A Sappho of Green Springs | Page 4

questioner's bucolic appearance by no means precluded an assault. Indeed, it had been a legend of the office that a predecessor had suffered vicariously from a geological hammer covertly introduced into a scientific controversy by an irate professor.
"As we make ourselves responsible for the conduct of the magazine," continued the young editor, with mature severity, "we do not give up the names of our contributors. If you do not agree with their opinions"--
"But I DO," said the stranger, with his former composure, "and I reckon that's why I want to know who wrote those verses called 'Underbrush,' signed 'White Violet,' in your last number. They're pow'ful pretty."
The editor flushed slightly, and glanced instinctively around for any unexpected witness of his ludicrous mistake. The fear of ridicule was uppermost in his mind, and he was more relieved at his mistake not being overheard than at its groundlessness.
"The verses ARE pretty," he said, recovering himself, with a critical air, "and I am glad you like them. But even then, you know, I could not give you the lady's name without her permission. I will write to her and ask it, if you like."
The actual fact was that the verses had been sent to him anonymously from a remote village in the Coast Range,--the address being the post-office and the signature initials.
The stranger looked disturbed. "Then she ain't about here anywhere?" he said, with a vague gesture. "She don't belong to the office?"
The young editor beamed with tolerant superiority: "No, I am sorry to say."
"I should like to have got to see her and kinder asked her a few questions," continued the stranger, with the same reflective seriousness. "You see, it wasn't just the rhymin' o' them verses,-- and they kinder sing themselves to ye, don't they?--it wasn't the chyce o' words,--and I reckon they allus hit the idee in the centre shot every time,--it wasn't the idees and moral she sort o' drew out o' what she was tellin',--but it was the straight thing itself,--the truth!"
"The truth?" repeated the editor.
"Yes, sir. I've bin there. I've seen all that she's seen in the brush--the little flicks and checkers o' light and shadder down in the brown dust that you wonder how it ever got through the dark of the woods, and that allus seems to slip away like a snake or a lizard if you grope. I've heard all that she's heard there--the creepin', the sighin', and the whisperin' through the bracken and the ground-vines of all that lives there."
"You seem to be a poet yourself," said the editor, with a patronizing smile.
"I'm a lumberman, up in Mendocino," returned the stranger, with sublime naivete. "Got a mill there. You see, sightin' standin' timber and selectin' from the gen'ral show of the trees in the ground and the lay of roots hez sorter made me take notice." He paused. "Then," he added, somewhat despondingly, "you don't know who she is?"
"No," said the editor, reflectively; "not even if it is really a WOMAN who writes."
"Eh?"
"Well, you see, 'White Violet' may as well be the nom de plume of a man as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification. The handwriting, I remember, WAS more boyish than feminine."
"No," returned the stranger doggedly, "it wasn't no MAN. There's ideas and words there that only come from a woman: baby-talk to the birds, you know, and a kind of fearsome keer of bugs and creepin' things that don't come to a man who wears boots and trousers. Well," he added, with a return to his previous air of resigned disappointment, "I suppose you don't even know what she's like?"
"No," responded the editor, cheerfully. Then, following an idea suggested by the odd mingling of sentiment and shrewd perception in the man before him, he added: "Probably not at all like anything you imagine. She may be a mother with three or four children; or an old maid who keeps a boarding-house; or a wrinkled school- mistress; or a chit of a school-girl. I've had some fair verses from a red-haired girl of fourteen at the Seminary," he concluded with professional coolness.
The stranger regarded him with the naive wonder of an inexperienced man. Having paid this tribute to his superior knowledge, he regained his previous air of grave perception. "I reckon she ain't none of them. But I'm keepin' you from your work. Good-by. My name's Bowers--Jim Bowers, of Mendocino. If you're up my way, give me a call. And if you do write to this yer 'White Violet,' and she's willin', send me her address."
He shook the editor's hand warmly--even in its literal significance of imparting a good deal of his own earnest caloric to the editor's fingers--and left the room. His footfall echoed along the passage and died out, and with it, I fear,