She saw Lillian Gueste’s hand in it. Blanche did not reason; she only felt, and hated the subtle and delicate treason. Did Lillian Gueste suppose, she asked herself, that because a woman wore large hats and loud gloves she had no right to the man she loved?
She rode along the cliff edge at a foot pace, her eyes abstractedly on the dancing shadows of eucalyptus leaves the sun painted in the dust. She wondered was this the close of what had been opening out before her as her life? She thought, with her primitive reasoning, were Lillian only out of the way—her mind did not get further than that. But Blanche had felt from the first that Lillian Gueste had come to Santa Barbara for no other reason than rescuing her brother, and that she did not intend to go until she took Wallie with her. “Could she do that?” Blanche wondered in a panic. Had an opportunity offered, she would have pushed Lillian Gueste out of her way as she would have thrust a pebble from her path.
The sun, falling low in the western sky, made towers of tree shadows, and spread an iridescence over the in creeping fog, as she followed the descending road downward toward the arroya, where a bridle path slipped seaward under willows. She had taken that path often before. It met the beach below what was the usual limit for riders, but she loved the long, exciting gallop, the scramble among the rocks, the spice of danger at the narrow turns about the two points when the tide was coming in.
The salt smell of the sea met her, strong with reek of kelp, as she approachedits thunder through the willows. The range of sea and sky, the free wind blowing between, gave her release from thought and scope to act. The tide was running in high and full. Where the first bold bluff jutted out, a distance of some six yards, the sliding foam already lapped the rock. Once around the turn of the bluff, the beach lay before her—a long white, empty sweep under black cliffs.
She rode at an easy canter, breathing in the stinging salt air, looking out upon the water, where the dark “seaward line” swung with the swell a mile out in “the channel.” She had lost the choking tears, the despair of her first rush down the Monticito road. She felt not happy, but wildly at liberty. The wind took her hat, and she laughed, seeing it spin down the beach. The tingling breeze in her hair whipped out the short, springy curls. The high animal spirits that had helped her over situations where a less vital woman would have been overwhelmed had begun to reassert themselves in the exercise and open air. She scanned the empty beach perspective. What a gallop to the far point! She touched the mare, then pulled her up sharply in the first bound. The beach was not empty. Some one was riding—perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of her—imperfectly to be distinguished among the scattered rocks.
Her first thought was “Walter!” Trembling with eagerness, she peered under a sheltering hand. The rider was a woman. In the revulsion of her feeling, Blanche’s disappointment was an inarticulate sound. All her misery was back upon her. Who it was, riding slowly down the beach in a direction similar to her own, did not matter. She only wanted to avoid being seen—hatless, red-eyed, wild—by this woman, who, being a woman, was her natural enemy. She rode slowly, cautiously, hoping the other would quicken her pace, and put the next point between them. The sun had fallen into the fog, from under which the ocean thundered sullen, gray, up the shore.
Blanche wanted to get around the next point before dusk. She saw the horse in front—bright sorrel on the yellowish-white sand—drawing slowly near the black shoulder of rock; finally, fairly at the turn of it. In an instant it would be out of sight. No, it had stopped; stood motionless a full minute; then, to the girl’s intense amazement, wheeled and came back down the beach at a quick lope. There seemed something of vexation in the sharp turn-about.
Had the woman seen, and come back to speak with her? Blanche wondered. There was no avoiding the meeting. Shaking her hair over her eyes, she rode forward. As the rider drew nearer, with a contraction of heart she recognized Lillian Gueste. At the same instant she knew that Lillian had not seen her.
Mrs. Gueste’s face wore a preoccupied, a vexed, a vaguely anxious, look. The sand half quenched the sound of the horse’s coming. They were almost abreast before she saw Blanche Remi, and then it was with a start, a stare of keen surprise, of interrogation, that effaced the first expression.
Blanche knew whom the questioning eyes missed. There was about them a subtle, tantalizing suggestion of Walter, and she felt the blood run in her temples as she bent her head in faint recognition.
Mrs. Gueste stopped.
“Where is my brother?” she said. She fairly challenged the other with it. That she did not name him Mr. Carter was a mark of her extreme surprise, alarm; for Blanche Remi, with discolored eyes, disheveled hair, and the red stains across her face, looked wild enough to have thrust a displeasing lover into the sea.
Blanche looked at and realized how she hated this woman, this unruffled perfection. The strength of her feeling frightened herself. But her voice was as cool as Mrs. Gueste’s.
“I have no idea,” she said, politely insolent, and made to go on.
Lillian Gueste’s sharp scrutiny had taken in all the girl’s misery, and supposed a scene. Her idea of what hadbeen Walter’s part in it made her, with a revulsion of relief, almost amiable.
“You can’t get around that way,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the point. The vexation was back on her face. “The tide is in.”
The girl’s eye ranged back along the beach. The black cliffs seemed suddenly to have marched seaward.
“Well, you can’t get backthatway,” she said. “The water was up to the second point when I came through an hour ago—it’s over the quicksand.”
“Quicksand?” Lillian looked at her blankly. “Then what can we do?”
“Get around there,” said Blanche, waving back to the near point.
“We can’t.” Irritation and unbelief were in Mrs. Gueste’s voice.
“I’ve done it before. It’s easy. Come on.” Blanche was nonchalant in the face of the encroaching sea. The gulls were screaming above their heads, the sound of shattering water was in their ears, as they rode forward.
At the shoulder of the point the wind met them, and the inrush of the ocean. Here the beach sloped suddenly. The cliffs came out in a convex sweep of several rods, with a sharp jut of rock thrust out from the midst of it, like a fish’s fin. Over it, up to the cliff face, the water fawned and leaped, and in its sucking recoil left bare for an instant a narrow neck of sand.
Blanche looked at the bulging bluff, the sharp rock. That made it bad. One could not make a straight dash—would have to make an angle—out and then back; and a moment’s hesitation at the turn—well, it wouldn’t do to meet the ebb there. Blanche knew the strength of the undertow.
With her eyes on the rising and receding water, she made a rapid calculation for the best moment to go in. She was excited, eager for the enterprise. She was surprised at the other woman’s pallor.
“We can’t get through there,” Lillian Gueste said, half angrily. She looked small, pale, impotent, among the severities of waves and sky.
“Then where?” Blanche slid lightly from her saddle.
“If we should shout——” Lillian began.
Blanche almost laughed at her. Did this woman expect to be rescued? Blanche’s experience had been that people in bad places had to get themselves out.
“Up on the cliff you couldn’t hear a cannon fired down here,” she said. “Wecanget through, only you must not be afraid.” She began loosening the lower hooks of her habit bodice.
“What are you going to do?” Lillian asked, nervously. She felt fearful of what might happen next in these strange, perilous conditions.
“Take off my skirt. Better do the same. Then if a wave gets you you can use your legs.”
Lillian looked at her in horror. “Oh, no!” she said, feeling somehow insulted.
“It’s dangerous,” said Blanche, swinging into her saddle man-fashion. In her boots and spurs, with her wide shoulders and narrow hips, she looked a beautiful boy. “You’d better be astride, anyway,” she said.
“I can keep my saddle.” Lillian’s mouth twitched nervously. “Shall I go first?” she said. Blanche saw her hand on the rein tremble. In her excitement at the trick of the sea she had merged her personal attitude toward Lillian.
“No, follow me, and do as I do. Wait until the wave breaks, and go out with it. Then when you turn at the rock you won’t have the ebb against you. You’ll go up with the flow. It’s perfectly safe. But you must not hesitate a minute. When I shout, dash!”
The breakers were coming in high and quick. The neck of sand next the cliff was seen only momently. The nose of rock was perpetually in a boil of water.
Blanche waited, let the great seventh wave go by, and in the midst of the surge of its recoil dashed in. She felt the mare stagger as the tow took her. A swift, terrible force seized and snatched her seaward. She was swept along like a drift. Then, almost touching the point of rock, she was relinquished. With the roar of the next breaker sounding fairly upon her, shespurred savagely. The mare plunged with a boil of water to her knees, with a wake of white behind her. She went up the beach with the spray of the driving ocean in her hair. She wheeled and waved to the woman on the other side.
Through flying foam she could see Lillian Gueste’s face, a little white, a little strained in its composure. Blanche had felt no fear for herself, but now she had a thrill through her body, a withering sensation in her throat, to see Lillian Gueste waiting there, hanging on her word to make the rush. And the haunting semblance of Walter in the fixedeyes——
“Don’t look at the water!” Blanche shouted. “Look at me! Now!” she screamed, to make herself heard above the breaking wave. But the horse and rider hesitated before the recoil of it; came on, seemed to hover on the brink of it.
“Go back!” Blanche shouted, with frantic gesticulation. The ebb was racing out. Lillian wavered, now fairly in; then the sorrel floundered out, belly deep in the surge. Now the girl saw him close upon the point of rock—now suddenly dragged out from it. A yard of fretted water heaved between. Blanche sat as if hypnotized, with the sight of a struggling horse and rider black etched on the green water. It rushed over her all at once who it was the ebb was taking out, and she was motionless. She saw the rider’s face turned landward with the stark stare of the drowning appealing to her with Walter’s eyes. The next moment she was in deep water. She breasted the current with a rush. She saw a horse, with empty saddle, struggling, swimming, drifting out; saw a swash of black tumble in the twisting tides that sucked it seaward. She made a plunge and seized a skirt. Her fingers held a flow of hair. Threshing hands caught at her stirrup. A body sprang tense to her lift. Then the sea had them again.
Eyes, ears, lungs, full of it. Blanche felt the mare gallantly struggling to keep footing; the steep sand seemed slipping away from under them. Then, with a roar, the dark parted. She gasped in the air. She saw Lillian’s face wax white at her knee. She had not strength to lift more than the head and shoulders as she trailed the limp figure up the beach.
Her knees tottered as she slid from the saddle. Her ears were ringing. Or was some one, somewhere, really calling to her? A cart was plunging and bouncing down the grassy tussocks that dip from the coast road to the beach.
“Oh, Blair!” She cried the driver’s name in a burst of relief.
“That you, Blanche?” He had jumped out of the cart and was running toward her. He saw the drenched figure on the sand.
“My Lord! Mrs. Gueste!”
Blanche’s clutch on his arm hurt him. “Oh,isshe dead?” she entreated him.
“Not by a good deal.” He gave his flask to Blanche, and rolled his carriage robe around Lillian. Then he stripped off his mackintosh. “Here, girl,” he said, and Blanche thrust her arms into the sleeves.
“Saw you down there,” he said, lifting the unconscious woman’s dead weight into the cart. His voice was matter-of-course, but his look said she was magnificent.
“Hurry, hurry!” Blanche implored. “Take her over to the Crosbys’, Blair! Oh, quick!”
“Well, come on, then. I’ll whirl you over in a jiffy.”
“Oh, I’m going home—I’ll ride. I’m all right,” she said, through chattering teeth. “But she might—and Mr. Carter——”
“But, girl——”
“Oh, go, go!” She lifted herself into the saddle. Weak as she was, her nervous excitement carried her up.
“And mind, Blair, don’t say anything—if you love me!” She almost laughed the last words at him. Then she was off.
She chose not to take the boulevard, but cut through the town by lanes and side streets, where in the dusk of gathering night and inclosing fog her drippinghorse, her drenched habit, would escape observation. She shook with nervous excitement, but the fast riding kept the blood pounding in her veins. She had no power to think coherently of what had happened. She had seen Blair Hemming lift Lillian Gueste into his cart, but the idea possessed her that Lillian had gone out in the tide, and drowned with that terrible face looking back to land, with Walter’s eyes.
She urged the exhausted horse cruelly because the face seemed to stare at her out of the dark street ends. She seemed to look from the surface of things into an abyss of possibility. She felt afraid of herself as something horrible.
But as she turned into the drive between the ghostly acacias returned the little, concrete fear lest she be seen by anyone, most of all her mother. There were lights in the drawing-room windows that looked out on the drive oval, and Blanche cautiously took the far side, to be screened by the feathery palms.
Leaving the mare at the stable, and money in the stableman’s hand, she stole tiptoe up the side stair. Once in her room, she stripped, bathed, rubbed her damp hair dry, tossed it up gleaming on the crown of her head, and, still in her glow and shiver of excitement, hooked herself into a black lace dinner gown glittering with jet, fastened a diamond crescent over her bosom, and swept in upon her mother and maiden aunt, who were patiently, resignedly, dining without the belated equestrienne.
“Why, darling!” her mother murmured, in gratified amazement. Blanche seldom bothered to dress for dinner, and to-night she seemed almost too dazzling to be real. She was surprised herself at the extent to which her bravado covered what had happened. Inwardly she was quaking. Her ears were alert for every sound.
“Did you have a nice time?” her mother asked her.
“Oh, lovely!” said Blanche, with a shiver.
“Where did you go?”
“Down the beach.” Blanche started. Her hand poised halfway to an olive. She heard what her ears had been pricking for—horses’ feet on the gravel drive.
With an effort she held herself quiet.
The Spanish maid opened the dining-room door. “Some one to see you, señora.”
Blanche, who had half risen, sank back in her chair.
“Why, who can it be?” Mrs. Remi was murmuring as she went into the hall.
Blanche sat listening, lips apart. She heard her mother exclaim; then a man’s voice exclaimed; she knew the voice; she rose. Her heart seemed beating in her throat. She heard her mother’s voice, perplexed, emphatic: “But she’s all right; she’s very well. There’ssomemistake!”
Then Walter Carter’s, insisting: “But they were both in the water. Hemming saw her bring Lillian out. He drove my sister home. How could Blanche——” When she burst upon them.
“Walter!” The sight of him, wild-haired, pale, his mackintosh over his evening clothes, his general look of catastrophe, struck her with only one significance.
“Mrs. Gueste?” she gasped. “How is she?”
For a moment Walter could only stare at her, dazed. He had seen his sister—drenched, disheveled, white, unconscious—carried into the house. And here stood Blanche, vital, vigorous, self-possessed, groomed for a function.
“My God, no—it was you!” he stammered. “But—but is there any mistake?”
The soft sound of the dining-room door closing left them alone face to face. He came toward her. She stepped back.
“There’s no mistake. At least, we were in the water, andshewas afraid.”
“But Hemming said she was washed out of the saddle—and the tow took her out, and you went after her and got her!” He still came toward her. It was hard to look him in the face, for the bewildered eyes reminded her ofLillian Gueste’s look when the tide took her out from the rocks. Blanche felt her bravado running out at her finger ends.
“But I didn’t—— I—I—oh, Walter, you don’t know what I did!” She faltered and sobbed. She leaned against the hatrack and buried her face in the folds of a coat.
“Why, child, you simply saved her!” His arms were around her, and he tried to pull the cloak from her face. “She wants to see you to-morrow. She wants to tell you——”
“Oh, no; I can’t. She wouldn’t if she knew——” Blanche’s voice was muffled on his shoulder.
“Well, what?” he muttered, his lips against her cheek.
The answer reached him, a half smothered, almost contented whisper:
“How I hated her!”
IN empty days now left behind,I asked why Love was counted blind.No answer came until I learnedWhat every lover has discerned:The blind—my answer ran—are reftOf one thing, but how much is left!Touch, hearing, every quickened senseThrills with an impulse thrice intense.And so when Love has filled the heart,Dull man awakes in every part;Undreamed-of potencies are rifeWithin him, crying “Sweet is life!”And if half-blindness be his lot,What matter—since he knows it not?M. A. DeWolfe Howe.
IN empty days now left behind,I asked why Love was counted blind.No answer came until I learnedWhat every lover has discerned:The blind—my answer ran—are reftOf one thing, but how much is left!Touch, hearing, every quickened senseThrills with an impulse thrice intense.And so when Love has filled the heart,Dull man awakes in every part;Undreamed-of potencies are rifeWithin him, crying “Sweet is life!”And if half-blindness be his lot,What matter—since he knows it not?M. A. DeWolfe Howe.
IN empty days now left behind,I asked why Love was counted blind.
No answer came until I learnedWhat every lover has discerned:
The blind—my answer ran—are reftOf one thing, but how much is left!
Touch, hearing, every quickened senseThrills with an impulse thrice intense.
And so when Love has filled the heart,Dull man awakes in every part;
Undreamed-of potencies are rifeWithin him, crying “Sweet is life!”
And if half-blindness be his lot,What matter—since he knows it not?
M. A. DeWolfe Howe.
Society and Racing
A
A PERUSAL of the daily papers would lead one to the belief that racing, socially speaking, had just been discovered in New York. No account whatsoever is taken by the cheerful metropolitan of the rest of the country, though racing is going on from California to Washington, from Chicago to New Orleans—indeed, it is to the South that we go for both our hunters and our thoroughbreds. All through the Southern States there are little sporting communities hunting a pack of hounds, whose runs, if they took place in the neighborhood of New York, would be reported in all our papers by thesociety, not the sporting, editor.
For our thoroughbreds we still go to Kentucky. It was only the other day that I heard the owner of one of the great stock farms there complaining of the ignorance and extravagance of one of our younger Northern racing men, who sent his trainer South tobuy, at any figure that he chose.
Washington, though now more cosmopolitan than Southern, gives, from the social standpoint, warm encouragement to racing. In all our cities now there seems to be growing up a young married coterie—parallel to the fashionable circle in New York. Such a characteristic little group is to be found in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Baltimore and in Washington. This coterie, which is neither of diplomacy nor yet of old-time Washington, gives special attention to the Bennings track. Not but what the younger diplomats are to be found there, on Saturdays, when they are able to get away from their embassies and legations. Miss Roosevelt is an enthusiastic spectator. Oddly enough, in contrast to our Northern tracks, it seems to be permissible for two girls to go alone together to Bennings without escort. Maidens of careful upbringing may be seen stepping from the trolley at the race track as coolly as if it were a county fair.
If the New York papers take no account, socially speaking, of all these tracks, it is scarcely to be expected that their memories should go back as far as Jerome Park. It was a poor course, I am told, with bad turns and obscure corners, but prettier to look at than any we have had since. The lawn in front of the clubhouse—which was separated from the grand stand by the whole width of the track—was crowded by the members of a society smaller but more complete than Morris Park or Sheepshead has ever seen.
The opening of Belmont Park is destined, probably, to make a difference, to emphasize again the social side of the sport. The country club on the grounds—the club within a club, as it were—will draw a different set of people from those whom a mere jockey club can attract. It will be used quite independently of any question of racing by all the little communities of Long Island. If Hempstead and Westbury and Roslyn and Cedarhurst will come there to dine, and use it as the object of an automobile trip or a drive, there will be a well-established social life connected with it before the next race meeting opens.
I do not believe that any nation derives, as a whole, quite the delight from a race track that we do—with our Puritan traditions. To the English it is the national sport; to the French the extravagance of the smartest people; butto us, though both these elements may enter in, it is an intense excitement, which many of us have been brought up to think wicked. The mere word “horse-racing” would have struck terror to the hearts of our grandmothers, and thus a sport perfectly harmless to most of us has acquired a most alluring flavor of naughtiness. It is this feeling, this common sense of emancipation, that holds together a race-going crowd with a general sense of gayety. For as a nation we are not conspicuous for gayety. If we do not take our amusements solemnly, like the English, we at least take them strenuously. In this respect, racing has changed a good deal in the last twenty years. We are a little more serious about it than we used to be. In my recollection of the old days at Jerome Park, the clubhouse—certainly the feminine portion of it—took the sport itself much more lightly. The drive out in somebody’s coach, and the wonderful clothes one could wear and see, were the most important features of the day. You did not find the ladies in the paddock, as you see them now. Nor did they as openly transfer crisp bills from their own pretty purses to the bookies. Mild “pools,” in which onedrewfor one’s number quite irrespective of tips and inside information, were the only ladylike form of betting. There was something quite casual and social in the way in which everybody sat about on the lawn, under, I verily believe, the most brilliant parasols that the world has ever seen; the clubhouse behind us, and on the side a long line of coaches. It was a very long line, yet we could all tell them at a glance.
But this has changed now. Automobiles have driven out coaches. Not but what one still sees them, beautifully appointed, at any track; but instead of being the chosen means of locomotion for the fortunate, they are merely a picturesque way of wasting time. The consequence is that at Belmont Park one notices a distinct modification in the gorgeousness of the women’s clothes. In this country we have never gone the lengths of English women, whose clothes at Ascot and Epsom seemed to me quite as suitable to a ballroom. Still, our best dressed women have always felt hitherto that the races afforded a unique opportunity—especially when approached on the top of a smart coach. At Jerome and even at Morris Park, where New York could pour out in electric hansoms, this was still the rule, but to Belmont Park the trip in an automobile over dusty Long Island roads, or even on the Long Island Railroad, will not permit the same elaborate dressing.
It is not, however, only the chance to see and wear good clothes that gives races their charm to feminine eyes. Perhaps their chief attraction is the flavor of the great world. The penalty of leading a sheltered life is having a limited outlook, and the obverse of being select is being narrow. Women are beginning to see this. Society is unquestionably growing more and more friendly to the successful outsider, the people who are, as the phrase is, “doing something.” So far literary stars have had the main share of notice, but great actresses, great artists, even great scientists, have nowadays much more attention paid to them than the merely well-bred and socially available can hope for. Even the most exclusive of our great ladies no longer take pride in never having heard the name of anyone outside their own circle. We have not become such lion hunters as the Londoners, but we enjoy very much having pointed out to us, here a great plunger from Chicago, there a dancer never before seen but from across the footlights. The race track is an excellent field for such experiences. Not, of course, that these experiences must be carried too far. It is one thing to see the celebrities of the stage, but quite another to hear them calling our husbands and brothers by their first names. A recent instance of this kind has been brought to the attention, so it is said, of the governors of Belmont Park, with the result that box holders have been implored to be more circumspect in their choice of guests.
But of all our tracks, Saratoga offers the most amusing phases to the observer of things social. Smart New York appearsto think that Saratoga ceased to exist from the time when it was no longer the Newport of our grandmothers, until rediscovered in the interests of racing by the late Mr. William C. Whitney. The true situation is infinitely more amusing.
Saratoga, with its enormous hotels, teeming with a society busy and well entertained, has been perfectly satisfied with itself in spite of the fact that smart New York knew it not. The United States Hotel has represented all that was socially delightful to many people who never heard of the “Four Hundred.” And now suddenly into this community comes the smartest of New York’s racing section—the Whitneys, the Mackays, the Wilsons and the young Vanderbilts, and several more of like sort. And not only do they come, but they come under circumstances that render almost impossible the exclusiveness that has been regarded as essential. This year, I believe, the Mackays and a few others are renting separate houses, but hitherto it has been hotel life for everybody. Hotel life, which New Yorkers so scorn! A “cottage”—i. e., a suite of connecting rooms in a great caravansary—was the utmost seclusion possible. After the publicity of the race track, this was the only refuge. Then to meet the crowd again at dinner at Canfield’s (the ladies penetrated no further than the dining room even in the palmy days), and later, perhaps, to listen to the band at the Grand Union. This is a life in contrast to the seclusion of the cliffs at Newport. Verily racing makes strange companions.
There is something particularly gay in the atmosphere of the place. Any serious business other than racing is so plainly lacking. As the meeting is in summer, a great many men choose their holiday so as to take it in. The result is that we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a class of idle men—at leisure and eager to be amused, almost like a foreign community. No one who has been to Saratoga will ever repeat the worn platitude that American men do not know how to enjoy a holiday.
We must remember, too, that for the feminine element racing is one of the few opportunities for—can we use so ferocious a term as “gambling” for the risking of a mild fiver on a “sure thing”? People are fond of saying that women are born gamblers; meaning, I suppose, that they love it better than men do. But it seems to me that this is only half the truth. The element of chance has charms for all of us, and women have so few opportunities to indulge it. They do not usually speculate in Wall Street; their daily occupation is not a gamble, as so many businesses are; the private wager is almost unknown to them. Until bridge swept over us, women could not, whilespendingas much money as they pleased, have any of the fun of losing it. Perhaps, in spite of all the talk about the intellectual stimulation of bridge, it owes some of its popularity to the same causes that the races do.
Not but what I believe that the interest of many women is a truly sporting one. Feminine love and knowledge of horses have increased wonderfully in the last twenty-five years. Our mothers and grandmothers rode, but took it as an elegant relaxation, or even as a mere means of locomotion. In this country the true sportswoman—the woman who hunts and drives four-in-hand and tandem—is a fairly recent development. In England we have only to go back to the novels of Whyte Melville to see that even in the middle of the last century she was a known type. It is not at all uncommon for women over there to know quite as much about horses as their brothers, to understand the horses and the cattle and the pigs. For Englishwomen to own a racing stable is no novelty, while here the joint experiment of two of our best known ladies was very much talked about, and endured but a short time.
The sport is essentially a sport for men. Women are merely onlookers; and in so far as it has a social side, even that side is controlled by men, serving thus as the great exception to things social.
Naturally we assume that the majority of men who go into racing go intoit for the love of the sport itself. Yet we cannot look about us and see the men who have not only no knowledge of racing, but no knowledge of horses, even their own, without asking what is the inducement that has led them to take it up.
There are a good many answers. In the first place, there is the prestige. You buy a racing stable, and your name is known not only to your equals—the other owners, the members of the jockey clubs—but to every office boy who “plays the ponies,” to every great lady who wants a competent guide to the paddock. Mr. Belmont may build subways and conduct gigantic banking operations, but it is as the man who named Belmont Park that he is known to a majority of his fellow countrymen. The racegoing community is an epitome of all society, from the “tout” and the beggar to the multi-millionaire. A real aristocracy can be built on so well organized a foundation, and the owner of a great stable has the flattery of all classes in his little world.
Then, too, it is the sign and symbol of great wealth. Some men prefer to tell you how rich they are; others load their wives with jewels, or endow universities. Others, again, set up a racing stable. It is a process that sets them in a small class apart.
But even in a society as materialistic as ours, the outward symbol is not everything. A house on the east side of the park, a perfectly appointed carriage, a steam yacht—these are valuable instruments to those destined to “get on,” but can by themselves affect very little for those who are not so destined. Cold-blooded as the inter-relations of society seem to be, they are, nevertheless, human relations, and can never be achieved by mere things, however much we may hear to the contrary. Knowing this, women who desire social advancement always seek it through the means of friendships.
But men! The spectacle of a man struggling for social success was rare a few years ago. It was always supposed to be the wives and daughters of our self-made men who waged the combat. But nowadays, as society and business are growing closer and closer, as more of our great financiers take prominent social positions, as prominent social positions become a more and more valuable asset, we find, as we are bound to, that men desire such positions more and more.
This is the damaging suspicion that clings to men who go into racing after a past ignorant of horseflesh—the suspicion that they are using the sport as a means of social advancement. Many people who ought to know will tell you that no such advantage is offered by racing, and will point to the veterans of the turf whose names have never been heard socially. But the answer to this is that such men had no ulterior motive, and would not have wanted social honors, even if they had come.
Even in countries where the sport is more seriously taken than here, this social element mingles with it. In France racing is the special amusement of the fastest set—not of thevieille noblesse, but of Monsieur Blanc of dry goods fame, of that set who has imported its clothes and its slang from England, the set whose men cannot be told from well-bred Englishmen, the set who has invented “le sport.” To penetrate this set is almost impossible for a foreigner. Indeed, the only representative of the Vanderbilt family who has gone into racing at all has done so in France. Perhaps even for him some little aid was necessary in that difficult circle.
In England, again, the situation is different. The turf is the serious and respected sport of all classes. London is literally empty the day of the Derby. Many of the most honored names in England have been, or are, connected with a great racing stable. It is bound to have also an important social aspect. The winning of the Derby has always been so eagerly desired by Americans that one is justified in suspecting that the social prominence attracts them. Yet here the very seriousness of the English attitude toward their favorite sport is clearly to be seen. The Englishman is quick to detect an unsportsmanlikeattitude; and to use the “sport of kings” for social purposes is a thing he finds it hard to forgive.
Over there it is most literally the “sport of kings,” for it must, if successfully followed, bring you sooner or later into contact with the king himself. This apparently is not always the most agreeable of experiences, if the story is true that one of our most conspicuous expatriates, who has been racing over there, has been almost forced out of it on account of a breach of etiquette. It seems he bid against the king for the possession of a certain horse, and bid higher than his majesty cared to go. The gentleman who was representing the king was immensely incensed, and has taken steps to prevent such audacious competition. Yet to republican eyes it seems rather hard that the king’s bid should of itself preclude all others.
Here the position of racing is so much more ambiguous. It has not the respect of the country at large. It does not make one beloved or even celebrated in the world outside the track. No political capital could be made out of it. As to its social uses, I think it is fair to say that, while no social advantage necessarily follows, it offers an immense opportunity to those clever enough to take advantage of it.
For the main difficulty in the way of the social aspirant is the first step—is in getting to know two or three of the right people—two or three are often sufficient. A large yacht may be a powerful recommendation, but let her owner once fill her with the wrong people, and he were better without her. To make yourself conspicuous is fatal unless your companions are those whom the world envies. To advertise yourself is, alas! too often to advertise your undesirable friendships. Many men seem to think that a coach is the safe road to success, and will drive round and round the park secure in the knowledge that their appointments are perfect and their horses the best, not knowing that the effect is being ruined by their guests, who are evidently unknown to the world of fashion. The idea seems to be that it is quite safe to begin with “frumps,” that they are better than no one. But this is a great mistake. Solitude has its dignity. Common friends have none at all. It is not easy to progress from them to the more exclusive. Once you have identified yourself with the wrong people, the right ones insist on believing that that is the kind you really prefer.
For the rich bachelor there are just two avenues of social ambition. He may become attentive to a smart girl not so accustomed to attention as to be overcritical, or if he is above this sort of thing, I know of nothing so hopeful as racing. Here is a sport in which he may become known without forming undesirable social ties, without proclaiming his acquaintance with undesirable people. There is a chance for him to meet men of the best position in an atmosphere congenial to friendship—a mutual interest in a great sport. At the same time there is no role in which a man may appear better than in that of a straightforward and generous sportsman.
Our Lady of Succor, by Grace MacGowan Cooke
S
SHE looked up from the fire she was kindling in the small wood heater; a stout, rosy-faced old woman, the sole occupant of the humble little eating house at Socorro Junction. The Spanish name means succor, and probably marks the place where some man or party in dire need was rescued. The man who entered had a muffled feminine figure clinging to his arm, and he glanced about suspiciously as he asked, in a voice which held a sharp note of anxiety: “Is this an eating house—a hotel?”
“This here’s the Wagon Tire House,” returned its proprietor, rising and shaking the piñon slivers from her checked apron.
“Have you rooms—a parlor—some place where this lady can be alone?”
Without awaiting an answer, he turned and whispered to the veiled woman, who shuddered and shrank; but whether from his touch or with fear of publicity was not apparent. “Take off your things—put back that infernal veil,” he muttered, angrily. “There’s nothing here to hurt you.”
The removal of the wraps showed a round, innocent face, with its own pretensions to beauty. Such prettiness as it held, however, was just now stricken out of it by the blanched terror which dominated every curve and line.
“No, sir,” said the old woman, surveying them both. “This ain’t rightly a hotel. I’ve——”
“Why do you call it one, then?” interrupted the man, angrily. He placed his companion in a chair, and stood between her and the proprietor of the eating house. “Who are you, anyhow?” he asked, as he removed his shining silk hat, and mopped his brow with a snowy handkerchief.
“I’m Huldy Sarvice. Most folks calls me Aunt Huldy,” she returned, looking her guest up and down.
The man did not volunteer any return information; but Huldah, who was given to communing with herself in regard to her patrons and summing them up instantly, supplied the deficiency with the muttered statement: “And you’re a gambler. Everything about you jest hollers ‘Gambler.’” Her eye fell upon the little figure behind the tall, black-clad one. It rested a moment on the crude, pathetically approbative countenance which should have been rosy and smiling, “You’re——” she halted in her unspoken sentence. “I’m blessed if I know what you are. You don’t look like no sport’s wife. You sure don’t look like anything worse. I guess you’re just a fool. Poor little soul! I see mighty deep waters in front of your feet.”
Even while these things were flitting through Aunt Huldah’s mind, she had been automatically answering “yes” and “no” to the somewhat heated inquiries of her would-be guest. Now, with a quick patter of little running feet, a small Mexican boy, with half a pie, burst in from the kitchen, followed closely by the irate cook, who was also his mother. Huldah held her plump sides and shook with mirth as the little rascal doubled and turned among the chairs and table legs, snatching a hasty bite now and again from his stolen pie. Nobody knew better than the proprietor of the Wagon Tire House—kind, motherly soul—that the threats the Mexican woman hurled after her offspring were threats only.
At last, when the final morsel was bolted, Jose permitted himself to becaught, and burst into loud conventional sobs as his mother berated him. The slim, pale little woman crouching in her chair, her great furred cloak—painfully new, as was all the rest of her expensive wear—drawn tight around her, watching this scene with wide, horrified eyes, sprang up and, in spite of the man’s restraining hand, ran to the child.
“Oh! Don’t strike him!” she cried, kneeling before the boy, her face bathed in tears. “You’ll be sorry—sorry—if you do! I had a little boy—a baby—and I used to—to forget sometimes and—and be harsh——”
The man caught her shoulder and attempted to raise her. She shook him off almost as though she had not noticed it.
“Louise! Louise!” he said. “This is ridiculous. Sit down. She isn’t going to hurt the child.”
But the kneeling woman went on exactly as though she had not heard. “You mustn’t strike him. If anything should happen——” she hesitated. “My little boy——”
She stole a look over her shoulder at the angry man.
The Mexican woman’s doubled fist came down, unclinched and became fingers, which fumbled at her kitchen apron. “Is your young son dead, señora?” she asked, in an awed voice.
“Louise!” remonstrated the man.
The girl whom he addressed shivered, caught the boy in her arms, and sobbed wildly: “No, no—not dead, I wish he were. I wish I were dead!”
The man leaned down and lifted her bodily to her feet. “Here,” he said, pushing her not overgently back into the chair, “you sit down and get your nerves quiet.” He turned almost savagely to Huldah Sarvice, demanding: “There is surely some place you can give us where my wife can be alone. You see how it is here.”
Huldah nodded, looking at her visitor with shrewd, kindly eyes. “I ’spect your wife”—she put a little stress on the two words, and the girl winced, her pale face reddening—“I jest think she’s better off here among people.”
The man made a muttered objection, but Huldah went serenely on: “My lodgin’ rooms is acrost the street, and I don’t know’s I’ve got a vacant one. They’s a man with a broken leg in one of ’em, an’ a feller that’s been drinkin’ a little too much is in another. Two more of ’em is locked up by the men that rents ’em. Best sit here till I can git you a little supper; mebby that’ll cheer her up some.”
All the time she talked, Aunt Huldah had been watching the little woman’s face and behavior, which were those of a creature under some desperate pressure; and as she concluded and turned back to her fire building, she made her decision. “That man—husband or not—has done something that she’s knownst to. He’s a gambler; mebby he’s knifed some feller acrost the cards; mebby he’s gone further. But my guess is that she knows of some crime he’s done, an’ he’s hangin’ onto her for fear she’ll tell.”
She rose from the now kindled fire for another covert survey of her guests, who were deep in a whispered conference. “Yes, and she’d jest about do it, too. She wants to give him away.” Again, after a moment of keen observation on her way to the kitchen, she added: “An’ he knows it.”
As she went on with her supper, aided by the Mexican woman, who was used to her habit of arguing with herself aloud, she muttered: “What next, then?” and answered her own question: “Why, her life ain’t safe with him—not a minit!”
Having come to which conclusion, she gave her helper a few hasty directions, wiped her hands on her apron and marched back to the front room, where all day long the dining table stood set out with its pink mosquito-net covering. “I’ve got a room of my own,” she began, abruptly. “’Tain’t much of a place, but there’s a bed in it, where your wife could lay down.”
The two were on their feet in a moment. Huldah laid hold of the cringing little shoulder nearest her, and turned to the door. “It’ll be nigh to three hours,” she observed, “till thesouth-bound comes through. I shan’t be usin’ the room, and she might as well git a little rest there.”
“I’ll take her over, and stay with her,” agreed the man, reaching for his hat.
“No—no, sir, that was not my offer,” objected the old woman. “My room and my bed she can have—because she needs ’em. But it ain’t fixed up, and I’ll jest have to ask you to let her go by herself.”
The man’s pale countenance went a shade whiter; a peculiar trick he had of showing his teeth without smiling became suddenly apparent. It rendered his handsome face repulsive for the moment, as he grasped the arm which was not clinging to Aunt Huldah. “Come back here. Sit down. What do you mean by pretending that you—that I——”
He jerked the girl toward him with such force that she cried out faintly, and Huldah’s gray eyes, the one beautiful feature of her homely countenance, narrowed and sparkled. “You go and get us something to eat,” he blustered. “Food is what she needs. She isn’t well enough to be alone; and you won’t let me take her over and stay with her.”
“Please go away,” begged the sobbing girl, looking pleadingly at Huldah. “You—it only makes it worse. I—I’m all right here. Please go away.”
And Huldah went, glancing back to see that the man had seated himself once more in front of the huddled figure, looming above her, bending toward her; and that urgent whispered parley had begun again.
The proprietor of the Wagon Tire House was just turning her sizzling steak in its skillet when the door behind her opened a crack, and the gambler, as she had mentally dubbed him, put his head through.
“Come here,” he said.
Huldah grunted. “I am here,” she returned. “What is it you want?”
“I want to speak to you”—impatiently.
“Speak,” suggested the old woman.
“But I’ve got something to say that I don’t care to yell to every fool on the street.” He stared malevolently at the broad, blue calico back and half turned to retrace his steps; but no, he needed a woman’s help—he must have it; and he finally began, in an anxious, reluctant half whisper: “What do you think of her? Is she really sick?”
“I think she’ll die, all right,” answered the old woman, without turning her head or glancing up from her cooking.
“You do!” sneered the man, with a sudden loudness of tone. “You think she’ll die! You women are always using that word. I never saw a woman in a tight place yet but what she began whining that she believed it would kill her—that she’d die.”
“Well, and they die, too, sometimes—don’t they?”
A little sound or movement in the room behind him brought the man’s glance around with such a malignant scowl that Huldah, noting it, deemed her time to speak out had come. “See here, sir,” she began, turning away from the stove—“Manuelita, tend to that steak, and don’t let it burn, for goodness’ sake—see here, sir, you know a lot more’n I do about what ails that woman in there. But I know enough to know that she’s goin’ to die if she’s driv’ like you’ve been drivin’ her.”
“Like I’ve been driving her!” echoed the man, angrily. “She’s the one that’s making it hot for me. There’s nothing the matter with her.”
“All right,” returned Huldah, applying herself once more to the cooking. “If there’s nothing the matter of her, what did you come out here to ask me about it for?” Sudden rage mastered her as she worked over the steak gravy. She whirled and shook a finger at her interlocutor so sharply that he drew back. “I tell you that little creatur’ in the room behind you is a-goin’ to die if she ain’t let up on,” she finished, impressively.
Fear, indecision and rage contended upon the man’s face. “Oh, Lord!” he ejaculated, “if one woman can’t raise enough row, there’s always another to help her. Well, come in here. You can take her over. To your own room,mind—nowhere else. And let nobody else see her or talk to her. You’ll come right back, and not stay with her.” He looked at Huldah Sarvice’s strong, benevolent face, which smiled upon him inscrutably. “I expect I’m a fool to risk it,” he muttered. “But—well, come in.”
“Stay with her!” echoed Huldah, tossing up her head with a peculiar, free motion which belonged to her in times of excitement. “Stay with her?Idon’t want to stay with your wife. I’ve got my work to do. I don’t spy on nobody—no matter how bad things looks for ’em.”
She had spoken the latter words in an undertone, as she gathered the drooping girl and her belongings upon a capable arm. Now, as a heavy, drumming roar became audible, she added, in excitement: “Land sakes! There’s a train. No, it can’t be no train; but for sure them’s engines out on the Magdalena Branch! I’ve got to fly ’round and git supper for them train crews. All the boys o’ the Magdalena Branch eats with me.” She made as though to release her charge, saying sharply: “I guess I ain’t hardly time to take your wife acrost—let alone hangin’ ’round to chat with her.”
“Hi, colonel! That big trunk of yours bu’st open when we tried to get it off the freight,” announced a man’s voice in the doorway. “Want to come over and see to it?”
This was the help that Huldah could have asked for. The man addressed as “colonel” turned from one to the other with a worried look. “I guess I’ve got to,” he replied to the brakeman. “How bad is it?”
“I didn’t see it,” returned the other, “but Billy said it was plumb bu’st, and the things fallin’ out. It’ll have to be roped, I guess.”
As the men hurried away in the direction of the station, Huldah turned briskly and tightened her arm about the girl. “Now, honey,” she whispered. And they hastened across the straggling red mud road in the face of a shower whose large drops were beginning to pelt down like hail. Aunt Huldah gathered up her petticoats and ran. “I’ll have to git them winders shut,” she panted. “I hope to gracious Manuelita’s got the sense to shut ’em in the other house.”
The roaring of engines which Huldah had mentioned as on the Magdalena Branch came more distinctly now. “Looks like there must be three or four of ’em—engines—one right behind t’other,” the old woman muttered. “I’ll jest git you fixed comfortable over here, honey, and shut them winders, an’ then I must run back.”
But when she would have done so, the girl clung to her with shaking hands. “Oh, don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “Don’t let that man know where I am. Hide me.”
“He ain’t your husband, then?” hazarded Huldah.
“No—no—no!” moaned the girl. “My husband’s a freight conductor on this road—Billy Gaines. You’ve seen him. He told me about you and the Wagon Tire House—about your having a wagon tire in front of it to beat on to call to meals. I expect he’s eaten many a meal here. He might come now; and then if he saw me—and that man—and—oh, hide me!”
Aunt Huldah let the head rest upon her shoulder, the shamed face hidden. “Who is this feller they call colonel, child?” she asked, gently.
“He owned—the house we lived in—in El Paso,” came the muffled explanation. “He’s rich, and—and very refined.”
“I know a place that’s full of jest such refined fellers,” muttered Huldah, angrily.
“Billy didn’t seem to love the baby as he—as—and Colonel Emerson is very fond of children—he’s devoted to my baby—or I thought he was. And he said that it was cause enough for me to leave Billy. And if I should leave him—if I should leave Billy—if I should get a divorce from him—he said—Colonel Emerson said——”
“Don’t tell me what hesaid, honey child,” urged Huldah. “What’d hedo? Where’s your baby?”
Oh, then the poor little mother clung with strangling sobs to the stronger,older woman. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “He got me all these nice things—ain’t my clothes awfully pretty?—and he promised we’d bring the baby with us. He says he’s taking me to his mother, and that I can stay there until I get my divorce—because, you know, Billy has treated me awfully mean, and he don’t care—Billy—he don’t care a thing on earth about me nor the baby any more.”
She reiterated these last words with a piteous look of entreaty into the kind gray eyes bent upon her, repeated them as a little child repeats a lesson which has been laboriously taught to it. Huldah looked at her with infinite pity. “Where’s your baby?” she repeated.
“That’s what scares me!” cried the wife of Billy Gaines. “He said—Colonel Emerson said—when he met me at the station, and he hadn’t sent for the baby like he promised to—that he was going to have some man that he knew go and get the boy and take it to his mother’s house, but that it wouldn’t do for it to travel with us, because we could be traced by it. I”—the pretty lips trembled—“I never was away from my baby a night in my life. I don’t know if anybody knows where to get his little night drawers. He always wears a little sack, extra, at night, because he’s a great one for throwing his arms out and getting the covers off them——”
She was running on like a crazed thing, with these little fond details, when Huldah Sarvice’s strong voice interrupted her. “Thank God!” said the old woman, heaving a mighty sigh of relief. “If you’re a good mother, you’re worth savin’. I’m goin’ right over now an’ telegraft to your husband.”
“Oh, no! Don’t do that!” cried the other. “He’ll be killed. You mustn’t. Don’t. He’ll be killed!”
“Killed!” snorted Huldah. Hers was the rough-and-ready code of the West. “Killed—and serve him right!”
“I don’t mean Colonel Emerson,” remonstrated the frantic girl. “Sometimes I think he’s a bad man—an awful man—anyhow, he’ll just have to stand it if anything happens. It’s Billy I’m thinking about. The colonel has shot three or four men—he’ll kill my poor Billy——”
Huldah smiled to herself in the gathering darkness. The problem was becoming easier and easier. But the girl’s strangled, sobbing voice went on: “And I couldn’t bear to see Billy. I don’t dare to have him see me when he knows about this. I can’t face him. If you say you’re going to telegraph to him, I’ll run right straight to Colonel Emerson and get him to take me away somewhere.”
Huldah puckered her lips—had she been a man she would have whistled. She saw no way but to go with the girl and fight it out with her tempter. “Come,” she said, a little roughly for Huldah. “I’ll go back with you.”
She whom the old woman would have saved turned like a hunted thing, as to elude her benefactress. Huldah clung to her arm, and they struggled thus to the doorway. Here the thunder of engines toward Magdalena once more arrested the attention of the proprietor of the Wagon Tire House. It had increased to a deafening uproar; the rain fell like bullets; and even as they drew back, frightened, there was no street to be seen—only a flood of swirling yellow water, running like a tail race between the lodging rooms and the little eating house. “My Lord!” groaned Huldah. “I might ’a’ knowed ’twa’n’t engines. Hit’s a cloudburst, above—the big arroyo’s up.”
It was true. The red gash which through nine-tenths of the year lay dry and yawning beside the tracks of the little Magdalena Branch railway was brimmed with the same tide which swept the street. And down it, as they looked, came a wall of writhing, tormented water, nearly five feet high.
There had been a cloudburst in the mountains above, whence came such trickle as fed the arroyo in the dry season. Twice before had this thing happened, and the little eating house stood upon stilts of cottonwood logs to be above the flood line, while the lodging house was on higher ground.
The watching women saw the flood reach the railway track, beat upon itsembankment with upraised, clinched hands, tear at it with outspread fingers in an access of fury, wrench up the rails yet bolted to the ties, and fling them forward on its crest as it plunged on. The two little houses, standing isolated from the town and nearer to the railroad tracks than any other, were now in an open waste of water, the current sweeping swiftly between them, an eddy lapping in their back yards.
As Huldah saw Manuelita’s frightened face at a window of the Wagon Tire House, she made a trumpet of her plump hands and shouted: “Don’t you be scared, Manuelita—hear? Keep up the fire, and make a b’iler of coffee. I’ll be over soon’s I can git thar!”
Billy Gaines’ wife looked down at the water with relief. “He can’t come across that,” she murmured.
“No, he can’t,” agreed Aunt Huldah. “An’ you come an’ lay down on my bed. Slip off your shoes, an’ loosen your clothes, but don’t undress. This house is safe, I reckon; but no knowin’ what might happen.”
All that night Huldah Sarvice worked, with the strength of a man and the knowledge of a seasoned frontiers-woman. The injured were brought to the lodging house or the eating house, just as it happened. When a hastily improvised boat came to their aid, she went in it over to see that some refreshment was prepared for the workers; and later, when the sullen flood receded to a languid swell, she paddled back and forth on foot, her petticoats gathered in one sweep of her arm, and whatever was necessary to carry held fast with the other.
“You’ll get your death, Aunt Huldah,” remonstrated the agent, when she had struggled across to the station to send a telegram to Billy Gaines.
“I reckon not,” she returned, with twinkling eye. “Seems like you can’t drown me. I’ve been flooded out six times; twict at El Captain, once at Blowout and now three times here; and I ain’t drownded yet. This is a good long telegraft that I’m a-sendin’; but I reckon the railroad won’t grudge it to me.”
“You bet they won’t,” returned the boy, heartily, as he addressed himself to his key. “I’ll add a message of my own to a fellow I know at El Paso, and get him to hunt Billy up if he’s on duty to-night.”
Huldah beamed. “That’s awful good of you,” she returned; “but if you had seen that little woman over there a runnin’ from one window to another, a wringin’ her hands and carryin’ on so that I’m ’most afraid to leave her alone, you’d be glad to do it.”
As she splashed back to her tired helpers and the injured at the Wagon Tire House, the old woman muttered to herself: “He’s a good boy. It’s better to have good friends than to be rich;” and never reflected for an instant that no personal benefit had been conferred upon herself in the matter.
With the simple wisdom of a good woman who knows well the human heart, Huldah set poor Louise Gaines to attending upon the worst injured of the flood sufferers, and took her promptly in to see the one corpse which so far had been found floating in an eddy after the waters receded a little. It was that of a young Mexican girl from the village above. The little fair woman went down on her knees beside the stretcher. “Oh, I wish it was me!” she cried. “Why couldn’t it have been me? She’s young, and I expect she wanted to live—why didn’t God take me?”
“Now, now,” remonstrated Aunt Huldah, with a touch of wholesome sternness. “I didn’t bring you in here to carry on about your own troubles—that’s selfish. I brung you to make this poor girl look fit to be laid away. You can do it better’n I can, and there’s nobody else for to do it. Likely her folks is all drownded, too.”
And Billy Gaines’ wife rose up and wiped her eyes, and went to work in something of the spirit that Huldah had hoped.
It was five o’clock in the gray of the morning when the wrecking train from El Paso came through; and Billy Gaines was aboard it. The poor little wife had had attacks of hysteric terror all night long at the thought of his coming;and now she lay exhausted and half sleeping upon the lounge in the dining room. Huldah herself felt a little qualm of fear as she opened the kitchen door to the tall figure buttoned in the big ulster. For the first time, she wondered where the man Emerson was, and hoped that he had taken the one train which left Socorro going northward, just before the flood struck them. But the hope was a faint one; more likely he was up in the town, cut off from them temporarily by the water which still ran between; and when he and Billy Gaines met, she doubted not that there would be another bloody reckoning such as the West knows well.
If she had doubted, her questions would have been answered when she looked into the frank gray eyes of the man who met her, a trifle stern and very resolute. “I’ve come for my wife,” he said, breathing a little short, “and if Jim Emerson’s in the house, I want to see him.”
“Come in here,” said the old woman, drawing the newcomer into a small section of chaos which was generally known as the pantry. “I remember you now, an’ I guess you’re a decenter man than the run of ’em; but I want to have a word with you before you go in to that poor girl. You see, I want to be sure that you’ve looked on both sides of it. You pass all right among the men—I hear you well spoke of—but how many things can you ricollect that you’ve done that are jest as bad as what she’s done?”
“Plenty,” said Billy Games, almost with impatience. “I understand, Aunt Huldah.”
“Mebby you do,” said the old woman; “but I want to be sure. Where was you when this poor little soul was left to herself—and that scoundrel?”
“I was over in Mexico on a six weeks’ hunting trip.”
“You was! Well, then, after all, who done this thing—who’s really to blame?”
“I am—you bet,” came the deep-voiced answer. “I don’t hold it against you a bit, Aunt Huldah; but you’re working on the wrong trail. You think you’ve got a great big job ahead of you trying to make me see this thing right. But I’ll remind you that it’s eight hours from El Paso here—eight night hours—and your telegram was pretty complete. You left the man out; and so will I—until I meet him.” The firm jaw squared itself heavily; and Huldah sighed as she realized that the law of blood for honor must be met.
The man had carried one arm almost as though it were injured; and she now glanced down at it as he moved it and fumbled in the folds of his big overcoat. His voice softened beautifully. “I’ve got something here,” he said, “that ought to show you that I know and understand, and am going to behave myself.”
He opened his great cloak and showed, lying upon his breast asleep, a baby of about two years old, who stirred, put up a wandering little hand and murmured: “Daddy,” as he settled himself for a longer nap.
“Bless his heart!” murmured Huldah, in the richest tones of her strong, heartsome voice. She wiped the tears from her eyes on a corner of the check apron. “I guess you’ll do, Billy. You seem to have the makin’s of a tol’able decent feller in you. You’ve got the only medicine right there that your poor little, half crazy wife needs.” And she pushed him toward the door of the deserted dining room.
There was a long, agonized cry: “O—o—oh, Billy!” Then the big voice talked brokenly and gently for a time, choking sobs interrupting it; and Huldah could hear, at first, the thin, shrill terror of the woman’s tones, very sharp and pleading; finally an eloquent silence.
She glanced in to see Billy Gaines sitting with what she called “both of his children—for the little woman’s ’most as much of a baby as her boy”—asleep; the mother with her head upon his shoulder, while the child lay in the laps of both of them.
“Lord, but that’s a sight for sore eyes!” she ruminated, as she lifted the coffee boiler from the stove and sent Manuelita to lie down and get a rest.
“But there’s the colonel,” she pursued. “There’s goin’ to be awful times when him and Billy Gaines meets.” Then she smiled at herself and went on: “Jest listen to a old woman like me tryin’ to tell how it ort to come out. We’re all God’s children. I reckon the colonel’s His child”—she seemed to have a little doubt upon this point—“an’ I reckon God’ll take care of him.”
As if in answer to her half-spoken thought, there came the tramp of stumbling feet, somebody beat upon the door, and a voice called: “Mrs. Sarvice! Aunt Huldah! We’ve just found another body over by the railroad tracks. Can we bring him in here, or shall we take it over to the other house?”
Huldah hurried out, to turn down the blanket they had drawn over the stark form and look upon the dead gambler’s face. “Carry him to the lodgin’ house, pore feller,” she said, gently.
God had taken care of the colonel.