Читать книгу Mariquita: A Novel - Ayscough John - Страница 8

Jack did not like Sarella, and so it was fortunate for that young person that Jack's opinion was of no sort of consequence. He had been longer on the range than anyone there except Don Joaquin, and he did much that would, if he had been a different sort of man, have entitled him to consider himself foreman. But he received smaller wages than anyone and never dreamt of being foreman. He was believed never to have had any other name but Jack, and was known never to have had but one suit of clothes, and his face and hands were much shabbier than his clothes, owing to a calendar of personal accidents. "That happened," he would say, "in the year the red bull horned my eye out," or "I mind – 'twas in the Jenoorey that my leg got smashed thro' Black Peter rollin' on me…" He had been struck in the jaw by a splinter from a tree that had itself been struck by lightning, and the scar he called his "June mark." A missing finger of his right hand he called his Xmas mark because it was on Christmas Day that the gun burst which shot it off. These, and many other scars and blemishes, would have marred the beauty of an Antinoüs, and Jack had always been ugly.

But, shabby as he was, he was marvellously clean, and Mariquita was very fond of him. His crooked body held a straight heart, loyal and kind, and a child's mind could not be cleaner. No human being suspected that Jack hated his master, whom he served faithfully and with stingily rewarded toil: and he hated him not because he was stingy to himself, but because Jack adored Mariquita, and accused her father of indifference to her. He was angry with him for leaving her alone to do all the work, and angry because nothing was ever done for her, and no thought taken of her.

When Sarella and Gore came, Jack hoped that the young man would marry Mariquita and take her away – though he would be left desolate. Thus Mariquita would be happy – and her father be punished, for Jack clearly perceived that Don Joaquin did not care for Gore, and he did not perceive that Mariquita's departure might be convenient to her father. But Jack could not see that Gore himself did much to carry out that marriage scheme. That the young man set a far higher value on Mariquita than her father had ever done, Jack did promptly understand; but he could perceive no advances and watched him with impatience.

As for Sarella, Jack was jealous of her importance: jealous that the old man made more of his wife's niece than of his own daughter; jealous that she had much less to do, and specially jealous that she had much smarter clothes. Jack could not see Sarella's beauty; had he possessed a looking-glass it might have been supposed to have dislocated his eye for beauty, but he possessed none – and he thought Mariquita as beautiful as the dawn on the prairie.

To do her justice, Sarella was civil to the battered old fellow, but he didn't want her civility, and was ungrateful for it. Yet her civility was to prove useful. Jack lived in a shed at the end of the stables, where he ate and slept, and mended his clothes sitting up in bed, and wearing (then only) a large pair of spectacles, though half a pair would have been enough. He cooked his own food, though Mariquita would have cooked it for him if he would have let her.

Sarella loved good eating, and on her coming it irritated her to see so much excellent food "made so little of." Presently she gave specimens of her own superior science, and Don Joaquin approved, as did the cowboys.

"Jack," she said to him one day, "do you ever eat anything but stew from year's end to year's end?"

"I eats bread, too, and likewise corn porridge," Jack replied coldly.

"I could tell you how to make more of your meat – I should think you'd sicken of stew everlastingly."

"There's worse than stew," he suggested.

"I don't know what's worse, then," the young lady retorted, wrinkling her very pretty nose.

"None. That's worse," said Jack, triumphantly.

"It seems to me," Sarella observed thoughtfully, "as if you're growing a bit oldish to do for yourself, and have no one to do anything for you. An elderly man wants a woman to keep him comfortable."

Jack snorted, but Sarella, undefeated, proceeded to put the case of his being ill. Who would nurse him?

"Ill! I've too much to do for sech idleness. The Boss'd stare if I laid out to get ill."

"Illness," Sarella remarked piously, "comes from Above, and may come any day. Haven't you anyone belonging to you, Jack? No sister, no niece; you never were married, I suppose, so I don't mention a daughter."

"I was married, though," Jack explained, much delighted, "and had a daughter, too."

"You quite surprise me!" cried Sarella, "quite!"

"She didn't marry me for my looks, my wife didn't," chuckled Jack. "Nor yet for my money."

"Out of esteem?" suggested Sarella.

"Can't say, I'm sure. I never heerd her mention it. Anyway, it didn't last – "

"The esteem?"

"No. The firm. She died – when Ginger was born. Since which I have remained a bachelord."

"By Ginger you mean your daughter?"

"That's what they called her. Her aunt took her, and she took the smallpox. But she didn't die of it. She's alive now."

"Married, I daresay?"

"No. Single. She's as like me as you're not," Jack explained summarily.

Sarella laughed.

"A good girl, though, I'll be bound," she hinted amiably.

"She's never mentioned the contrary – in her letters."

"Oh, she writes! I'm glad she writes."

"Thank you, Miss Sarella. She writes most Christmasses. And she wrote lately, tho' it's not Christmas."

"Not ill, I hope?"

"Ill! She's an industrious girl with plenty o' sense … but her aunt's dead, and she thinks o' taking a place in a boarding-house."

"Jack," said Sarella, after a brief but pregnant pause of consideration, "bring her up here."

Jack regarded her with a stare of undisguised amazement.

"Why not?" Sarella persisted. "It would be better for you."

"What's that to do with it?"

"And better for Miss Mariquita. It's too much for Miss Mariquita – all the work she has to do."

"That's true anyway."

"Of course it's true. Anyone can see that." (That Sarella saw it, considerably surprised Jack, and provided matter for some close consideration subsequently.)

"Look here, Jack," she went on, "I'll tell you what. You go to Mr. Xeres and say you'd like your daughter to come and work for you…"

"And he'd tell me to go and be damned."

"But you'd not go. And he wouldn't want you to go. And I'll speak to him."

Jack stared again. He hardly realized yet how much steadily growing confidence in her influence with "the Boss" Sarella felt. He made no promise to speak to him: but said "he'd sleep on it."

With that sleep came a certain ray of comprehension. Miss Sarella was not thinking entirely of him and his loneliness, nor entirely of Miss Mariquita. He believed that she really expected the Boss would marry her (as all the cowboys had believed for some weeks) and he perceived, with some involuntary admiration of her shrewdness, that she had no idea of being left, if Miss Mariquita should marry and go away, to do all the work as she had done. Once arrived at this perception of the situation, Jack went ahead confident of Sarella's quietly persistent help. He had not the least dread of rough language. He had no sensitive dread of displeasing his master. He would like to have Ginger up at the range especially as Ginger's coming would take much of the work off Miss Mariquita's hands. He even made Don Joaquin suspect that if Ginger were not allowed to come he, Jack, would go, and make a home for her down in Maxwell.

It did not suit Don Joaquin to lose Jack, and it suited him very well to listen to Sarella.

So Ginger came, and proved, as all the cowboys agreed, a good sort, though quite as ugly as her father.