Читать книгу The Mine with the Iron Door - Harold Bell Wright - Страница 6

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Wise Mother Burton came to wonder, sometimes, if Saint Jimmy’s teaching was not more a matter of love than even he perhaps realized.

DOCTOR Jimmy Burton and his mother spent their first year in Arizona at Tucson and Oracle. But when they were satisfied that Jimmy could live if he gave up his too strenuous professional work and remained in the Southwest, and that if he did not follow that course he would as surely die, they built the little white house on the mountain side at Juniper Springs, above the Cañada del Oro. As Jimmy explained, “it was quite necessary, under the circumstances, that they live where they could see out.”

It was during that first summer in Oracle that the neighbors began to speak of his tender care of his mother, for, even in those days when he was too ill to do more than think, his thoughts were all for her. And so lovingly did he try to shield her from the pain of his suffering, so cheerfully did he accustom her to the thought of the utter hopelessness of his professional future, and so courageously, for her sake, did he accept the pitifully small portion that life offered him, that the people marveled at the spirit of the man. It was a question, they sometimes said, with a touch of sincere reverence in their voices, if Doctor Burton needed his mother as much as the doctor’s mother needed him. But Jimmy and his mother knew that the truth of the matter was they needed each other.

And so in their mutual need both mother and son found compensation for their dreams that now could never come true. In place of the professional honors that were predicted with such confidence for her boy, and toward which she had looked with such pride, the mother saw her son honored by the love of the unpretentious country folk. From plans that had failed and hopes that were buried, Jimmy himself turned to the grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of tree and bush and flower—to the limitless spaces of the desert and the peace of the quiet stars. The life of the great eastern city, with its hunger for fame, its struggle for riches, its endless tumult and its restless longings, faded farther and farther away. The simple, more primitive, more peaceful life of God’s great unimproved world became every day more satisfying.

To the roaming cowboys and miners and their kind, and to the people of the little mountain village, that tiny white house on the hill was known. And many a man, when things were going wrong, came to spend an hour with this friend whose understanding was so clear and whose counsel was so true. Many a girl or woman in need of comfort, strength or courage came to sit a while with Mrs. Burton. And sometimes a tired rider of the range would hear in the twilight dusk the clear, sweet song of Jimmy’s flute and, hearing, would smile and lift his wide-brimmed hat; or perhaps a lonely prospector, camped for the night in some gulch or wash would hear, and, hearing, would think again of things that in his search for gold he had forgotten. And this is how Doctor James Burton became Saint Jimmy and Saint Jimmy’s mother became Mother Burton to them all.

It was natural that the good doctor should become Marta Hillgrove’s teacher, and that Mrs. Burton should mother the girl who, until her fathers brought her to the Cañada del Oro, had never known a woman’s guiding love. Indeed, it was Saint Jimmy and his mother and all that their friendship meant to Marta that had kept the Pardners in that neighborhood. Never before since the beginning of their partnership had those wanderers stayed so long in one place. For four—nearly five—years Marta had been studying under Saint Jimmy; a fair equivalent of the usual college course. With this textbook education she had received from Mother Burton the kind of training that such a woman would have given a daughter of her own. And yet these most excellent teachers knew no more of their pupil’s history than did those thoughtless ones who so freely discussed the girl and looked at her askance for what they thought her parentage might be.

It should be said, too, that this schooling which Marta had received from Saint Jimmy and his mother was wholly a matter of love. As Doctor Burton explained to the Pardners, when they insisted that he should be paid “same as a reg’lar teacher,” the work was really a blessing to him in that his pupil contributed more to his life than he could possibly give to hers; while Mother Burton warned the anxious fathers, gently but firmly, that if they ever said another word about pay they would ruin everything.

But as the years passed and she watched the amazing development of the girl’s mind, and saw the unfolding of her richly endowed womanhood, wise Mother Burton came to wonder sometimes if Saint Jimmy’s teaching was not more a matter of love than even he perhaps realized.

On that spring morning when Marta rode to Oracle and her fathers discussed the problem that so troubled them, Saint Jimmy sat in the yard before the cottage door. On every side he saw the Mariposa tulips lifting their lovely orange cups, and sweet pea blossoms swinging like pink and white fairies above a lilac carpet of wild verbena and purple fragrant hyptis, while against the rocks that were stained with splashes of gray and orange and red and yellow lichens stood the purple pentstemon. The mountain sides below were wondrous with the scarlet glory of the ocotillo and the indescribable beauty of the chollas and opuntias with their crowns and diadems of red and salmon and orange and pink. The slopes and benches of the lower levels were bright with great fields of golden brittle-bush; and beyond these, on the wide spaces of the mesa, he could see the yuccas (our Lord’s candles) in countless thousands, raising their stately shafts with eight-foot clusters of creamy-white bloom.

Mrs. Burton, leaving her housework for a moment, came to stand in the doorway. When they had spoken of the beautiful sight that never failed to move them—calling each other’s attention to different favorite views—Saint Jimmy said:

“Mother, doesn’t it all make you sort of hungry for something—something that can’t be told in words?” he laughed in boyish embarrassment.

His mother smiled.

“Marta will be coming from Oracle with the mail, I suppose—this is Saturday, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jimmy softly, and wondered if his mother guessed what it really was that he hungered for and could not talk about even to her.

Mrs. Burton was turning back into the house when they heard some one coming up the trail from the cañon. A moment later the Pardners appeared. Saint Jimmy and his mother knew at once that the old prospectors had come on business of greater moment than to make a mere neighborly call.

When they had exchanged the customary greetings and Marta’s fathers had assured their friends that the girl was well, Thad and Bob sat looking at each other in troubled silence.

“Wal,” said Bob, at last, “why don’t you go ahead? She’s your gal this week. Bein’ her daddy makes it your play, don’t it?”

Thad, rubbing his bald head desperately, made several ineffectual attempts to speak. At last, with a recklessness born of this inner struggle, he addressed Mrs. Burton:

“You see, ma’am, me an’ my pardner here has been takin’ notice lately how my gal Marta is due, first thing we know, to be a growed-up woman.”

“She is, indeed!” replied Jimmy’s mother with an encouraging smile.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s what me an’ Bob here took notice. An’ we’ve been figgerin’ up that mebby it was time she knowed what we know about her. You an’ your son knows the same as everybody does, I reckon, that we ain’t Marta’s real honest-to-God daddies.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton, “but we have never, in any way, mentioned the matter to Marta.”

“No, ma’am,” said Thad, “an’ we ain’t neither.”

“An’ that’s jest what’s the matter now,” put in Bob. “The gal ain’t never been told nothin’.”

Mrs. Burton looked at her son.

“I am sure that you men are right,” said Saint Jimmy. “I have been wanting to talk with you about it. You ought to tell Marta everything you know of her and her people—how she came to you—everything.”

The Pardners consulted each other silently. Then Thad turned to Marta’s teacher; the old prospector’s faded blue eyes were fixed on the younger man’s face with a steady, searching gaze that permitted no evasion, even if Saint Jimmy had been disposed to parry the question.

“Is there, to your thinkin’, any perticler reason why my gal ought to be told at this perticler time?”

Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.

“No particular reason, so far as I know,” he said. “Of course you realize that there has always been more or less talk. Sooner or later the girl is bound to hear it. She should be fortified with the truth.”

Again Bob and Thad looked at each other helplessly.

“An’ if the truth ain’t jest what you might call fortifyin’—what then?” said Thad at last.

“Yes,” echoed Bob. “What then? What if my pardner an’ me can’t say that all the gossips is talkin’ ain’t so?”

Saint Jimmy did not answer. Mother Burton looked away. Old Thad rubbed his bald head in mournful meditation.

“Doctor Burton,” said Bob slowly, as one feeling his way amid conversational dangers, “Thad an’ me ain’t to say blind, if we be gittin’ old. We can still tell ‘color’ when we run across it.” He consulted his pardner with a look and Thad nodded his head in approval. Bob continued: “We’re almighty proud of what you been doin’ for our gal,” he caught himself quickly. “Excuse me, Pardner—for your gal, I mean.”

Thad raised his hand—a gesture which signified that, in the stress of the situation, he waived the fine point of their usual courtesy, and for this crucial occasion acknowledged their joint fatherhood.

Old Bob swallowed, with difficulty, something that seemed to obstruct his usual freedom of speech.

“An’ I reckon you understand, sir, that we ain’t noways lackin’ in appreciation an’ gratitude to you an’ your ma for helpin’ Marta to grow up into the young woman she is. My pardner an’ me, we sure done what we could, an’ we’d been glad to a-done more if it had a-been possible, but it wasn’t, not for us, an’ we’re sensible to what it all means to our gal. If she wasn’t trained up an’ all educated like you an’ your ma has made her, it wouldn’t much matter what her own folks was or how she first come to us.”

“I understand,” said Saint Jimmy gently, “and I know that the girl could not love you men more if you were, in fact, her own fathers. I know, too, that nothing could make her love you less. But I am convinced that she should know all that you know about her.”

“We would a-told her the story long ago,” said Thad, “if only we’d a-knowed a little more than we do, or mebby, if we hadn’t knowed as much, or if what little we do know didn’t look so almighty bad.”

“It will look a heap worse to her now than it ever did to us,” said Bob.

“It sure will,” agreed Thad, “an’ so, you see, we’ve been waitin’ an’ puttin’ it off, hopin’ that we would mebby, somehow, find out something that, as it is, is lackin’.” He appealed to Mrs. Burton: “You can see how it is, can’t you, ma’am?”

“I understand,” said the good woman, gently, “but I agree with my son. Whatever it is, the story will make no difference in Marta’s love for you, just as it has made no difference in your love for her.”

“Yes,” said Thad, “but how about the difference it might make to—” he paused and looked at his pardner helplessly. “Ahem—to—I mean——”

Bob spoke quickly:

“To you an’ Saint Jimmy, ma’am. What difference will it make to you folks?”

Thad drew a deep breath of relief and rubbed his bald head with satisfaction.

Mother Burton met them bravely with:

“Nothing that you have to tell can change our feeling for Marta. I could not love her more if she were my own daughter.”

The two old men looked at Saint Jimmy eagerly.

“You dead sure that nothin’ would make you change toward our gal?” demanded Bob.

“You plumb certain, be you, sir?” said old Thad.

Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.

“As certain as I am of death,” he answered.

With an air of excited relief Thad faced his pardner.

“That bein’ the case I move, Pardner, that we tell Doctor Burton here what we know, an’ he can tell our gal or not as he sees fit, and when he sees fit.”

“Jest what I was about to offer myself,” returned Bob. “You go ahead.”