by Bret Harte
of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind hadblown in a scarecrow from the distant farms.
Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him,leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in thedirection of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that itwas singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in thepresence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he couldhave gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so.Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He hadrecourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.
To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, andthen shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evidentdistress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.
"I'm sorry I frighted ye, ma'am, but I was afraid I might skeer ye moreif I lay low, and said nothin'."
Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would haverelapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face andfigure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman pastforty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, whichwas turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Herforehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped,and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almostsightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teethin an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by everyother line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial.Her figure was hidden by a shapeless garment that partook equally of theshawl, cloak, and wrapper.
"I am very foolish," she began, in a voice and accent that at onceasserted a cultivated woman, "but I so seldom meet anybody here that avoice quite startled me. That, and the heat," she went on, wiping herface, into which the color was returning violently--"for I seldom go outas early as this--I suppose affected me."
Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood whichI fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient,undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angulararm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection beingin the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.
"Like as not, ma'am," he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in herburning face. "The sun IS pow'ful hot at this time o' day; I felt itmyself comin' yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets itback, it's likely to come out ag'in. Ye can't check it no more than thesap in that choked limb thar"--he pointed ostentatiously where a fallenpine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but whichstill put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. "Do youlive far from here, ma'am?" he added.
"Only as far as the first turning below the hill."
"I've got my buggy here, and I'm goin' that way, and I can jist set yedown thar cool and comfortable. Ef," he continued, in the same assuringtone, without waiting for a reply, "ye'll jist take a good grip ofmy arm thar," curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherd'scrook, "I'll go first, and break away the brush for ye."
She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns inthis fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally droppinga word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face.When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,--andperpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had beena transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,--and then gravelytook his place beside her.
"Bein' in the timber trade myself, ma'am," he said, gathering up thereins, "I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My nameis Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there ain't much that grows in theway o' standin' timber on the Pacific Slope that I don't know and can'tlocate, though I DO say it. I've got ez big a mill, and ez big a run inmy district, ez there is anywhere. Ef you're ever up my way, you ask forBowers--Jim Bowers--and that's ME."
There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation betweenstrangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each other'sfoibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman,naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure herthat she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and sosatisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the womanregained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowers's vanity,and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of thebuggy along the road, thanked him graciously.
"I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel," shesaid, after a pause.
"I didn't get to see 'em, as I only put up my hoss there," he replied."But I know the stage took some away this mornin': it seemed pretty wellloaded up when I passed it."
The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possiblereturn of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once bedistracted at any cost--even conversation.
"Perhaps," he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, "I'm a-talkin'to Mrs. McFadden?"
"No," said the woman, abstractedly.
"Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on thatcrossroad."
"My name IS Delatour," she said, somewhat wearily.
Mr. Bowers was conversationally stranded. He was not at all anxious toknow her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there wasnothing more to say. He would, of course, have preferred to ask herif she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew thepoetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appearedto be an "eddicated" woman made him sensitive of displaying technicalignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was"subjective" or "objective"--two words he had heard used at the DebatingSociety at Mendocino on the question, "Is poetry morally beneficial?"For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiativein conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as ifappreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some reliefin monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, butunostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that attimes it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating someconversation she had held with another.
She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husbandhad bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had beenobliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls anda boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent atSanta Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared,too shiftless--to do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor;she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans,where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand countrylife. Of course she had been married too young--as all girls were.Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, whereshe would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He couldadvise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were farenough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia,was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.
As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminineAmerican indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved.But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to hismain object, and, looking up cautiously, said:--
"And mebbe write po'try now and then?" To his great discomfiture, theonly effect of this suggestion was to check his companion's speech forsome moments and apparently throw her back into her former abstraction.Yet, after a long pause, as they were turning into the lane, she said,as if continuing the subject:--
"I only hope that, whatever my daughters may do, they won't marryyoung."
The yawning breaches in the Delatour gates and fences presently camein view. They were supposed to be reinforced by half a dozen dogs,who, however, did their duty with what would seem to be the prevailinginefficiency, retiring after a single perfunctory yelp to shamelessstr
etching, scratching, and slumber. Their places were taken on theveranda by two negro servants, two girls respectively of eight andeleven, and a boy of fourteen, who remained silently staring. As Mr.Bowers had accepted the widow's polite invitation to enter, she wascompelled, albeit in an equally dazed and helpless way, to issue somepreliminary orders:--
"Now, Chloe--I mean aunt Dinah--do take Eunice--I mean Victorine andUna--away, and--you know--tidy them; and you, Sarah--it's Sarah, isn'tit?--lay some refreshment in the parlor for this gentleman. And,Bob, tell your sister Cynthia to come here with Eunice." As Bob stillremained staring at Mr.