her friends.
But one evening whilst she was sitting on the honeysuckle porch, Holles rode up waving a paper in his hands.
“Such good news!” he cried; “the strike is over. There has been some kind of a compromise between the company and the men, and some of the mails are through. I’ve got a ton-load for you in this gunny-sack. Nothing for me, of course, except my religious paper. That never gets lost.”
She put the magazines on one side, and opened her home letters. They were the first she had received in answer to her own letter telling of Robert’s death. Her father wrote most kindly, enclosing an order on one of the banks to cover her passage-money.
“Of course you will come back at once,” he said, “and take up your life where you left it.”
The letter fell from her hands.
The old life was offered to her again. There it was waiting for her, and she was free to go and accept it, and taste once more of the things for which she had been starving.
She was free. There was no one and nothing to hinder her. She could go back, and put these sad events and her remorse and her great mistake away from her remembrance. She argued that one had not to suffer all through one’s life for a mistake. She had not meant to be cruel to poor Robert, but she ought never to have come at all. And now she was free to go, and once at home again these months would seem to her as a time of which she had dreamed during an uneasy night.
But no sense of gladness or thankfulness came over her. She sat there, and bit her lips.
Home? What did she want with home?
She rose and went into the living-room, carelessly throwing her letters and papers on the table. The bank bill fell down, and she stooped and picked it up, and her fingers moved as though they were being impelled to tear it in shreds.
But she tossed it whole on to the table. She struck a match to light the lamp, but changed her mind and let the darkness creep on unrelieved.
Ben Overleigh rode up half an hour afterwards, and found her thus.
“I have come to tell you that the strike is over, and the train service begins to-morrow,” he said.
“I have heard,” she said rigidly.
“You must be glad to hear the news,” he said. “This time of waiting must have been very trying for you.”
She did not answer.
“And now at last you will be able to go home to your friends,” he said.
She was silent.
“I wanted to speak to you about the ranch,” he continued, a little nervously. “I have set my mind on buying the place, and carrying out Robert’s ideas. I hope you will give me the opportunity. If you look over his papers, you will find at what figure he valued his property. I only speak of it, because I thought that the certainty of being able to sell the ranch and receive money down at once, might make it all the easier for you, now that the line is open, to arrange your plans, and return home.”
“Home?” she echoed, as though in sudden pain.
Ben started.
“Yes,” he said quickly, “back to the life for which you have been hungering ever since you came, back to all those interests which you threw away, and then so bitterly regretted. Now your path is clear before you, and you can go straight on, and forget that you ever took a side-turning which led you to uncongenial pastures. Not every one can do that.”
“The old life!” she said wildly, “what does one want with the old life? What do I care about returning? Why should I go home?”
For a moment Ben Overleigh’s heart leapt within him. Why should she go home? These words were on his very lips, and others came rushing afterwards, struggling and wrestling for utterance. The storm raging around and within him for so many weeks, now assailed him with all its fury—and left him standing as firm as those mountains yonder.
“Why should you stay?” he said calmly; “you have said all along that this Californian life was detestable to you, and that you could never reconcile yourself to it. Have you forgotten that afternoon when you poured out your confidences to me, and eased your mind of your misery? Do you remember how you spoke of the isolation, the fearful distance from home, and the absence of stimulus, and the daily drudgery, and the mistake you had made in coming out to such a wretched land, and to such a starved existence?”
“Oh, I have not forgotten,” she said excitedly; “that was the first long breath I’d taken since I left England.”
“And do you remember how you said that if you’d only realised what you were coming to, nothing would have made you come,” he continued deliberately,—“neither love nor friendship, nor duty nor regret; and that if you had been a man, you would have preferred to starve in your old career rather than settle in such a land as this?”
“Yes, yes,” she broke in, “and I meant every word I said.”
“And do you remember how you asked me what it was we found to like in the life,” he continued, “and whether we would not throw it up to-morrow if we could, and what in the name of heaven we got in exchange for all we had lost?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” she said breathlessly; “and do you remember what you said then about the women?”
“I said that we men gained in every particular, and that it was a life for men and not for women,” he answered.
“Ah, but there was something else,” she said, almost desperately. “You said they came off badly here, but that their one salvation was to love passionately, desperately—”
“And if I did say so,” he said, turning to her fiercely, “what has that to do with you and me?”
There was no mistaking the ring of contempt in his voice. She smarted in every fibre of her, and instantly gathered herself together.
“No, you are right,” she said, with a quick nervous laugh. “It has not anything to do with you and me.”
He had struck a match as she spoke, and lit the lamp, and she came from the window where she had been standing, and pushed into a heap the letters and papers which were scattered over the table.
“That railway strike has lasted a terribly long time,” she said, in a tone of voice utterly different from her trembling accents of a few minutes past. “But now, thank goodness, it is all over, and I can arrange my plans at last. My father has sent the money for my return. But it is good of you to wish to make things easy for my journey. I shall not, however, need any more ready money, you see, for the cheque is large enough to pay my expenses twice over to England.”
Ben stood there half stunned by her sudden change of manner, and by the consummate way in which she swept from her horizon the whole of this incident between them.
“And now about the ranch,” she continued, with the dignity of a queen. “I will look out the papers to-morrow, and then we will settle it as you wish. I do not know any one to whom I could sell dear Robert’s ranch with greater pleasure than to you. But you must pay me at your leisure. There is no hurry.”
“Good God!” thought Ben. “A few minutes ago this woman was all but throwing herself at my feet, and now she stands there and patronises me.”
He could scarcely control his anger and scorn, but he mastered himself, and said quietly:
“I shall be very grateful to have old Robert’s ranch. It will be some consolation to me to take care of it and make it my own. You know we loved each other, he and I. But as for payment, I shall prefer to give the money down, at once.”
“That shall be just as you please,” she said, with gracious condescension. “And now good-night. I am very tired.”
She held out her hand to him, but he looked her straight in the face, bowed slightly, and left her.