He looked cautiously round the curtain. Esther Park was still there, sitting beside his comfortable chair. He frowned and picked up the latest copies of Vista and New Dimensions, which had just arrived across the Atlantic. He was cheered by noticing a promising article on Kafka in Vista, and a most interesting analysis of the new and almost unknown poet-philosopher Wehmut Schaudichan in New Dimensions. (Schaudichan’s doctrine of Atomism was definitely on the way up.)
He might find peace to read in the library. No one used it nowadays. They were always out riding, or fishing, or picnicking, or talking to the cook in the kitchen, or watching the cowboys around the ranch. Of course, if he had been given the guest-cottage, with its bedroom and sitting-room, all would have been well. Instead Grubbock and Koffing shared it. They seemed to use it mostly for parties, which were invariably over before he ever heard of them. It also seemed that no one over thirty was asked to these parties. He compressed his lips and gave a parting look in the mirror.
In the library Mrs. Peel was talking to one of the cowhands, the tall, thin, fair-haired one.
Mrs. Peel looked up to say, “Don’t leave, Prender. I was giving Robb a book he might like. Martin Fierro...”
Robb looked at the book in his hand. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Peel. Now I’ll be getting back. We had a bit of trouble with two of the colts.”
“Where?” Mrs. Peel asked anxiously.
“Down the road a piece. The little fellows got on to the wrong side of the fence from their mothers.”
“And they tried to get through?” Mrs. Peel was horrified. “Oh, that dreadful barbed wire. Why do you have it, Robb?”
“A steer don’t understand anything else.” He looked at the book again. “Well, I’ll get going. I’ll take right good care of this, Mrs. Peel.”
“What will happen to the colts?”
“Jim and Bert are taking them to the vet. They’ll mend. They’re young enough.” He was wishing now that he hadn’t mentioned the colts. Mrs. Peel had a soft heart. That was what the boys liked about her. Didn’t think of herself all the time. He looked at Atherton Jones, and his quiet blue eyes were no longer warm and friendly. He pulled his hat down over his brow and left.
“I do hope it wasn’t any of the palominos,” Mrs. Peel murmured anxiously. “I wonder if they’ll be scarred? Robb said they would mend, though. You know, Prender, there is always some tragedy going on here. To look at these mountains you’d think there was nothing but peace and safety. And then you see the bleached bones of a horse on some lonely hillside—‘one that didn’t get through the winter,’ as Bert said to me when I asked him. Or you come across a canyon where every tree is splintered and charcoaled... Only last week one of the young steers fell down a precipice and broke its legs. The eagle got at it. You’ve seen him, haven’t you, soaring over Flashing Smile? And last spring—”
“Yes, yes,” Atherton Jones said, with a touch of amused impatience.
Mrs. Peel was suddenly nettled. “How can you stay here without being interested in everything that goes to make this place? A ranch isn’t just a Madison Square Garden show put on to amuse Easterners. It is something that lives, and has its own life and its own problems.”
“Well, the despised Easterner has his own problems,” Prender Atherton Jones said. “I’ve quite enough, without starting to imagine a young colt entangled in barbed wire. You and Sally were always inclined to dip deeply into local colour. In Paris or Rapallo that could make sense. But here—my dear Margaret, where does it lead you except to start thinking like a farmer, acting like a yokel?”
“Yokel!”
“Certainly! They call us ‘doods.’ When they tack such names on to us, then they are merely asking for an equivalent response. Besides, what else is in their minds except horses and weather and cows?”
“Steers,” Mrs. Peel corrected firmly. “Let’s have the mot juste, Prender. You were always a stickler for that. And what’s in their minds? What is in anyone’s mind? You’ve got to delve deep down for that, wherever you are. You shouldn’t underestimate people, Prender.”
“I? My dear Margaret...only yesterday Sally said I overestimated people!”
“So you do, Prender.” Then, as he watched her with a puzzled, tolerant, almost pitying smile, she said a little angrily, “You overestimate people who have a reputation, and you underestimate those who haven’t. Take Robb, for instance.”
“Who on earth is Robb?”
“The young fair-haired cowboy from Montana, the one who writes poetry. Why, you just saw him!”
Atherton Jones smiled. “And does he sing over the radio too?”
Mrs. Peel ignored that. “Why do you think I was giving him Hernandez’s Martin Fierro to read?”
“Why not Whittier and Longfellow?” Prender Atherton Jones asked, with a continuing smile.
Mrs. Peel looked at him. “Robb had a schoolteacher who liked poetry, and got him interested. Robb can also write poetry.” But Prender had picked the most comfortable chair, and was looking at the contents list of Vista with a thoughtful frown. She moved over to the window and looked out to see whether the early clouds had blown away or would she need her raincoat this morning. “Old Chuck said we were in for a change,” she said, in a puzzled way. The sky looked much brighter to her eyes. “Why, there’s Esther Park. Waiting for you, Prender?”
“I beg your pardon, Margaret?”
“All right, I’ll leave you in peace. If you get any with Esther Park around, that is.”
“Is she still out there?”
“She’s coming this way actually.”
He rose quickly. “Margaret, let’s go to your sitting-room. We can go on discussing your cowboy-poet there. What kind of stuff does he write? Fourline stanzas?”
In order to answer him Mrs. Peel had to leave the library too. He had crossed the hall at an amazing speed, for he was already in her private sitting-room, and once she entered he closed the door swiftly and locked it.
“Ssh!” he silenced her. “It’s the only way. Don’t answer if she calls.”
Esther Park didn’t; she knocked, and she tried the door handle, but she didn’t call. They listened to her footsteps leave the hall.
“Poor Esther...” Mrs. Peel said. She frowned at Atherton Jones. “We shouldn’t have done that!”
“I’m being driven crazy, Margaret. I simply can’t stand it.” He sank wearily into the deepest armchair and looked round the room with approval. “Do you use this place much?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m afraid we don’t use it as much as we had hoped,” Mrs. Peel said, with gentle irony.
“A pity to let it go unused.”
Mrs. Peel suddenly realised where the current was setting. She looked embarrassed, wondered where Sally was, offered Prender a cigarette, and sat down. “Oh, it isn’t altogether uninhabited,” she said. “Now, about Robb. He has real talent, a lot of instinctive taste, and a surprising amount of reading behind him. I was wondering, Prender, if you could advise—”
Prender said, “You know, Margaret, I think the cottage would have been more suitable for me. I do need a room to work in, and my bedroom—charming, of course, and most comfortable—is distractingly bedroomish. The cottage has a pleasant sitting-room.”
“If Dewey Schmetterling had not arrived with you, Prender, you could have had the cottage. He really complicated all our plans. Or didn’t you guess? I sometimes wish that Karl Koffing hadn’t been so quick to suggest he would share the cottage with Earl Grubbock. Then Dewey wouldn’t have got a bedroom to himself. In fact, he would have had to share yours, and he wouldn’t have stayed on.” That would have solved several problems. Mrs. Peel thought of the beautiful Drene, whose dusting and mopping was more absent-minded than ever. Dewey Schmetterling had been with her constantly for a full week; and then, in these last three days, he hadn’t been with her at all—as if he were avoiding her. Yet he still stayed. And Drene looked still as serene and aloof. And poor Ned was still ignored, still waiting, still hopi
ng.
But Prender’s indignant voice interrupted Mrs. Peel’s thoughts about Dewey and his unfathomable behaviour. “And I was to suffer Dewey in my bedroom so that he would leave quickly?” Prender was asking. “Margaret, really...” He was hurt and horrified.
“Well, we aren’t exactly responsible for having him here.”
“Now, you know that was a mistake. I’ve admitted it.” It was so like women to keep reminding you of small errors in judgment. “I don’t see why I have to be the only one who suffers for it.”
“The only one?” Mrs. Peel thought of Ned.
“Or why I have to bear the brunt of Esther Park.”
“I’ve borne a little of that brunt myself in this last week,” Mrs. Peel reminded him. “I don’t even get my siesta any more... Prender, frankly, why is she here?”
Atherton Jones smoothed his hair, lost the look of martyrdom, and said with his most engaging simplicity, “Frankly, Margaret? It was a mistake.”
“What? Another one?”
“My secretary’s mistake this time,” he said quickly. “Esther Park had enrolled for my Literary Festival, and my secretary included her name on the list that was sent to Sally in New York. Sally was so hasty about ’phoning all the writers on it that the damage was done before I could stop it.”
“But—” Mrs. Peel began. Then she stopped, completely bewildered.
“I am sorry. I apologise for my secretary’s stupidity.” He looked so miserable at having unloaded all this unpleasantness on his friends in Wyoming that Mrs. Peel didn’t have the heart to question him any further.
“There’s no need to look so hurt, Margaret. Mistakes do happen,” Prender went on. His voice was too assured again.
Mrs. Peel looked at him quickly. “I’m more than hurt. I’m inclined to be really angry. Doesn’t she realise she is taking up the place of someone who could have benefited from this holiday? She can easily afford to pay for her own holidays, judging from what she spends on clothes and liquor and all these extras she is forever ordering from Sweetwater. That’s the only thing she has got—money.”
“Well, that is scarcely her fault: her people are frightfully rich. But they spend their money wisely. They bought Shenquetucket Island, and restored the manor house and village. It is now one of the early colonial showplaces, you know.”
“And Miss Park is part of it, no doubt. All she needs is a village pond and a ducking-stool to complete the illusion.”
“There’s no need to be so upset, Margaret. After all, I am the one who suffers. She haunts me. You must have noticed it. That’s why I’d like the cottage, where I can have my own sitting-room and a door to lock.”
“You knew her before we did,” Mrs. Peel said sharply. Then she stared at him as she realised he had known, too, that Esther Park had only the desire, but no talent at all, to be literary.
The door-knob turned and then rattled. “Are you all right, Margaret?” It was Sally’s voice.
“What’s the idea?” she asked, as Mrs. Peel unlocked the door and she entered. Then she saw Prender Atherton Jones, who seemed as ruffled as if she had interrupted an assignation. Sally looked at both of them with some surprise.
“We were hiding from Esther Park,” Mrs. Peel explained quickly.
“The coast is clear now,” Sally said, looking pointedly at Atherton Jones. “Miss Park waylaid me in the yard and talked to me for full fifteen minutes. When last seen she was heading for the corral. And there she’ll pester Jackson until he hands in his resignation and escapes from the lunatic fringe to the comparative sanity of Atlantic City. Why don’t you go and rescue him, Prender? After all, he is the totally innocent bystander.”
“I’ll be in my room if anyone wants me,” Atherton Jones said, without looking at Sally. His parting glance at Mrs. Peel was reproachful.
“Sally—you were almost rude,” Mrs. Peel said, worried, as the door closed behind Prender Atherton Jones. But so was I, she thought; I should have offered him the use of this sitting-room when he wanted it.
“You might have been really rude if you had talked to Miss Park for fifteen minutes. She is going really literary this winter: she’s helping to back a ‘little’ magazine in New York. And didn’t I hear Prender mention an editorship of a little magazine this winter? There’s your problem solved: now we know why Miss Park is here. He daren’t say no to any of her whims—not at this stage of his plans. She’s the money behind his magazine.”
“Oh, no!” Mrs. Peel was shocked. “I can’t understand it. He isn’t—well, I mean, he can be so likable, so charming. But he really hasn’t behaved too well since he has come here. What’s gone wrong with him?”
“Nothing. He is as he was and always will be. We are just seeing him more clearly. It is so easy to be charming and likable if you don’t foot the bill. It is so easy to be liberal if someone else pays. And I don’t mean money, either, although he is quite adept at that too. Prender is the supreme paradox, Margaret: the egotist who believes in his own unselfishness, the materialist who condemns materialism.”
“Then have we changed that we can see him more clearly?”
Sally shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the background that put him into proper proportion.” She pointed to the window, and Mrs. Peel looked and saw the soaring peak of Flashing Smile, the deep canyon which scored a sharp gash through its band of forest to lead to more mountains, more forests, more mountains.
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Peel agreed. “These mountains shrink us all to little men with little problems. Very little problems.” For several moments nothing more was said.
“He isn’t happy here,” Mrs. Peel said suddenly. “Why doesn’t he leave?”
“Egotists have pride. They don’t like to admit that mountains can make them or their problems as little as they are.” Then Sally looked at her watch and said, “Heavens, what happens to time out here? I ought to have been half-way to Sweetwater. What about the little problems on this blasted shopping-list? Nothing to add?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Peel said, with a smile. Then she added, “Well, you’ve solved the riddle about Esther Park as well as Prender for me. I wish you could do something about Dewey, though.”
“Why not convince Esther Park that Dewey has succumbed to her fatal charms, and let her chase him away?”
“Her charms might be more fatal than you think. Remember her gun.” Mrs. Peel spoke lightly, but she was beginning to worry again. How did you get someone as determined as Esther to hand over that ridiculous gun? Prender had laughed when he heard about it, frankly disbelieving. Earl Grubbock had thought it was a joke. Even Sally didn’t take it seriously. And Mrs. Peel hadn’t had the courage to speak to Jim Brent about it. Why convince him that Easterners were neurotic? Or he might possibly think it was only Esther’s idea of Western dress. Heaven only knew, that was peculiar enough.
Sally was talking about Dewey. “I’ve a theory,” she announced.
“I’ve given up all my theories about him,” Mrs. Peel said, discarding Esther’s gun and thinking now of Drene and Ned. “He took Drene from Ned. He spent a week with her. Then suddenly, overnight, he began avoiding her. Yes, avoiding her. Yet he stays here and he makes no move to leave. I give up.”
“He’s in love.”
“What?”
“With Drene. For the first time in his life he is really and truly in love. And he doesn’t want to be in love with Drene. He wants to leave. And he can’t.”
“But why avoid her? Why sit around by himself? Why?”
“Because he can’t bear to find himself in love with her. Imagine what his elegant friends in London and New York would say if they knew! Can you imagine what he would have said if someone like Prender had fallen in love with a cute little girl with cute little bows in her hair? With someone who did tricks on horseback? It would have been a field day for Dewey, and he knows it.”
“But what makes you think—oh, it’s nonsense. Not Dewey. Complete nonsense.”
“
He was attracted to Drene from the first.”
“Good material for his next satire. You know Dewey.”
“It may have begun that way. In that case there is justice in this world; for he is suffering plenty now. Have you noticed him in these last few days? Silent, nervous, unobservant. He doesn’t even enjoy coining a phrase about people’s mistakes any more. He doesn’t even notice their mistakes.”
“He’s probably bored.”
“When he is bored he leaves.”
“But she scarcely utters a word!”
“That might have its attractions.”
“Whatever gave you this fantastic idea?”
“Dewey likes to ride, but he doesn’t risk it here. Drene is so good that he doesn’t want her contempt. Instead he took her out in his car, where he could do the impressing.”
“And he hates to use his car on these roads. He lends it to no one.” Mrs. Peel looked at Sally, half convinced. “No,” she said suddenly. “It won’t do. Not Dewey. Think of all the women he’s had, and never been in love. Besides, they only met less than two weeks ago.”
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