FullReads

A great hawk flapped across the canyon below the ranch-house, bats began to wheel in the clear dusk, owls called in the woods. Just before Manzanita appeared in the kitchen doorway to ring a clamorous bell for some sixty ear-splitting seconds, her father, an immense old man on a restless claybank mare, rode into the yard, and the four brothers, Jose, Marty, Allen, and the little crippled youngest, eight-year-old Rafael, appeared mysteriously from the shadows, and announced that they were ready for dinner. Martin Boone, Senior, gave Mrs. Phelps a vigorous welcome.

“Well, sir! I never thought I’d be glad to see the mother of the fellow who carried off my girl,” said Martin Boone, wringing Mrs. Phelps’s aching fingers, “but you and I married in our day, ma’am, and it’s the youngsters’ turn. But he’ll have to be a pretty fine fellow to satisfy Manzanita!” And before the lady could even begin the spirited retort that rose to her lips, he had led the way to the long, overloaded dinner-table.

“I am too terribly heartsick to go into details,” wrote the poor little lady, when Manzanita had left her for the night in her bare, big bedroom and she had opened her writing-case upon a pine table over which hung, incongruously enough, a large electric light. “Austin is apparently blind to everything but her beauty, which is really noticeable, not that it matters. What is mere beauty beside such refinement as Sally’s, for instance, how far will it go with OUR FRIENDS when they discover that Austin’s wife is an untrained, common little country girl? Even when I tell you that she uses such words as ‘swell,’ and ‘perfect lady,’ and that she asked me who Phillips Brooks was, and had never heard of William Morris or Maeterlinck you can really form no idea of her ignorance! And the dinner,–one shudders at the thought of beginning to teach her of correct service; hors d’oeuvres, finger-bowls, butter-spreaders, soup-spoons and salad-forks will all be mysteries to her! And her clothes! A rowdyish-looking little tight-fitting cotton a servant would not wear, and openwork hose, and silver bangles! It is terrible, TERRIBLE. I don’t know what we can do. She is very clever. I think she suspects already that I do not approve, although she began at once to call me ‘Mother Phelps’–with a familiarity that is quite typical of her. My one hope is to persuade Austin to come home with me for a visit, and to keep him there until his wretched infatuation has died a natural death. What possible charm this part of the world can have for him is a mystery to me. To compare this barn of a house to your lovely home is enough to make me long to be there with all my heart. Instead of my beautiful rooms, and Mary’s constant attendance, imagine your mother writing in a room whose windows have no shades, so that one has the uncomfortable sensation that any one outside may be looking in. Of course the valley descends very steeply from the ranch-house, and there are thousands of acres of silent woods and hills, but I don’t like it, nevertheless, and shall undress in the dark. …I shall certainly speak seriously to Austin as soon as possible.”

But the right moment for approaching Austin on the subject of his return to Boston did not immediately present itself, and for several days Manzanita, delighted at having a woman guest, took Mrs. Phelps with her all over the countryside.

“I like lady friends,” said Manzanita once, a little shyly. “You see it’s ‘most always men who visit the rancho, and they’re no fun!”

She used to come, uninvited but serene, into her prospective mother-in-law’s room at night, and artlessly confide in her, while she braided the masses of her glorious hair. She showed Mrs. Phelps the “swell” pillow she was embroidering to represent an Indian’s head, and which she intended to finish with real beads and real feathers. She was as eagerly curious as a child about the older woman’s dainty toilet accessories, experimenting with manicure sets and creams and powders with artless pleasure. “I’m going to have that and do it that way!” she would announce, when impressed by some particular little nice touch about Cornelia’s letters, or some allusion that gave her a new idea.