FullReads

“You can’t get across there, miss.”

She turned. It was the young inventor from the wheat ranch, on horseback and with a clean face. He had just ridden out of the grain on the same side of the chasm as herself.

“But you seem to have got over,” she said bluntly.

“Yes, but it was further up the field. I reckoned that the split might be deeper but not so broad in the rock outcrop over there than in the adobe here. I found it so and jumped it.”

He looked as if he might–alert, intelligent, and self-contained. He lingered a moment, and then continued:–

“I’m afraid you must have been badly shaken and a little frightened up there before the chimneys came down?”

“No,” she was glad to say briefly, and she believed truthfully, “I wasn’t frightened. I didn’t even know it was an earthquake.”

“Ah!” he reflected, “that was because you were a stranger. It’s odd–they’re all like that. I suppose it’s because nobody really expects or believes in the unlooked-for thing, and yet that’s the thing that always happens. And then, of course, that other affair, which really is serious, startled you the more.”

She felt herself ridiculously and angrily blushing. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said icily. “What other affair?”

“Why, the well.”

“The well?” she repeated vacantly.

“Yes; the artesian well has stopped. Didn’t the major tell you?”

“No,” said the girl. “He was away; I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Well, the flow of water has ceased completely. That’s what I’m here for. The major sent for me, and I’ve been to examine it.”

“And is that stoppage so very important?” she said dubiously.

It was his turn to look at her wonderingly.

“If it’s LOST entirely, it means ruin for the ranch,” he said sharply. He wheeled his horse, nodded gravely, and trotted off.

Major Randolph’s figure of the “life-blood of the ranch” flashed across her suddenly. She knew nothing of irrigation or the costly appliances by which the Californian agriculturist opposed the long summer droughts. She only vaguely guessed that the dreadful earthquake had struck at the prosperity of those people whom only a few hours ago she had been proud to call her friends. The underlying goodness of her nature was touched. Should she let a momentary fault–if it were not really, after all, only a misunderstanding–rise between her and them at such a moment? She turned and hurried quickly towards the house.

Hastening onward, she found time, however, to wonder also why these common men–she now included even the young inventor in that category–were all so rude and uncivil to HER! She had never before been treated in this way; she had always been rather embarrassed by the admiring attentions of young men (clerks and collegians) in her Atlantic home, and, of professional men (merchants and stockbrokers) in San Francisco. It was true that they were not as continually devoted to her and to the nice art and etiquette of pleasing as Emile,–they had other things to think about, being in business and not being GENTLEMEN,–but then they were greatly superior to these clowns, who took no notice of her, and rode off without lingering or formal leave-taking when their selfish affairs were concluded. It must be the contact of the vulgar earth–this wretched, cracking, material, and yet ungovernable and lawless earth–that so depraved them. She felt she would like to say this to some one–not her father, for he wouldn’t listen to her, nor to the major, who would laughingly argue with her, but to Mrs. Randolph, who would understand her, and perhaps say it some day in her own sharp, sneering way to these very clowns. With those gentle sentiments irradiating her blue eyes, and putting a pink flush upon her fair cheeks, Rose reached the garden with the intention of rushing sympathetically into Mrs. Randolph’s arms. But it suddenly occurred to her that she would be obliged to state how she became aware of this misfortune, and with it came an instinctive aversion to speak of her meeting with the inventor. She would wait until Mrs. Randolph told her. But although that lady was engaged in a low-voiced discussion in French with Emile and Adele, which instantly ceased at her approach, there was no allusion made to the new calamity. “You need not telegraph to your father,” she said as Rose approached, “he has already telegraphed to you for news; as you were out, and the messenger was waiting an answer, we opened the dispatch, and sent one, telling him that you were all right, and that he need not hurry here on your account. So you are satisfied, I hope.” A few hours ago this would have been true, and Rose would have probably seen in the action of her hostess only a flattering motherly supervision; there was, in fact, still a lingering trace of trust in her mind yet she was conscious that she would have preferred to answer the dispatch herself, and to have let her father come. To a girl brought up with a belief in the right of individual independence of thought and action, there was something in Mrs. Randolph’s practical ignoring of that right which startled her in spite of her new conservatism, while, as the daughter of a business man, her instincts revolted against Mrs. Randolph’s unbusiness-like action with the telegram, however vulgar and unrefined she may have begun to consider a life of business. The result was a certain constraint and embarrassment in her manner, which, however, had the laudable effect of limiting Emile’s attention to significant glances, and was no doubt variously interpreted by the others. But she satisfied her conscience by determining to make a confidence of her sympathy to the major on the first opportunity.