THE next morning after Robert Strafford had gone off to town to meet Hilda, Ben Overleigh went to his friend’s house and put everything in order, and after having paid special attention to the arrangement of his moustache, he set out to visit Miss Dewsbury, the deaf lady, intending, if possible, to coax her piano out of her. He was a great favourite of hers, and he was indeed the only person who was not thoroughly frightened of her. She was quite seventy years of age, but she had unending strength and vitality,[33] and worked like a navvy on her ranch, only employing a man when she absolutely must. And when she did employ any one, she mounted to the top of the house, and kept watch over him with an opera-glass, so that she might be quite sure she was having the advantage of every moment of his time. The boys in the neighbourhood often refused to work for her; for, as Jesse Holles said, it was bad enough to be watched through an opera-glass, but to have to put up with all her scoldings, and not be able to say a word of defence which could reach her, except through a trumpet—no, by Jove, that wasn’t the job for him! Also there were other complaints against her: she never gave any one a decent meal, and she never dreamed of offering anything else but skimmed[34] milk which people did not seem able to swallow. They swallowed the opera-glass and the trumpet and the scoldings and the tough beef, but when it came to the skimmed milk, they felt that they had already endured enough. So the best people in the valley would not work for Miss Dewsbury—as least, not willingly; and it had sometimes happened that Ben Overleigh had used his powers of persuasion to induce some of the young fellows to give her a few days’ help when she was in special need of it; and on more than one occasion, when he could not make any one else go to her, he had himself offered her his services. Thus she owed him some kindness; and moreover his courtliness and his gentle voice were pleasing to her. He was the only person, so she said,[35] who did not shout down the trumpet. And yet she could hear every word he uttered.
This morning when he arrived at her house, she was vainly trying to hear what the butcher said, and the butcher was vainly trying to make himself understood. She was in a state of feverish excitement, and the butcher looked in the last stage of nervous exhaustion.
“You’ve just come in time to save my life,” he said to Ben. “For the love of heaven, tell her through the trumpet, that beef has gone up two cents a pound, that she can’t have her salted tongue till next week, and that she has given me seven cents too little.”
Then Ben of the magic voice spoke these mystic words through the trumpet, and the butcher went off comforted, and Miss Dewsbury smiled at her favourite; and when he told her that he had come to ask a special favour of her, she was so gracious that Ben felt he would have no difficulty in carrying out his project. But when she understood what he wanted, things did not go so easily. To be sure, she did not use the piano, she said, but then that was no reason why any one else should use it for her. Ben stood waiting patiently until she should have exhausted all her eloquence, and then he stooped down, and quietly picked one or two suckers off a lemon-tree, and took his pruning-knife from his pocket, and snipped off a faded branch. After this, with quiet deliberation, he twirled his great moustaches. That settled the matter.
“You may have the piano,” she said, “but you must fetch it yourself.”
Ben did not think it necessary to add that he had already arranged for it to be fetched at once, and he lingered a little while with her, listening to her complaint about the men she employed and about their laziness, which she observed through the opera-glass. Ben was just going to suggest that perhaps the opera-glass made the men lazy, when he remembered that he must be circumspect, and so he contrived some beautiful speech about the immorality of laziness; he even asked for a glass of skimmed milk, and off he cantered, raising his hat and bowing chivalrously to the old lady rancher. Before very long, her piano stood in Robert Strafford’s little house, and Ben spent a long time in cleaning and dusting it.
After he had finished this task, he became very restless, and finally went down to the workshop and made a rough letter-box, which he fixed on to a post and placed at the corner of the road leading up to his friend’s ranch. Two hours were left. He did a little gardening and watered the tiny grass-plot. He looked at the sky. Blue-black clouds were hovering over the mountains, obscuring some and trying to envelop others.
“We are in for a storm,” he said. “It is making straight for this part from Grevilles Mountain. But I hope it won’t come to-night. It will be a poor welcome to Bob’s wife, though it’s about time now for the land to have a thorough good drenching.”
He looked at the pretty valley with its belt of trees, seen at its best from the hill where Robert’s house was built. At all times of the year, there was that green stretch yonder of clustering trees, nestling near the foothills, which in their turn seemed to nestle up to the rugged mountains.
“Yes,” he said, as he turned away, “those trees make one home-sick for a wooded country. These wonderful ranges of mountains and these hills are all very well in their way, and one learns to love them tremendously, but one longs for the trees. And yet when Jesse Holles went north and came back again, he said he was glad to see the barren mountains once more. I wonder what the girl will think of it all, and how she will take to the life. The women suffer miseries of home-sickness.”
He stood thinking a while, and there was an expression of great sadness on his face.
“My own little sweetheart would have pined out here,” he said softly; “I can bear the loneliness, but I could not have borne hers. Poor old Bob,” he said regretfully, “I almost wish he had not sent for her: it is such a risk in this land. I don’t wonder he is anxious.”
He glanced again at the threatening clouds, and went back to the house, took off his coat, turned up his sleeves, and began the preparations for the evening meal. He laid the cloth, changed the flowers several times before they smiled to his satisfaction, and polished the knives and forks. He brought in some logs of wood and some sumac-roots, made a fire, and blew it up with the bellows.
“BEN LIT THE LANTERN, AND STATIONED HIMSELF
OUTSIDE WITH IT.”
Suddenly the frail little frame-house was shaken by a heavy gust of wind; and when the shock had passed, every board creaked and quivered. Nellie got up from her warm place near the fire, and stalked about uneasily.
“Damnation!” said Ben. “The storm is working up. If they’d only come before it is any worse.”
It was now seven o’clock and pitch dark. Ben lit the lantern, and stationed himself outside with it. The time seemed endless to him, but at last he heard the music of wheels, and in a few minutes the horse dashed up the hill, and Robert’s voice rang out lustily:
“Here she is, Ben!”
“Yes, here I am,” said Robert’s wife.
“Just in time to escape the storm,” said Ben, coming forward to greet her, and helping her out of the buggy. “I’ve been awfully anxious about you both. I’ll take the horse down to the barn, Bob, and then I’ll fly up to see about the dinner. Leave everything to me.”
So whilst Ben was unhitching the horse, Robert led his wife into the little house, and he was transfigured with pride and pleasure when she glanced round and said:
“Why, how cosy you’ve made it! And how cheerful the fire looks! And this dear dog ready to be so friendly. It looks like a real little home—doesn’t it?”
In that one moment all Robert’s doubts and misgivings were set at rest, and when Ben hurried up from the barn, the husband and wife were kneeling down and toasting themselves before the fire, the dog nestling up near them, and he heard Robert asking questions about the dear old country, and Hilda answering in a voice which struck on Ben’s sensitive ear as being somewhat harsh and strident. He had only time to glance hastily at her as, intent on serving up a dainty little dinner as quickly as possible, he passed into the kitchen. At last he brought it in triumphantly, hot steak cooked as only Ben knew how, and fried potatoes and chicken salad, and the most fragrant coffee. Finally, overcome with his exertions and his anxiety and his day’s working and waiting, with a sigh of relief he sank back in his chair and twirled his great moustaches.
“You have been such a good friend to Bob,” said Hilda, smiling at him. “I know all about it.”
“No, no,” said Ben, with his easy grace, “I’ve only helped to get him through the time until you came out to him. The poor wretch needed cheering up. But he does not look much like a poor wretch now.”
“No, indeed,” laughed Robert, “and I don’t feel like one.”
“You’ve often been a great anxiety to me,” said Ben, turning to Hilda. “When the mails have been delayed and your letters have not come at their appointed minute, then I have had to suffer. And once you were ill. During that period I was not allowed any peace of mind.”
“In fact, you have had bad times on my account,” she said brightly.
“AND HE HEARD ROBERT ASKING QUESTIONS.”
“Well, I could not bear to see him suffer,” Ben said, laying his arm on Robert’s shoulder. “He is a terrible fellow at taking things to heart. There is no doing anything at all with him.”
“He has suffered quite unnecessarily,” Hilda answered, with that peculiar harsh ring in her voice which again jarred on Ben’s sensitiveness. “I am one of the strong ones of the earth.”
And she looked it. Though tired after the long journey from England, she had the appearance of being in excellent health. Her complexion was dark, and her eyes were brown, but without any softness in them. She was decidedly good-looking, almost beautiful indeed, and strikingly graceful of form and stature. But she impressed Ben as being quite unsympathetic, and all the time he was washing up the tea things and tidying the little kitchen, he found himself harping on this note alone.
And when he had said good-bye to Robert and Hilda, and was hurrying home on his pretty little mare Fanny, he gave vent, in his usual musical fashion, to a vague feeling of disappointment, and kept up a soft accompaniment of swearing to the howling of the wind.