A Mountain Woman | Page 7

me as the cool air of her
moun- tains might if it blew to me on some bright dawn, when I had
come, fevered and sick of soul, from the city.
When we were alone, Jessica said to me: "That man has too much
vanity, and he thinks it is sensitiveness. He is going to imagine that his
wife makes him suffer. There's no one so brutally selfish as your
sensitive man. He wants every one to live according to his ideas, or he
immediately begins suffering. That friend of yours hasn't the courage of

his convictions. He is going to be ashamed of the very qualities that
made him love his wife."
There was a hop that night at the hotel, quite an unusual affair as to
elegance, given in honor of a woman from New York, who wrote a
novel a month.
Mrs. Brainard looked so happy that night when she came in the parlor,
after the music had begun, that I felt a moisture gather in my eyes just
because of the beauty of her joy, and the forced vivacity of the women
about me seemed suddenly coarse and insincere. Some wonderful red
stones, brilliant as rubies, glittered in among the diaphanous black
driftings of her dress. She asked me if the stones were not very pretty,
and said she gathered them in one of her mountain river-beds.
"But the gown?" I said. "Surely, you do not gather gowns like that in
river-beds, or pick them off mountain-pines?"
"But you can get them in Denver. Father always sent to Denver for my
finery. He was very particular about how I looked. You see, I was all he
had --" She broke off, her voice faltering.
"Come over by the window," I said, to change her thought. "I have
something to repeat to you. It is a song of Sydney Lanier's. I think he
was the greatest poet that ever lived in America, though not many agree
with me. But he is my dear friend anyway, though he is dead, and I
never saw him; and I want you to hear some of his words."
I led her across to an open window. The dancers were whirling by us.
The waltz was one of those melancholy ones which speak the spirit of
the dance more elo- quently than any merry melody can. The sound of
the sea booming beyond in the darkness came to us, and long paths of
light, now red, now green, stretched toward the distant light-house.
These were the lines I repeated: --
"What heartache -- ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill The
drear sand levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me
all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl

it o'er and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name;
Always the same -- the same."
But I got no further. I felt myself moved with a sort of passion which
did not seem to come from within, but to be communicated to me from
her. A certain unfamiliar hap- piness pricked through with pain thrilled
me, and I heard her whispering, --
"Do not go on, do not go on! I cannot stand it to-night!"
"Hush," I whispered back; "come out for a moment!" We stole into the
dusk without, and stood there trembling. I swayed with her emotion.
There was a long silence. Then she said: "Father may be walking alone
now by the black cataract. That is where he goes when he is sad. I can
see how lonely he looks among those little twisted pines that grow from
the rock. And he will be remembering all the evenings we walked there
together, and all the things we said." I did not answer. Her eyes were
still on the sea.
"What was the name of the man who wrote that verse you just said to
me?"
I told her.
"And he is dead? Did they bury him in the mountains? No? I wish I
could have put him where he could have heard those four voices calling
down the canyon."
"Come back in the house," I said; "you must come, indeed," I said, as
she shrank from re-entering.
Jessica was dancing like a fairy with Le- roy. They both saw us and
smiled as we came in, and a moment later they joined us. I made my
excuses and left my friends to Jessica's care. She was a sort of social
tyrant wherever she was, and I knew one word from her would insure
the popularity of our friends -- not that they needed the intervention of
any one. Leroy had been a sort of drawing-room pet since before he
stopped wearing knickerbockers.

"He is at his best in