CHAPTER XI.A CHANCE MEETING.
The spring whence the Westons drew their water was about a quarter of a mile from the house across an angle of the corn field. A little foot-path winding in and out among the hills of corn led to it. As the corn grew, this path changed in character and became at length a track through a miniature forest. The corn grew to about eight feet in height, and of course the first to be covered was little Olive, with her brief five feet two inches, but by the end of July it had covered them all. Then it became Olive’s greatest delight to go down through that forest where the corn shook in the breeze. The satin-smooth stalks coming up like bamboos, and the broad fibrous ribbons of leaves, were a constant pleasure. But greatest joy of all was to watch the coming of the silk. When the young ears of grain were forming they threw off great skeins of exquisite silken threads, changing through every tint from palest green to rich dark crimson. These bunches of silk were like soft plumes falling from the crest of the husk that heldthe ears, and were most tempting to twist through idle fingers. A forest of tall-growing prairie corn is just the place for fairies, only alas! the wee folk had departed this life long before ever Olive went to live at Perfection City. So charmed was she with this dwarf forest, which afforded the only shade to be enjoyed on that glaring prairie, that during the summer she always went to the spring for an extra pail of fresh water every afternoon before supper-time, as this errand gave her an excuse for loitering among the corn stalks and amusing herself with her own playful fancies.
Diana of course accompanied her young mistress upon these walks to the spring, for the puppy was attached to her by bonds of firmest canine affection, while Olive, on her side, was never tired of laughing at Diana’s ridiculous freaks, although they sometimes caused her considerable trouble.
Take an example.
A day so hot and scorching that words fail to convey any idea of it, and Olive in a great fuss, for she was behindhand with her work. At four o’clock, the very most blistering hour of the whole twenty-four, she set off hastily for the spring to fetch the fresh water, and with her Diana, her tongue lolling out half a hand’s breath. Knowing the object of the expedition, the puppy took the path through the corn, and Olive sweltered after her. It seemed as if the shelter of the corn was powerless against the slantingshafts of sunlight that danced and chequered between the broad hanging leaves, while the very air seemed endowed with such a load of heat as to press down with more than the allotted weight upon Olive’s head. She climbed over the fence and walked across the grass to where the spring started from under a tiny overhanging ledge of limestone rock. It was an excellent spring with the best of water, and would have been made into the holiest of wells by a spreading tree or a shady thorn-bush near it. There was, however, nothing of this sort, but only a clear pool of water some two feet across and about a foot deep, just enough, in fact, to enable one to get a good dip with the bucket. As Olive, hot and tired, hurried to this little pool of water, she beheld the accomplished Diana sitting in the middle of it, cooling herself and slobbering water up and down over her nose in supreme bliss. Poor Olive! She did not know whether to laugh or to cry, but eventually decided upon the first-named course. Then she sat down beside Diana and paddled her feet in the water, after which refreshment she returned home with her water-pail empty. The spring had an undisturbed night in which to renew its freshness, and in the future Olive kept her eye on Diana when they went together for water. The dog always wanted to go first, but Olive kept her severely to heel until the water was obtained, after which Diana was free to indulge in what diversions she pleased.
One day as Olive emerged from the pathway through the corn, her heart gave a great bound of alarm as she saw a man standing beside the spring, holding his horse’s bridle. He was a tall man in a red shirt and large-brimmed hat. He carried a revolver at his belt, but it was not that which frightened Olive, she was well accustomed to seeing armed men. On catching sight of her the stranger took off his hat with a sweeping bow, and coming forward greeted her with the greatest eagerness.
“This is indeed a delightful meeting, Mrs. Weston. Quite idyllic, if I may say so. And are you coming to fetch water? It is a subject for a poem, only I am not a poet. I can feel all the beauty of it, but must be dumb. You’ll let me carry back your pail for you, won’t you? It is too heavy for those wee hands.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cotterell. I can quite easily carry my pail. I do it every day,” said Olive speaking with much embarrassment.
“Mr. Cotterell!” he repeated with infinite sadness in manner, and with a look of much meaning in his bold blue eyes. “You call me Mr. Cotterell, then I am no longer Mr. Perseus, and my sweet romance is shattered forever!”
“I know now that you are Mr. Cotterell,” said Olive, in keen distress.
“And knowing that, you are disillusioned and have lost faith in me, and you will not even let me carryyour pail of water for you,” said he, sadly, in a way which cut Olive to the heart, “yet I am the same man I was. To you at least I have never changed.”
“I know you are very kind,” said Olive, “but if you please I’d rather you didn’t carry the pail for me.”
She was dreadfully sorry to say anything to hurt his feelings, but she remembered her promise, and she must make him understand here and now that their acquaintance was to cease. She wanted to do it as kindly as she could, but she must do it at once.
Cotterell was not slow to read her thoughts, indeed her distress was too real and undisguised for him to fail to understand.
“Is this an order of dismissal, Mrs. Weston? Am I not to come to see you any more?” he asked abruptly, with a look of pain in his face.
Olive glancing up saw the pain and felt sorrier than ever, but she went bravely forward.
“I am deeply pained, Mr. Cotterell, but I must ask you not to come to see me; my husband does not want you to,” she said, unable in her distress to find any words which would convey her meaning unmistakably, and yet not sound too unkind.
“Your husband has forbidden you to see me?” said Cotterell, biting his yellow moustache savagely.
“Yes,” said Olive simply.
“Your husband’s sentiments would do credit to a dog in the manger, Mrs. Weston, but are not whatone exactly looks for from a professing communist, who poses as a shining light for his poor fellow-creatures still groping in the darkness of their ignorance.”
“He says you are a bad man, Mr. Cotterell,” said Olive with a view to defending her husband and perhaps finding out the facts of the case about her mysterious friend, in whose personality she felt a great interest.
“I don’t pretend to be a good man, Heaven knows! but I’m a poor lonely devil living quite by myself, and your husband, with all that the world can give in the way of happiness, grudges me the brief pleasure of talking for half an hour with a good woman. That’s not the way to make me a better man, Mrs. Weston, and God knows I need all the help I can get.”
“I’m so sorry,” faltered Olive in ready sympathy, and the tears welled up into her tender black eyes.
“You sweet pitying angel,” said Mr. Cotterell, coming nearer and speaking very gently. “Your influence would save me if anything could.”
“Oh, you mustn’t talk like that,” said Olive, with a catch in her voice. “And you will be a good man, won’t you?”
He bent his handsome face low, and taking her hand implanted a kiss upon it with a grace that might have charmed a duchess.
“A woman can make or mar a man’s life,” said he. “Happy are they who draw the prizes. Goodbye!”
He sprang upon his horse and galloped away. Olive stood watching him, her eyes swimming in tears, she scarcely knew why, only he seemed so sad and so handsome. Ezra was unkind to say she must never see him any more and try to make his life less sad and wicked, and she was so sorry to think that she would never have any more talks with him.
At this moment a low growl from Diana made Olive turn round to encounter the clear cool gaze of Madame Morozoff-Smith.
“I followed you down here,” she said. “Napoleon Pompey told me that you were most likely gone to the spring.”
“Have you been here long?” asked Olive, blushing in her surprise and confusion. “I only came for a pail of fresh water.”
“No, I just saw Mr. Cotterell say good-bye and ride off,” observed Madame gently. “Do you see him often? He hasn’t a good reputation.”
“I don’t believe he is as bad as people say, I am very sorry for him living alone.”
“He need not have been alone only that he chose it, indeed it ought to have been quite otherwise, if report goes true.”
“We ought to be the last persons on earth to credit reports,” said Olive hotly. “I am sure there is a nice crop of them about us and our life here at Perfection City, if it comes to that.”
“True, I daresay there are,” said Madame. “One should be charitable.”
Olive was evidently ill at ease, and Madame drawing from a totally different experience of life her own conclusions, became convinced that Ezra’s wife was carrying on a secret acquaintanceship with a man of whom he thought very ill.
Madame’s position as leader at Perfection City gave her many rights and imposed certain duties. She considered that of private admonition as one of them. She did not speak for some moments, and the two walked along in silence. Madame was debating in her own mind whether she should speak to Olive and endeavour to turn her from the dangerous path towards which she seemed to be directing her steps; or whether she should keep silence and let her destiny be accomplished. She reflected that if she spoke to Olive, that rather high-spirited young woman would probably resent her interference, and might possibly complain to Ezra, with the result of estranging him from herself. On the other hand, if she left the silly wife to go her foolish way, she would break her husband’s heart. Madame’s well-shaped lips curled with a smile of contempt for herself as these thoughts passed rapidly through her brain. What a fool she was to stir in the matter! Let the giddy girl follow her own impulses and then—No, no! She would be true to her best self, she would put forth a hand and draw back the blind fool from the precipice that lay before her.
She spoke therefore to Olive in that soft quiet voice of hers that seemed to have more power of arresting the attention and holding it than the roar of an avalanche.
“I think you are, perhaps, not acquainted with Mr. Cotterell’s character,” said she. “I am sure you would not wish to associate with a bad man.”
“Why do you think he is a bad man? Do you know him?”
“No, I don’t know him, but I am sure I am right in saying that he is a man of loose morals,” said Madame.
“I don’t believe it,” said Olive.
“Why not? How can you know?”
“Because I have talked with him a great deal, and he speaks like a man with high aspirations, and not at all like the bad man you say he is.”
“But what can you know of a man’s real character from a chance word or two as you run across him in an afternoon’s stroll?” observed Madame.
“I don’t judge from a chance word, I have had long talks with him.”
“Indeed! and where? Do you meet him here at the spring then, so often?”
“I never met him at the spring before, but I used to meet him pretty often, when I was out cattle-hunting and he would generally accompany me for a bit. Sometimes too, he used to pass our house on his way cattle-hunting, and then he would look in and waterhis horse and stop to talk to me for a time,” said Olive in explanation.
“Really!” said Madame looking keenly at her companion, “and did Ezra know of these visits?”
“Ezra said he wasn’t to come any more, and I told Mr. Cotterell so to-day.”
“Oh! and what did he say?”
“He called Ezra a dog in the manger, and I do think Ezra oughtn’t to be so harsh about Mr. Cotterell. He would like to be a better man, I know, if he had any chance, and people were kind to him.”
“Did he intimate that you could influence him towards the better way?”
“I don’t see why I can’t try to use my influence in trying to make my fellow-creatures happier and better. You and Ezra are always talking about doing good that way. Why do you want to stop me the moment I see a chance of doing a little good?”
“Because you would only do harm.”
“No, I shouldn’t. A woman has great influence over a man. He said so himself.”
“Mr. Cotterell said so?” inquired Madame.
“Yes.”
“It is a very dangerous thing for a young woman to attempt to influence men of that sort.”
“You don’t know what sort he is, nor anything about him. You are only following reports. And how can you talk about the danger of influencingmen? That is just what you are always doing yourself.”
“With me it is quite different,” said Madame hastily.
“That is what everybody says to me whenever I want to do what other people find it right to do. I hate being treated like a baby.”
“You are very young and very pretty, child, and that makes it all the more necessary for your friends to guard you against dangers which you don’t perceive as clearly as they do.”
“I hate being young and—well—pretty, if it’s always going to make me be treated like that,” said Olive angrily.
“Like what?”
“Like a naughty child. That’s what Ezra does, and he goes to you to ask what he should do to me, you know he does.” She was beginning to cry, just like a naughty child.
Madame smiled contemptuously as she glanced at her companion. “What could have possessed that quiet reserved Ezra to marry such a feather-headed vain little puss?” she thought bitterly.
Olive dried her eyes angrily, she saw the contempt expressed by Madame’s curling lips, and her pride was thoroughly aroused.
“I want to know why things are different as soon as they apply to me?” she asked with doubtful grammar but unmistakable import. “It isn’t this onceonly, but it is always so. Personal liberty is the corner-stone of Perfection City, that is what you are here for, to enjoy liberty and protest against things. Mary Winkle won’t take her husband’s name, and dresses like a fright, and nobody minds. She’s free. But as soon as I try a little flight of my own, that doesn’t hurt anybody, I’m to be popped into a cage, and you and Ezra come and shut the door on me. I met this man by chance and liked talking to him. He is well-mannered and well educated, and likes the same books as I do, and has travelled and could tell me heaps and heaps of interesting things. He wasn’t forever talking in the same little muddling circle, and wasn’t always full of himself. He tried to interest me. You are an educated woman, Madame, and you know as well as I do that, except for you and Ezra, there is not an educated person in Perfection City, nor one who has the same tastes as I have. Mr. Cotterell used to come and talk to me, and I liked it; then Ezra gets very angry, says he is a bad man, and forbids my seeing him. He forbids me, mind you. Not a bit the sort of language you would expect in Perfection City, but I believe in wifely obedience and I obeyed him. I told Mr. Cotterell he must not come to see me any more, and he won’t do so. He always showed the best spirit in everything he said, and I won’t believe he is so very wicked just on mere report. We once had a horse-thief and murderer to stay to supper, and we did not inquire into his characterbefore we asked him to stop and rest and feed his horse. Mr. Cotterell said my influence might help him to be a better man, and perhaps it might. At all events, I want to know why I wasn’t to try to influence him, and I want to know why Perfection City ideas, when they make for freedom, are not applicable to me, but have to be all turned upside down when I come into play? Can you, Madame, answer me that?”
Madame was considerably dumbfoundered by this attack delivered so unexpectedly and so very straight from the shoulder. She hastily recast her idea that Olive was a silly little fool, and most unaccountably found herself anxiously seeking about for means of defence.
“The fact of the matter is, you are too pretty to do these things,” she replied, helplessly telling the truth in her extremity.
“Can Perfection City then only succeed if all the women are ugly?” asked Olive scornfully. “You had better not proclaim that fact, or you’ll have all the women running away.”
Madame was in the habit of being worshipped by men, and was not at all prepared to have her remarks ridiculed by a slip of a girl. She did not like it, and therefore replied with some asperity,
“You are really too silly, Sister Olive. You must surely perceive that there is great danger in your associating with Mr. Cotterell on so familiar a footing,that, in short, he may fall in love with you, and I presume you can understand the danger of that.”
“Precisely, a fresh set of laws must, as usual, be applied to me, and not those which govern the rest of you,” said Olive calmly.
“I don’t understand to what you refer,” said Madame looking at her doubtfully.
“Mr. Cotterell knew from the outset that I was a married woman. I don’t see the alarmingness of the danger that he might fall in love with me, simply because we talked together. The idea has only struck you in reference to me; it does not seem to have done so with regard to the similar circumstances of you and Ezra.”
Madame turned white with anger. “How dare you insult me by such an insinuation?” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t dare until after you had first given utterance to the insinuation against me,” replied Olive, with provoking calmness.
Madame turned as if she could have struck her, but she controlled herself with a desperate effort.
“It seems to me, Sister Olive, that your remarks are very ill-judged,” she said in a voice that shook in spite of her. “I have no wish to bandy words with you. I spoke merely out of a desire to do my duty, and to save you, if possible, from a danger which I imagined I foresaw more clearly than you did. I see that your words were prompted by quiteanother wish than to seek advice or counsel in a difficult moment.”
“I sought for neither advice or counsel,” returned Olive. “I simply wanted to discover, if possible, how to fit the theories of Perfection City, which I know pretty well by heart now, into the practice as applied to me.”
Madame looked at her with eyes of anger and even of hate, and Olive, conscious of having been almost more successful than she had imagined possible in argument with so distinguished a mind, returned the look with one suggestive of triumph. Alas for the perfect harmony of Perfection City!
“I am surprised, I will not say pained, because you would care little for that, but I am surprised, I repeat, at such words in the mouth of Ezra Weston’s wife. He must have been strangely mistaken in your character, or you cannot have revealed your true self to him, for I cannot imagine him binding himself for life to a mate who scorns and flouts in this manner what he holds so dear. You are mocking the principles to which he has devoted his life. You are too foolish to see what you are doing, but one day you will be punished, and then perhaps you will repent—when it will be too late.”
Madame turned and walked rapidly away, leaving Olive feeling very angry and very much frightened as well.
That evening Napoleon Pompey carried a noteand a small parcel to Madame, who guessed pretty well what it was. The note was brief, it contained but these words:
“I thought you sent the bracelet as a present, therefore I accepted it and was grateful: now I know you sent it as a reproof, therefore I return it.”