Geraldine Bonner

“ After a pretence of breakfasting, she went out on the back balcony, where her hammock hung and her books and work-basket stood on a table. This was a little bit like her dream. There was a clump of orange and lemon trees below the railings round which climbing roses trailed. Below, in the parched soil, Jim had made a rose garden for her, at what care and expense she had never guessed. Four times a week one of the men dug a little trench round each tree, and at sundown the water-wheel was set in motion and streams of water deflected to it from the trenches. ”

“ But she hated the sunshine the most. In the spring, when Jim had come on to New York to marry her, she had thought his description of California and the ranch too lovely, and the loveliest thing in it the days all brightness. She had pictured it to herself as something radiantly tropical, in which hammocks and palm-leaf fans played a part. And she saw herself thus environed sweeping gracefully about in thin white dresses against a background of roses. It was true that Jim had said it would be hot—very hot in summer.
Hot! ”

“ The violent odors of coarse cooking and the shouts and laughter of the feeding men rose from the kitchen. Had her husband not been there she would have left the room. A wave of recollection of the well-ordered elegance of her own home rose within her with an almost throttling sense of homesickness. She moved uneasily in her chair and tried to divert her mind by looking at the prints on the wall, and thinking of them. Suddenly Jim said:
“I’m going to drive over to Ortega’s ranch this afternoon if you’d like to go. He’s to be sold up on a mortgage, and it’s a good piece of land. ”

“ They were prosperous ranchers of German extraction. The wife, a good-looking young woman, with a growing family and an eye on a future translation to the urban delights of San Francisco society, had been pronounced by Helen as quite impossible. Jim had taken her there one afternoon and left her to talk to Mrs. Bechtel while Mr. Bechtel had offered him true ranch hospitality by segregating him from his womenkind and then proffering him whiskey. Helen had returned silent and depressed from that visit. She would rather be lonely for the rest of her life than foregather with Mrs. Bechtel. ”

“ In the motionless, glaring panorama the only human creatures to be seen were the Chinamen squatting among the vines. The man and woman in the buggy seemed to shrink to the vanishing point of insignificance in the vastness of this dormant nature, resting after its fierce energies of reproduction. ”

“ Whose son?”
“The sun that’s always shining—I hate it so.”
“It is hot,” he said, contritely, and tried to open the parasol and hold it over her, but she peevishly pushed it away.
“But—but we can’t help the sun,” he stammered; “it always shines this way in summer. I told you it did.”
“Oh, it’s not that only—I’d—I’d—been hoping to go to New York so. Oh, you don’t know how I’d been hoping to go! I hate this place. And now—and now——”
Her voice rose in a wail of misery that caused Maggie to turn her head with matronly deliberation and survey the occupants of the buggy. ”

“ Helen’s hidden hatred of it all suddenly rose within her in a passion of revolt. Without preface she broke the silence in a high, protesting key:
“Why do you want to buy Ortega’s place? Haven’t you got enough? All your land isn’t cultivated yet.”
“Yes, but this is a chance that doesn’t often come. Ortega’s land is the best in this part of the valley. He’s a lazy greaser and hasn’t done anything with it He never had much energy, and since his wife’s death he’s just let everything slide. ”

“ But I can take Ortega on to our place and give him the cottage the Swede’s wife had. I’ve got to get him some kind of a job. He’ll pull up again if he gets a start.”
Seeing that she seemed more herself, he took up the reins and clucked to Maggie, who went jogging off again. Helen sat back in the buggy, her arm through his, her little fingers mingled with his as they held the reins. Now and then they spoke of the coming trip, but for the most part she was silent. She did not feel that satisfaction a gratified desire should give. Jim could not go with her. ”

“ You wouldn’t have it get mad and fade, would you; just because it wasn’t in a greenhouse?”
“Well, it might. People do, sometimes.”
“Do they? Well, then,those people haven’t got the grit of one poor little wild flower.” ”