A Mountain Woman | Page 4

he brings her here."
Jessica wrote, as she said she would; but, for all that, a fortnight later she was walking down the wharf with the "mountain woman," and I was sauntering beside Leroy. At dinner Jessica gave me no chance to talk with our friend's wife, and I only caught the quiet contralto tones of her voice now and then contrasting with Jessica's vivacious soprano. A drizzling rain came up from the east with nightfall. Little groups of shivering men and women sat about in the parlors at the card-tables, and one blond woman sang love songs. The Brainards were tired with their journey, and left us early. When they were gone, Jessica burst into eulogy.
"That is the first woman," she declared, "I ever met who would make a fit heroine for a book."
"Then you will not feel under obligations to educate her, as you insinuated the other day?"
"Educate her! I only hope she will help me to unlearn some of the things I know. I never saw such simplicity. It is antique!"
"You're sure it's not mere vacuity?" "Victor! How can you? But you haven't talked with her. You must to-morrow. Good-night." She gathered up her trail- ing skirts and started down the corridor. Suddenly she turned back. "For Heaven's sake!" she whispered, in an awed tone, "I never even noticed what she had on!"
The next morning early we made up a riding party, and I rode with Mrs. Brainard. She was as tall as I, and sat in her saddle as if quite unconscious of her animal. The road stretched hard and inviting under our horses' feet. The wind smelled salt. The sky was ragged with gray masses of cloud scudding across the blue. I was beginning to glow with exhilaration, when suddenly my companion drew in her horse.
"If you do not mind, we will go back," she said.
Her tone was dejected. I thought she was tired.
"Oh, no!" she protested, when I apolo- gized for my thoughtlessness in bringing her so far. "I'm not tired. I can ride all day. Where I come from, we have to ride if we want to go anywhere; but here there seems to be no particular place to -- to reach."
"Are you so utilitarian?" I asked, laugh- ingly. "Must you always have some reason for everything you do? I do so many things just for the mere pleasure of doing them, I'm afraid you will have a very poor opinion of me."
"That is not what I mean," she said, flushing, and turning her large gray eyes on me. "You must not think I have a reason for everything I do." She was very earnest, and it was evident that she was unacquainted with the art of making conversation. "But what I mean," she went on, "is that there is no place -- no end -- to reach." She looked back over her shoulder toward the west, where the trees marked the sky line, and an expression of loss and dissatisfaction came over her face. "You see," she said, apolo- getically, "I'm used to different things -- to the mountains. I have never been where I could not see them before in my life."
"Ah, I see! I suppose it is odd to look up and find them not there."
"It's like being lost, this not having any- thing around you. At least, I mean," she continued slowly, as if her thought could not easily put itself in words, -- "I mean it seems as if a part of the world had been taken down. It makes you feel lonesome, as if you were living after the world had begun to die."
"You'll get used to it in a few days. It seems very beautiful to me here. And then you will have so much life to divert you."
"Life? But there is always that every- where."
"I mean men and women."
"Oh! Still, I am not used to them. I think I might be not -- not very happy with them. They might think me queer. I think I would like to show your sister the mountains."
"She has seen them often."
"Oh, she told me. But I don't mean those pretty green hills such as we saw com- ing here. They are not like my mountains. I like mountains that go beyond the clouds, with terrible shadows in the hollows, and belts of snow lying in the gorges where the sun cannot reach, and the snow is blue in the sunshine, or shining till you think it is silver, and the mist so wonderful all about it, changing each moment and drifting up and down, that you cannot tell what name to give the colors. These mountains of yours here in the East are so quiet; mine are shouting all the time, with the pines and the rivers. The echoes