Читать книгу The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country - Ernest Thompson Seton - Страница 32

Table of Contents

Belle had been in the express office signing some receipts for goods consigned to her father when Jim stepped from the train. He appeared framed in the open doorway; six feet four, broad and straight, supple and easy, with the head of a Greek god in a crown of golden curls, and a dash of wild hilarity in his bright blue eyes that suggested a Viking, a royal pirate. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen and when he spoke it was with a slight and winsome Irish brogue that lent new charm to a personality already too dangerously gifted.

It seemed to her that Nature had given him all the gifts there were for man; and he was even better furnished than she perceived, for he had youth, health, happy moods, magnetic power in face and voice, courage, and the gift of speech. And yet, with all these unmeasured blessings was conjoined a bane. To be possessed of the wild, erratic spirit of the roving, singing Celt, to be driven to all ill-judged extremities, to be lashed by passion, anger, and remorse, to be the battle ground of this wild spirit and its strong rival, the calm and steadfast spirit of the North—that was a spiritual destiny not to be discerned in a first meeting; but Belle, keen and understanding, was to discover it very soon.

Belle Boyd was an only child. Her father was a well-to-do trader; he had had just enough schooling to give him a high notion of its value, and he resolved to equip his child with the best there was in reach. This meant an Illinois college. She entered at seventeen. Here many vague aspirations of schoolgirl life took definite shape, and resulted in some radical changes in her course of studies. Her mother had but one thought—to prepare Belle for being a good wife to some one. Her views on many subjects were to be left blank, so that she might at once adopt those of her prospective husband. Her tentacles alone were well considered in the maternal method, so that she could cling ivy-like to her oak, stay up with him or go down with him; but help him to stand up—no, never and not at all!

But Illinois was seething with a different thought in the late '70's. There were women who boldly proclaimed that sex and mind had little bearing on each other; that woman should train herself to be herself, and to stand on her own feet; that when woman had the business training of men, the widow and the unmarried woman—half of all women—would no longer be the easy prey of every kind of sharper. These new teachers were, of course, made social martyrs, but they sowed the seed and the crop was coming on. That every woman should prepare herself to stand alone in the world was the first article in their creed. This crystallized an old and shapeless thought that had often come to Belle, and the pointed application that she made was to focus her college studies on a business training. Bookkeeping, shorthand, and exact methods were selected for specialization; and when at the age of twenty Belle was graduated and went home to Cedar Mountain, she had, in addition to her native common sense, a disciplined attention that made her at once a power in the circle of the church. It was her own idea to take a business position at once. Her mother was absolutely opposed to it. "Why should her child be sent to work? Were they not able to keep her at home? What was the good of parents giving years to toil if not to keep their children at home with them?" Mr. Boyd was more inclined to see things Belle's way, and at length a compromise was reached by which Belle became her father's bookkeeper and secretary, and for a time all went well.

Then a new factor entered the case, one for which the reformer has not yet found a good answer. The daily routine of the desk was assumed as a matter of course; and Belle quickly got used to that and found abundant mental diversion in other things and in hours of freedom. But her body had less strength than her mind, and the close confinement of the office began to tell. Her hands got thin, her cheeks lost their colour, her eyes grew brighter. Mrs. Boyd began to worry, and sent secretly to Illinois for bottles of various elixirs of life, guaranteed to put health, strength, youth, and brains into anything. She also made foolish and elaborate efforts to trick the daughter into eating more at meals, or between meals, without avail. At this juncture a very capable person took matters in hand. Dr. Peter Carson, family physician and devoted friend, was consulted; his views were clear and convincing: Belle must give up the office for a year at least; she needed fresh air and sun; the more the better. Every girl in the Black Hills rides as a matter of course, and Belle was at home on a broncho; but now it must be, not an occasional run, but a daily ride in the hills—off for miles, till the vital forces had renewed their strength.

For a month or more Belle rode and browned in the sun. The colour came again to her cheeks, and zest to her life; and there also came a strong desire to be in a business of her own. But it must be something out of doors; it must be something of little capital; and something a woman could do. Belle studied her problem with great care and presently there began to arrive at the post office sundry catalogues of extraordinary hens with unbelievable records as producers of eggs and of rapid-raising broilers. The result was that the acre of ground behind the store was cut up into poultry runs for the various strains of stock that Belle decided on and that spring Belle launched out on her career as a poultry farmer. There were Leghorns and Houdans for eggs, and Brahmas in another yard for mothers. Four things conspired to make her venture a success. She was the only one in Cedar Mountain with thoroughbred poultry, so there was a large demand for high-class eggs for setting. The eggs that for table use brought fifty cents a dozen were worth two dollars and a half a dozen for hatching. Her store training had taught her to watch the market reports in the papers, which arrived twice a week, and her college training taught her to study hen hygiene. Last but not least, she got their food for nothing.

On closing her books that autumn Belle found that on her investment of $250 capital borrowed from her father, she had cleared $250, and had all the capital to render back intact. She realized that while it was possible to make 100 per cent, on small capital, the rate decreased rapidly as the capital increased. She estimated that ten times as much capital would only produce about 25 per cent, because the possibility of personal management of every hen and every detail would grow proportionately smaller, and it was this personal touch which counted. Next, the sovereign advantages of grass range and table scraps must diminish with each additional hen; and if she had paid herself an adequate salary the profit would have been wiped out. Last, and perhaps the most important to her, she was absolutely tied to the farm. She could not be away one week without suffering loss. It was with ill-concealed admiration that her father listened to a summary of these conclusions; later, with the remarkable common sense that characterized most of her ways, Belle seized a chance to sell out and lodge her money in the local bank. But the venture had been a success in two respects. It had helped her to health and it had given her business experience and confidence.

The winter was now on, and Belle's outdoor activities were somewhat circumscribed, for there is a real winter in the Black Hills. But she was in robust health again and she turned her energies more and more to church work. She was depended on to get up the "sociables," to plan the entertainments, to invent new and happy games that would take them as near as they dared go in the direction of dance and stage without actually outraging the old-fashioned Methodist conscience by getting there. It was Belle who entirely refurnished the parsonage in one harmonious style by copying a mission chair and table from a picture, and then inviting each of the boys to make a like piece, and each of the girls to make a "drape" to match it. It was a sort of Noah's Ark trick, this gathering in of things in pairs, but it succeeded originally—the ark was full—and it succeeded now, for the parsonage was full; and it will always succeed, for it is built on the old fundamental pairing instinct.

Belle also imported and put in practical working the idea of a daily school 'bus, which gathered up the twenty-odd children for ten miles along the winter road and brought them on a huge hay rack to the Cedar Mountain School in the morning, and took them back at night to their homes. But in all these multiplied activities there was a secret dissatisfaction. She felt that she was a mere hanger-on of the church, a sort of pet cat to the parson's wife. She was not developing herself independently, and she began secretly to outline a scheme which meant nothing less than leaving home to take some sort of position on the west coast. She had no fear for her success, but she was restrained by two things: the question of health in case she could not find an outdoor enterprise, and the sorrow her parents would feel over her—to their thinking, unnecessary—departure.

For some time both in her school and church work Belle had been much associated with John Lowe, the schoolteacher. He was considered a well-meaning person, a dozen years older than herself, and had certain pleasing qualities, a suave manner—almost too suave—and a readiness of speech. He was fairly well educated, a good worker, a member of the church, and had no obvious bad habits. His history was not known; in fact, no one's history was known in those days of beginnings. Every one had to be taken as he was found and often on his own statement.

Lowe soon became a devoted admirer of Belle; and Mrs. Boyd, seeing a chance to beguile her daughter into settling down, did all she could to bring them together, never losing a chance of praising Jack. He was just what Belle needed as an executive help to realize much that she had planned. As a public reciter he had some little prominence; as a schoolteacher he was just a step nearer the world of brains than were the other possible men in town, and by that much more acceptable; and the inevitable result of propinquity was reached. The engagement of Belle Boyd and Jack Lowe was announced.

There was no ardent love-making on either side, and sometimes Belle, when left alone, would wonder why she was not more elated each time she heard him coming; rather, she seemed to feel weighted by the attachment. She reproached herself for this and as she strove to reach a more satisfactory state of mind she found herself thinking with a sigh of that free career she had planned in the business world. Mrs. Boyd's maternal hopes were too nearly realized to leave her with any discernment and Belle's father was too much wrapped up in business and small politics, to see even the mountains that were beyond his back yard; but another frequent visitor at the house was gifted with better eyes and more knowledge of the world.

Dr. Carson had never felt attracted toward Lowe. Instinctively he disliked him. He knew at the beginning that the teacher was much older than he admitted. The facts that the Boyds were well-to-do and that Belle was their only child offered, in his frame of mind, a suggestive sidelight. There were two other things that to Carson seemed important: one, that Lowe had rather obviously avoided any reference to his previous place of residence; the other that at one of the sociables he had amused them all by some exceedingly clever sleight-of-hand tricks with cards—not playing-cards, of course—they were unmentionable—but with a few business cards marked in a special way. Carson was sure he knew in what school such manual dexterity had been acquired.

The doubts in Belle's mind had not yet taken definite form when a new and unpleasant circumstance obtruded. More than once lately Lowe had come to the house carrying the unmistakable odour of drink about him. It was smothered with cloves and peppermint, but still discoverable. Belle's ideas were not narrow, but this thing shocked and disgusted her, chiefly because Lowe had repeatedly and voluntarily avowed himself as flatly opposed to it. She was thus drifting along in perplexity, taking the trail that her instincts said was not her trail, ever prompted to cut across to the other fork which meant developing herself, and always restrained by the fear of breaking with her people, when in the spring of that year the local press announced the coming to Cedar Mountain of the Rev. James Hartigan. And on the day after her meeting with him and their unexpected adventure with the runaway, the parson's wife gave a tea to introduce the young man to the congregation.

Jim's eyes met hers the moment she entered Jebb's parlour. His greeting was a joyous one and Belle felt the colour mount in her cheeks as Hartigan drew her aside to talk. There was something very stimulating about him, she found—a thrill in his voice, his eyes, and his presence that she had never experienced with Lowe.

A little later, Lowe himself arrived. Belle, as she turned to greet him, got an unpleasant shock to note the contrast between the frank, boyish face of the curly-haired giant and the thin features and restless eyes of the man she had promised to marry. Her conscience smote her for disloyalty; but in her heart she was not satisfied. Vague, unspoken, half-realized criticisms of past months rose to fill her with disquiet. A cumulative unhappiness in her association with Lowe took possession of her. And, as she watched with a little thrill the meeting between Jack and the Preacher, she read plainly on the face of her fiancé the disapproval that even his practised art could not conceal. For her, the meeting was portentous; it marked a turning-point; and as she thought of it later she took a slightly guilty pleasure in the fact that without a clash of words there was at once a clash of personalities, and that the Preacher had dominated the scene.