Miss Summerhayes

“ Miss Harwood sat knitting in her easy-chair, while Miss Amelia occupied herself in ticketing all that miscellaneous basket of articles destined for the bazaar of ladies’ work to be held in Summerhayes in February; but work advanced slowly under the influence of such an inducement to talk. The old ladies, as may be supposed, came to a sudden pause and looked confused and guilty when the door opened and the Miss Summerhayes were announced. Perhaps the new visitors might even have heard something of the conversation which was going on with so much animation. ”

“ But Augusta, Julia, and Adolphus! Can you wonder, Miss Summerhayes, that we are all sometimes on the eve of rebellion, and if mamma was not really so good might be tempted even to assault her, though she declares it was not her fault?”
“Ju,” said Mrs. Harwood, “get up and read by the lamp. The firelight, I am always telling you, will destroy your eyes.” ”

“ The two changed their rôles completely for the rest of the evening, during which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness, soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient in the certainty of youth.
“What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?—unless you happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm. ”

“ These words tingling in her ears gave Janet the strangest little shock, like the sudden touch of an electric battery, in the midst of the comfort and quiet. She could scarcely keep from jumping up, starting out of her seat. Her black sleeve, when Gussy took her long fingers from it, seemed to give out sparks. To strike a blow, to win a battle, never to allow herself to be beat. What curious words in this absolutely quiet and ordinary domestic calm?
Ju came in with a nod to Miss Summerhayes, and said nothing at all while she despatched her breakfast. ”

“ You have metamorphosed yourself. Do you dress for a new character every day? Does she make a practice of this sort of thing, Miss Summerhayes—one day, a girl in the pa; the next, a young lady of Timber Town?”
“Amiria is two people in one,” replied Rose, “and I have not found out which of them I like most, and I have known them both for ten years.”
“Most interesting,” said Captain Sartoris, shambling forward in his marvellous garb, and taking hold of the Maori girl’s hand. “The privilege of a man old enough to be your father, my dear. ”

“ Charley and Loo had ridden down with her till they came in sight of Summerhayes, and then had taken leave of their mother. Mary, with little Mary by her side in the pony-carriage, drove on to her separate fate alone. She was going to take possession of the old Manor-house, no longer the mistress of Fontanel but Tom Summerhayes’s wife, to receive him when he came home from his travels, and to make life bright, if he were capable of seeing it, to that imperfect and not very worthy man. The agitation in her face was only enough to heighten a little her sweet colour and brighten her tearful eyes. ”

“ You’re callous, I’m afraid, Mr. Scarlett.”
“Not at all: I’m merely flattered. It seems a pity I can’t stop in Timber Town, and see more of such girls; but I must be off to-morrow to get more gold. Gold is good, Miss Summerhayes, but girls are better.” ”

“ It is a sad thing to be expected to be grateful for a favor which does not appear to yourself in that light. Janet had always been called Janet by everybody all her life, so that she rather preferred at present to be Miss Summerhayes. ”

“ His one desire is to spread what he calls the ‘Light of Modern Research’; but it’s my belief that people don’t want his ‘Light,’ or anybody else’s. Every one thinks himself so clever, you know. And when you try and prove to them they are just ignorant and stupid, they don’t like it.”
“And what do you think of it all, Miss Summerhayes?”
“I am afraid I am one of the stupid, ignorant people! I just want to be like everybody else—no better, no worse. Only let me be where there is somebody—some life. This is my last appearance on the platform. Once in Sydney, there I stop. Dear old Sydney! ”

“ But all was quiet in the house below, the doors all shut, everybody occupied with their own business, singing going on in the drawing-room, talk in the servants’ apartments downstairs—nothing it would seem had been disturbed but Janet alone.
“It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back, please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the wing. ”

“ And Gussy will look so silly. Oh, why does a woman look so silly when there is nonsense like that going on?”
“It is generally the man who is supposed to look silly,” said Janet. Involuntarily she thought of poor Dr. Harding and his proposal; and the hard-hearted young woman laughed in spite of herself.{64}
“What are you laughing at? You are remembering something. Tell me, tell me, Miss Summerhayes! I suppose,” said Julia, with deep discrimination, “that the man looks silly when it is he who wants it most. Now, here it is Gussy who wants it most.” ”

“ Harwood’s brow had not appeared till Julia, with her dogged look, had stared into her mother’s face.
“I wish,” cried the old lady, “oh, I wish that Adolphus would come home!” and she wrung her white, plump hands with almost a tragic gesture, which was so strangely unlike her comfortable person, and all that Janet had hitherto known of her, that the little governess had hard ado not to laugh.
“Do you expect Mr. Harwood soon?” she asked.
“They are all very self-willed, Miss Summerhayes. You must have seen that, already. Gussy of course will not be guided by me. ”

“ Poor Harry was all very well, I daresay, but he was a great fool not to provide for his children. Your brother said so at the time; but I did think, for my part, that Mary Clifford had the sense to know when she was well off.”
“Oh, she shows that,” cried Lydia Summerhayes, with a little toss of her head; “widows are so designing; they know the ways of men, and how to manage them, very differently from any of us—if we could stoop to such a thing, which of course, we wouldn’t. Oh yes, Mary Clifford knows very well what she’s about. ”

“ Janet, Janet, come away!”
After a minute the door opened, and Janet came out. She was wiping away the tears from her eyelashes, but, notwithstanding these tears, she looked so resplendent that Julia was dazzled.
“What have you been doing to yourself? Crying generally makes one’s nose red, but you look as if you were all made of diamonds,” said the girl. “Come along, come along. I shall lose my dance, and it will be all because of you.”
Dolff was standing impatient at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh, here you are at last, Miss Summerhayes,” he cried. ”

“ A family ready made would just suit me.”
“Well, it ain’t much in my line to say what a fellow ought or oughtn’t to do,” said young Chesterfield. “I’m not a marrying man myself. I don’t pretend to understand that sort of thing, you know. But Summerhayes ain’t a spoon, as everybody will allow. He knows what he’s doing. Last time I was at Fontanel, I couldn’t make out for the life of me what Mrs Clifford wanted with that new set of stables. She said they were preparing against Charley’s growing up. I thought somehow Summerhayes must have a hand in it, and it’s plain enough now.” ”

“ Ellen groaned with pain.
"Why, yes! of course there is," said this man for emergencies; "Fisher takes out teeth, he told me so the other day."
Now I did not believe that Fisher knew any more about extracting teeth than I did myself, but I breathed a prayer to the Recording Angel, and said naught.
"I'll go get Fisher," said Jack.
Now Fisher was the steamboat agent. He stood six feet in his stockings, had a powerful physique and a determined eye. Men in those countries had to be determined; for if they once lost their nerve, Heaven save them. Fisher had handsome black eyes. ”

“ Of the two, it must be allowed that the retainers of the family preferred the cordial, kind, inconsistent sway of poor Mary to the firm and steady government of her new husband; and then everybody had acknowledged her right to rule, which came by nature, while every soul secretly rebelled against his, which was a kind of contradiction to nature. Mr Summerhayes’s path was not strewn with roses when he came back to Fontanel ”

“ It shall not be!” he declared to himself. “While I live I will struggle—I will fight! She is rightfully mine. I saw her first, loved her first, and she is foolish and dazzled by his winnings. But out of defeat I will learn success, fairly if possible; then, if not, in such a way as may be necessary,” he added darkly.
And he turned on his heel and walked moodily away.
p. 180CHAPTER XXI
THE ABDUCTION
A day later. It was ten o’clock at night. Bertha was busy serving the crowd of customers with drinks, when a lad came into the bar and asked for Miss Summerhayes. Bertha spoke to him. ”

“ I did not see any white people at all except Fisher, Abe Frank (the mail contractor) , and one or two of the younger merchants. If I wanted anything, I went to Fisher. He always could solve the difficulty. He procured for me an excellent middle-aged laundress, who came and brought the linen herself, and, bowing to the floor, said always, "Buenos dias, Senorita!" ”

“ I am told that Mary did all the furnishing herself.”
“Oh yes, she is very kind,” said Miss Laura; “she has made everything very nice; you must come and see it. Indeed, if it were not for thinking what a change it is for dear Tom,” cried the sisters both together, with an evident impression that their brother had been defrauded of something he had a right to, “we should all be very happy; for dear Mary,” said Miss Lydia, with a little sob, “is very kind—and look, here she comes.”
She came driving the pony-carriage, as she had appeared so often at Summerhayes. Poor Mary! ”

“ He always had a great deal of sense, had Tom Summerhayes.”
“Oh, I declare, to see how far the Miss Harwoods are on with their things!” cried Miss Louisa Summerhayes, almost before she had entered the room; “but you are always in such good time, Miss Amelia. As for us, we have such a great deal to think about just now, it drives the bazaar out of our heads; almost as bad as if we had a family ourselves,” said Miss Lydia, with a breathless outburst. “I daresay you have heard the news—you who always hear everything from Fontanel.”
“About Charley’s birthday?” said Miss Amelia. ”

“ Thomas' box and saw our frontier life brought before us with startling reality.
And so one season followed another. Each bringing its pleasures, and then came another lovely wedding, for my brother Harry gave up his bachelor estate and married one of the nicest and handsomest girls in Westchester County, and their home in New Rochelle was most attractive. My son was at the Stevens Institute and both he and Katharine were able to spend their vacations at David's Island, and altogether, our life there was near to perfection. ”

“ He may think he’s got off very easily, in my opinion—cure him of meddling with other people’s children as long as he lives. What the deuce did he want at Fontanel? a great deal better to make himself snug, as I suppose he means to do now, at Summerhayes.”
“Mary will drive down looking just as bright as ever,” said Miss Amelia Harwood. “I always said she deserved to be happy, poor soul—she always makes the best of everything. Her heart was breaking that night of Charley’s birthday. I heard for a certain fact that she fainted just before the ball—a thing I never heard of Mary doing before. ”

“ Like an ill-tempered father keeping up his power by a vague threat of altering his will, Mr Summerhayes waved his threatening flag over the heads of the family at Fontanel by this faint cloud of suspicion thrown upon the invincible certainty of the deed. He meant nothing more; but evil thoughts are suggestive, and have a wonderful power of cumulation. Perhaps he did mean something more before old Gateshead, whom, on other occasions, he did not hesitate to call an old fogy, was disembarked from his old-fashioned chaise at the door, two days before Charley’s birthday. ”

“ John W. Summerhayes, North Shore Hill, Nantucket, Mass.
My Dear Mrs. Summerhayes:
Were I to say that I enjoyed "Vanished Arizona, "I should very inadequately express my feelings about it, because there is so much to arouse emotions deeper than what we call "enjoyment;" it stirs the sympathies and excites our admiration for your courage and your fortitude. In a word, the story, honest and unaffected, yet vivid, has in it that touch of nature which makes kin of us all.
How actual knowledge and experience broadens our minds! ”

“ I hear, in fancy, the wheels of the ambulance crunching the small broken stones of the malapais, or grating swiftly over the gravel of the smooth white roads of the river-bottoms. I hear the rattle of the ivory rings on the harness of the six-mule team; I see the soldiers marching on ahead; I see my white tent, so inviting after a long day's journey.
But how vain these fancies! Railroad and automobile have annihilated distance, the army life of those years is past and gone, and Arizona, as we knew it, has vanished from the face of the earth. ”