In Exile and Other Stories
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Mary Hallock Foote >> In Exile and Other Stories
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11 Produced by William Flis and the Online Distributed Proofreaders Team
In Exile
and Other Stories
by
Mary Hallock Foote
CONTENTS.
IN EXILE
FRIEND BARTON'S "CONCERN"
THE STORY OF THE ALCAZAR
A CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN
THE RAPTURE OF HETTY
THE WATCHMAN
IN EXILE
I.
Nicky Dyer and the schoolmistress sat upon the slope of a hill, one of a
low range overlooking an arid Californian valley. These sunburnt slopes
were traversed by many narrow footpaths, descending, ascending, winding
among the tangle of poison-oak and wild-rose bushes, leading from the
miners' cabins to the shaft-houses and tunnels of the mine which gave to
the hills their only importance. Nicky was a stout Cornish lad of thirteen,
with large light eyes that seemed mildly to protest against the sportive
relation which a broad, freckled, turned-up nose bore to the rest of his
countenance; he was doing nothing in particular, and did it as if he were
used to it. The schoolmistress sat with her skirts tucked round her ankles,
the heels of her stout little boots driven well into the dry, gritty
soil. There was in her attitude the tension of some slight habitual
strain--perhaps of endurance--as she leaned forward, her arms stretched
straight before her, with her delicate fingers interlocked. Whatever may
be the type of Californian young womanhood, it was not her type; you felt,
looking at her cool, clear tints and slight, straight outlines, that she
had winter in her blood.
She was gazing down into the valley, as one looks at a landscape who has
not yet mastered all its changes of expression; its details were blurred in
the hot, dusty glare; the mountains opposite had faded to a flat outline
against the indomitable sky. A light wind blew up the slope, flickering the
pale leaves of a manzanita, whose burnished, cinnamon-colored stems glowed
in the sun. As the breeze strengthened, the young girl stood up, lifting
her arms, to welcome its coolness on her bare wrists.
"Nicky, why do the trees in that hollow between the hills look so green?"
"There'll be water over there, miss; that's the Chilano's spring. I'm
thinkin' the old cow might 'a' strayed over that way somewheres; they
mostly goes for the water, wherever it is."
"Is it running water, Nicky,--not water in a tank?"
"Why, no, miss; it cooms right out o' the rock as pretty as iver you saw!
I often goes there myself for a drink, cos it tastes sort o' different,
coomin' out o' the ground like. We wos used to that kind o' water at 'ome."
"Let us go, Nicky," said the girl. "I should like to taste that water, too.
Do we cross the hill first, or is there a shorter way?"
"Over the 'ill's the shortest, miss. It's a bit of a ways, but you've been
longer ways nor they for less at th' end on't."
They "tacked" down the steepest part of the hill, and waded through a
shady hollow, where ferns grew rank and tall,--crisp, faded ferns, with an
aromatic odor which escaped by the friction of their garments, like the
perfume of warmed amber. They reached at length the green trees, a clump
of young cottonwoods at the entrance to a narrow canon, and followed the
dry bed of a stream for some distance, until water began to show among the
stones. The principal outlet of the spring was on a small plantation at the
head of the canon, rented of the "company" by a Chilian, or "the Chilano,"
as he was called; he was not at all a pastoral-looking personage, but, with
the aid of his good water, he earned a moderately respectable living by
supplying the neighboring cabins and the miners' boarding-house with green
vegetables. After a temporary disappearance, as if to purge its memory of
the Chilano's water-buckets, the spring again revealed itself in a thin,
clear trickle down the hollowed surface of a rock which closed the narrow
passage of the canon. Young sycamores and cottonwoods shut out the sun
above; their tangled roots, interlaced with vines still green and growing,
trailed over the edge of the rock, where a mass of earth had fallen; green
moss lined the hollows of the rock, and water-plants grew in the dark pools
below.
The strollers had left behind them the heat and glare; only the breeze
followed them into this green stillness, stirring the boughs overhead and
scattering spots of sunlight over the wet stones. Nicky, after enjoying
for a few moments the schoolmistress' surprised delight, proposed that she
should wait for him at the spring, while he went "down along" in search
of his cow. Nicky was not without a certain awe of the schoolmistress, as
a part of creation he had not fathomed in all its bearings; but when they
rambled on the hills together, he found himself less uneasily conscious of
her personality, and more comfortably aware of the fact that, after all,
she was "nothin' but a woman." He was a trifle disappointed that she showed
no uneasiness at being left alone, but consoled himself by the reflection
that she was "a good un to 'old 'er tongue," and probably felt more than
she expressed.
The schoolmistress did not look in the least disconsolate after Nicky's
departure. She gazed about her very contentedly for a while, and then
prepared to help herself to a drink of water. She hollowed her two hands
into a cup, and waited for it to fill, stooping below the rock, her lifted
skirt held against her side by one elbow, while she watched with a childish
eagerness the water trickle into her pink palms. Miss Frances Newell had
never looked prettier in her life. A pretty girl is always prettier in
the open air, with her head uncovered. Her cheeks were red; the sun just
touched the roughened braids of dark brown hair, and intensified the glow
of a little ear which showed beneath. She stooped to drink; but Miss
Frances was destined never to taste that virgin cup of water. There was a
trampling among the bushes, overhead; a little shower of dust and pebbles
pattered down upon her bent head, soiling the water. She let her hands fall
as she looked up, with a startled "Oh!" A pair of large boots were rapidly
making their way down the bank, and the cause of all this disturbance stood
before her,--a young man in a canvas jacket, with a leathern case slung
across his shoulder, and a small tin lamp fastened in front of the hat
which he took off while he apologized to the girl for his intrusion.
"Miss Newell! Forgive me for dropping down on you like a thousand of brick!
You've found the spring, I see."
Miss Frances stood with her elbows still pressed to her sides, though her
skirt had slipped down into the water, her wet palms helplessly extended.
"I was getting a drink," she said, searching with the tips of her fingers
among the folds of her dress for a handkerchief. "You came just in time to
remind me of the slip between the cup and the lip."
"I'm very sorry, but there is plenty of water left. I came for some myself.
Let me help you." He took from one of the many pockets stitched into the
breast and sides of his jacket a covered flask, detached the cup, and,
after carefully rinsing, filled and handed it to the girl. "I hope it
doesn't taste of 'store claret;' the water underground is just a shade
worse than that exalted vintage."
"It is delicious, thank you, and it doesn't taste in the least of claret.
Have you just come out of the mine?"
"Yes. It is measuring-up day. I've been toddling through the drifts and
sliding down chiflons"--he looked ruefully at the backs of his trousers
legs--"ever since seven o'clock this morning. Haven't had time to eat any
luncheon yet, you see." He took from another pocket a small package folded
in a coarse napkin. "I came here to satisfy the pangs of hunger and enjoy
the beauties of nature at the same time,--such nature as we have here. Will
you excuse me, Miss Newell? I'll promise to eat very fast."
"I'll excuse you if you will not ask me to eat with you."
"Oh, I've entirely too much consideration for myself to think of such a
thing; there isn't enough for two."
He seated himself, with a little sigh, and opened the napkin on the ground
before him. Miss Newell stood leaning against a rock on the opposite side
of the brook, regarding the young man with a shy and smiling curiosity.
"Meals," he continued, "are a reckless tribute to the weakness of the flesh
we all engage in three times a day at the boarding-house; a man must eat,
you know, if he expects to live. Have you ever tried any of Mrs. Bondy's
fare, Miss Newell?"
"I'm sure Mrs. Bondy tries to have everything very nice," the young girl
replied, with some embarrassment.
"Of course she does; she is a very good old girl. I think a great deal of
Mrs. Bondy; but when she asks me if I have enjoyed my dinner, I always make
a point of telling her the truth; she respects me for it. This is her idea
of sponge cake, you see." He held up admiringly a damp slab of some compact
pale-yellow substance, with crumbs of bread adhering to one side. "It is a
little mashed, but otherwise a fair specimen."
Miss Frances laughed. "Mr. Arnold, I think you are too bad. How can she
help it, with those dreadful Chinamen? But I would really advise you not to
eat that cake; it doesn't look wholesome."
"Oh, as to that, I've never observed any difference; one thing is about
as wholesome as another. Did you ever eat bacon fried by China Sam? The
sandwiches were made of that. You see I still live." The sponge cake was
rapidly disappearing. "Miss Newell, you look at me as if I were making away
with myself, instead of the cake,--will you appear at the inquest?"
"No, I will not testify to anything so unromantic; besides, it might be
inconvenient for Mrs. Bondy's cook." She put on her hat, and stepped along
the stones towards the entrance to the glen.
"You are not going to refuse me the last offices?"
"I am going to look for Nicky Dyer. He came with me to show me the spring,
and now he has gone to hunt for his cow."
"And you are going to hunt for him? I hope you won't try it, Miss Frances:
a boy on the track of a cow is a very uncertain object in life. Let me call
him, if you really must have him."
"Oh, don't trouble yourself. I suppose he will come after a while. I said I
would wait for him here."
"Then permit me to say that I think you had better do as you promised."
Miss Frances recrossed the stones, and seated herself, with a faint
deprecatory smile.
"I hope you don't mind if I stay," Arnold said, moving some loose stones to
make her seat more comfortable. "You have the prior right to-day, but this
is an old haunt of mine. I feel as if I were doing the honors; and to tell
you the truth, I am rather used up. The new workings are very hot and the
drifts are low. It's a combination of steam-bath and hoeing corn."
The girl's face cleared, as she looked at him. His thin cheek was pale
under the tan, and where his hat was pushed back the hair clung in damp
points to his forehead and temples.
"I should be very sorry to drive you away," she said. "I thought you looked
tired. If you want to go to sleep, or anything, I will promise to be very
quiet."
Arnold laughed. "Oh, I'm not such an utter wreck; but I'm glad you can be
very quiet. I was afraid you might be a little uproarious at times, you
know."
The girl gave a sudden shy laugh. It was really a giggle, but a very sweet,
girlish giggle. It called up a look of keen pleasure to Arnold's face.
"Now I call this decidedly gay," he remarked, stretching out his long legs
slowly, and leaning against a slanting rock, with one arm behind his head.
"Miss Frances, will you be good enough to tell me that my face isn't
dirty?"
"Truth compels me to admit that you have one little daub over your left
eyebrow."
"Thank you," said Arnold, rubbing it languidly with his handkerchief. His
hat had dropped off, and he did not replace it; he did not look at the
girl, but let his eyes rest on the thread of falling water that gleamed
from the spring. Miss Frances, regarding him with some timidity, thought:
How much younger he looks without his hat! He had that sensitive fairness
which in itself gives a look of youth and purity; the sternness of his
face lay in the curves which showed under his mustache, and in the silent,
dominant eye.
"You've no idea how good it sounds to a lonely fellow like me," he said,
"to hear a girl's laugh."
"But there are a great many women here," Miss Frances observed.
"Oh yes, there are women everywhere, such as they are; but it takes a nice
girl, a lady, to laugh!"
"I don't agree with you at all," replied Miss Frances coldly. "Some of
those Mexican women have the sweetest voices, speaking or laughing, that I
have ever heard; and the Cornish women, too, have very fresh, pure voices.
I often listen to them in the evening when I sit alone in my room. Their
voices sound so happy"--
"Well, then it is the home accent,--or I'm prejudiced. Don't laugh again,
please, Miss Frances; it breaks me all up." He moved his head a little, and
looked across at the girl to assure himself that her silence did not mean
disapproval. "I admit," he went on, "that I like our Eastern girls. I know
you are from the East, Miss Newell."
"I am from what I used to think was East," she said, smiling. "But
everything is East here; people from Indiana and Wisconsin say they are
from the East."
"Ah, but you are from our old Atlantic coast. I was sure of it when I first
saw you. If you will pardon me, I knew it by your way of dressing."
The young girl flushed with pleasure; then, with a reflective air: "I
confess myself, since you speak of clothes, to a feeling of relief when I
saw your hat the first Sunday after I came. Western men wear such dreadful
hats."
"Good!" he cried gayly. "You mean my hat that I _call_ a hat." He reached
for the one behind his head, and spun it lightly upward, where it settled
on a projecting branch. "I respect that hat myself,--my _other_ hat, I
mean; I'm trying to live up to it. Now, let me guess your State, Miss
Newell: is it Massachusetts?"
"No,--Connecticut; but at this distance it seems like the same thing."
"Oh, pardon me, there are very decided differences. I'm from Massachusetts
myself. Perhaps the points of difference show more in the women,--the ones
who stay at home, I mean, and become more local and idiomatic than the men.
You are not one of the daughters of the soil, Miss Newell."
She looked pained as she said, "I wish I were; but there is not room for us
all, where there is so little soil."
Arnold moved uneasily, extracted a stone from under the small of his
back and tossed it out of sight with some vehemence. "You think it goes
rather hard with women who are uprooted, then," he said. "I suppose it is
something a roving man can hardly conceive of,--a woman's attachment to
places, and objects, and associations; they are like cats."
Miss Newell was silent.
Arnold moved restlessly; then began again, with his eyes still on the
trickle of water: "Miss Newell, do you remember a poem--I think it is
Bryant's--called 'The Hunter of the Prairies'? It's no disgrace not to
remember it, and it may not be Bryant's."
"I remember seeing it, but I never read it. I always skipped those Western
things."
Arnold gave a short laugh, and said, "Well, you are punished, you see, by
going West yourself to hear me repeat it to you. I think I can give you the
idea in the Hunter's own words:--
"'Here, with my rifle and my steed,
And her who left the world for me'"--
The sound of his own voice in the stillness of the little glen, and a look
of surprise in the young girl's quiet eyes, brought a sudden access of
color to Arnold's face. "Hm-m-m," he murmured to himself, "it's queer how
rhymes slip away. Well, the last line ends in _free_. You see, it is a
man's idea of happiness,--a young man's. Now, how do you suppose _she_
liked it,--the girl, you know, who left the world, and all that? Did you
ever happen to see a poem or a story, written by a woman, celebrating the
joys of a solitary existence with the man of her heart?"
"I suppose that many a woman has tried it," Miss Newell said evasively,
"but I'm sure she"--
"Never lived to tell the tale?" cried Arnold.
"She probably had something else to do, while the hunter was riding around
with his gun," Miss Frances continued.
"Well, give her the odds of the rifle and the steed; give the man some
commonplace employment to take the swagger out of him; let him come home
reasonably tired and cross at night,--do you suppose he would find the
'kind' eyes and the 'smile'? I forgot to tell you that the Hunter of the
Prairies is always welcomed by a smile at night."
"He must have been an uncommonly fortunate man," she said.
"Of course he was; but the question is: Could any living man be so
fortunate? Come, Miss Frances, don't prevaricate!"
"Well, am I speaking for the average woman?"
"Oh, not at all,--you are speaking for the very nicest of women; any other
kind would be intolerable on a prairie."
"I should think, if she were very healthy," said Miss Newell, hesitating
between mischief and shyness, "and not too imaginative, and of a cheerful
disposition; and if he, the hunter, were above the average,--supposing that
she cared for him in the beginning,--I should think the smile might last a
year or two."
"Heavens, what a cynic you are! I feel like a mere daub of sentiment beside
you. There have been moments, do you know, even in this benighted mining
camp, when I have believed in that hunter and his smile!"
He got up suddenly, and stood against the rock, facing her. Although he
kept his cool, bantering tone, his breathing had quickened, and his eyes
looked darker.
"You may consider me a representative man, if you please: I speak for
hundreds of us scattered about in mining camps and on cattle ranches, in
lighthouses and frontier farms and military posts, and all the Godforsaken
holes you can conceive of, where men are trying to earn a living, or lose
one,--we are all going to the dogs for the want of that smile! What is to
become of us if the women whose smiles we care for cannot support life in
the places where we have to live? Come, Miss Frances, can't you make that
smile last at least two years?" He gathered a handful of dry leaves from a
broken branch above his head and crushed them in his long hands, sifting
the yellow dust upon the water below.
"The places you speak of are very different," the girl answered, with
a shade of uneasiness in her manner. "A mining camp is anything but a
solitude, and a military post may be very gay."
"Oh, the principle is the same. It is the absolute giving up of everything.
You know most women require a background of family and friends and
congenial surroundings; the question is whether _any_ woman can do without
them."
The young girl moved in a constrained way, and flushed as she said, "It
must always be an experiment, I suppose, and its success would depend, as I
said before, on the woman and on the man."
"An 'experiment' is good!" said Arnold, rather savagely. "I see you won't
say anything you can't swear to."
"I really do not see that I am called upon to say anything on the subject
at all!" said the girl, rising and looking at him across the brook with
indignant eyes and a hot glow on her cheek.
He did not appear to notice her annoyance.
"You are, because you know something about it, and most women don't: your
testimony is worth something. How long have you been here,--a year? I
wonder how it seems to a woman to live in a place like this a year! I hate
it all, you know,--I've seen so much of it. But is there really any beauty
here? I suppose beauty, and all that sort of thing, is partly within us,
isn't it?--at least, that's what the goody little poems tell us."
"I think it is very beautiful here," said Miss Frances, softening, as he
laid aside his strained manner, and spoke more quietly. "It is the kind
of place a happy woman might be very happy in; but if she were
sad--or--disappointed"--
"Well?" said Arnold, pulling at his mustache, and fixing a rather gloomy
gaze upon her.
"She would die of it! I really do not think there would be any hope for her
in a place like this."
"But if she were happy, as you say," persisted the young man, "don't
you think her woman's adaptability and quick imagination would help her
immensely? She wouldn't see what I, for instance, know to be ugly and
coarse; her very ignorance of the world would help her."
There was a vague, pleading look in his eyes. "Arrange it to suit
yourself," she said. "Only, I can assure you, if anything should happen to
her, it will be the--the hunter's fault."
"All right," said he, rousing himself. "That hunter, if I know him, is a
man who is used to taking risks! Where are you going?"
"I thought I heard Nicky."
They were both silent, and as they listened, footsteps, with a tinkling
accompaniment, crackled among the bushes below the canon. Miss Newell
turned towards the spring again. "I want one more drink before I go," she
said.
Arnold followed her. "Let us drink to our return. Let this be our fountain
of Trevi."
"Oh, no," said Miss Frances. "Don't you remember what your favorite Bryant
says about bringing the 'faded fancies of an elder world' into these
'virgin solitudes'?"
"Faded fancies!" cried Arnold. "Do you call that a faded fancy? It is as
fresh and graceful as youth itself, and as natural. I should have thought
of it myself, if there had been no fountain of Trevi."
"Do you think so?" smiled the girl. "Then imagination, it would seem, is
not entirely confined to homesick women."
"Come, fill the cup, Miss Frances! Nicky is almost here."
The girl held her hands beneath the trickle again, until they were brimming
with the clear sweet water.
"Drink first," said Arnold.
"I'm not sure that I want to return," she replied, smiling, with her eyes
on the space of sky between the treetops.
"Nonsense,--you must be morbid. Drink, drink!"
"Drink yourself; the water is all running away!"
He bent his head, and took a vigorous sip of the water, holding his hands
beneath hers, inclosing the small cup in the larger one. The small cup
trembled a little. He was laughing and wiping his mustache, when Nicky
appeared; and Miss Frances, suddenly brightening and recovering her freedom
of movement, exclaimed, "Why, Nicky! You have been _forever_! We must go at
once, Mr. Arnold; so good-by! I hope"--
She did not say what she hoped, and Arnold, after looking at her with an
interrogative smile a moment, caught his hat from the branch overhead, and
made her a great flourishing bow with it in his hand.
He did not follow her, pushing her way through the swaying, rustling ferns,
but he watched her light figure out of sight. "What an extraordinary ass
I've been making of myself!" He confided this remark to the stillness of
the little canon, and then, with long strides, took his way over the hills
in an opposite direction.
It was the middle of July when this little episode of the spring occurred.
The summer had reached its climax. The dust did not grow perceptibly
deeper, nor the fields browner, during the long brazen weeks that followed;
one only wearied of it all, more and more.
So thought Miss Newell, at least. It was her second summer in California,
and the phenomenon of the dry season was not so impressive on its
repetition. She had been surprised to observe how very brief had been the
charm of strangeness, in her experience of life in a new country. She began
to wonder if a girl, born and brought up among the hills of Connecticut,
could have the seeds of _ennui_ subtly distributed through her frame, to
reach a sudden development in the heat of a Californian summer. She longed
for the rains to begin, that in their violence and the sound of the wind
she might gain a sense of life in action by which to eke out her dull and
expressionless days. She was, as Nicky Dyer had said, "a good un to 'old
'er tongue," and therein lay her greatest strength as well as her greatest
danger.
Miss Newell boarded at Captain Dyer's. The prosperous ex-mining captain
was a good deal nearer to the primitive type than any man Miss Newell had
ever sat at table with in her life before, but she had a thorough respect
for him, and she felt that the time might come when she could enjoy
him--as a reminiscence. Mrs. Dyer was kindly, and not more of a gossip
than her neighbors; and there were no children,--only one grandchild,
the inoffensive Nicky. The ways of the house were somewhat uncouth, but
everything was clean and in a certain sense homelike. To Miss Newell's
homesick sensitiveness it seemed better than being stared at across the
boarding-house table by Boker and Pratt, and pitied by the engineer. She
had a little room at the Dyers', which was a reflection of herself so far
as a year's occupancy and very moderate resources could make it; perhaps
for that very reason she often found her little room an intolerable prison.
One night her homesickness had taken its worst form, a restlessness, which
began in a nervous inward throbbing and extended to her cold and tremulous
finger-tips. She went softly downstairs and out on the piazza, where the
moonlight lay in a brilliant square on the unpainted boards. The moonlight
increased her restlessness, but she could not keep away from it. She dared
not walk up and down the piazza, because the people in the street below
would see her; she stood there perfectly still, holding her elbows with her
hands, crouched into a little dark heap against the side of the house.
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