The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“Goodness gracious! I ain’t makin’ any chests at yu’!” Laughter overcame
him for a moment, and Miss Wood liked his laugh very much. “Please come
a-ridin’,” he urged. “It’s the prettiest kind of a day.”
She looked at him frankly, and there was a pause. “I will take back two
things that I said to you,” she then answered him. “I believe that I do
like you. And I know that if I went riding with you, I should not
have an immature protector.” And then, with a final gesture of
acknowledgment, she held out her hand to him. “And I have always
wanted,” she said, “to thank you for what you did at the river.”
He took her hand, and his heart bounded. “You’re a gentleman!” he
exclaimed.
It was now her turn to be overcome with merriment. “I’ve always wanted
to be a man,” she said.
“I am mighty glad you ain’t,” said he, looking at her.
But Molly had already received enough broadsides for one day. She could
allow no more of them, and she took herself capably in hand. “Where did
you learn to make such pretty speeches?” she asked. “Well, never mind
that. One sees that you have had plenty of practice for one so young.”
“I am twenty-seven,” blurted the Virginian, and knew instantly that he
had spoken like a fool.
“Who would have dreamed it!” said Molly, with well-measured mockery. She
knew that she had scored at last, and that this day was hers. “Don’t
be too sure you are glad I’m not a man,” she now told him. There was
something like a challenge in her voice.
“I risk it,” he remarked.
“For I am almost twenty-three myself,” she concluded. And she gave him a
look on her own account.
“And you’ll not come a-ridin’?” he persisted.
“No,” she answered him; “no.” And he knew that he could not make her.
“Then I will tell yu’ good-by,” said he. “But I am comin’ again. And
next time I’ll have along a gentle hawss for yu’.”
“Next time! Next time! Well, perhaps I will go with you. Do you live
far?”
“I live on Judge Henry’s ranch, over yondeh.” He pointed across the
mountains. “It’s on Sunk Creek. A pretty rough trail; but I can come
hyeh to see you in a day, I reckon. Well, I hope you’ll cert’nly enjoy
good health, ma’am.”
“Oh, there’s one thing!” said Molly Wood, calling after him rather
quickly. “I--I’m not at all afraid of horses. You needn’t bring such
a gentle one. I--was very tired that day, and--and I don’t scream as a
rule.”
He turned and looked at her so that she could not meet his glance.
“Bless your heart!” said he. “Will yu’ give me one o’ those flowers?”
“Oh, certainly! I’m always so glad when people like them.”
“They’re pretty near the color of your eyes.”
“Never mind my eyes.”
“Can’t help it, ma’am. Not since South Fork.”
He put the flower in the leather band of his hat, and rode away on his
Monte horse. Miss Wood lingered a moment, then made some steps toward
her gate, from which he could still be seen; and then, with something
like a toss of the head, she went in and shut her door.
Later in the day the Virginian met Mr. McLean, who looked at his hat and
innocently quoted, “‘My Looloo picked a daisy.’”
“Don’t yu’, Lin,” said the Southerner.
“Then I won’t,” said Lin.
Thus, for this occasion, did the Virginian part from his lady--and
nothing said one way or another about the handkerchief that had
disappeared during the South Fork incident.
As we fall asleep at night, our thoughts will often ramble back and
forth between the two worlds.
“What color were his eyes?” wondered Molly on her pillow. “His mustache
is not bristly like so many of them. Sam never gave me such a look
at Hoosic Junction. No.... You can’t come with me.... Get off your
horse.... The passengers are all staring....”
And while Molly was thus dreaming that the Virginian had ridden his
horse into the railroad car, and sat down beside her, the fire in the
great stone chimney of her cabin flickered quietly, its gleams now and
again touching the miniature of Grandmother Stark upon the wall.
Camped on the Sunk Creek trail, the Virginian was telling himself in
his blankets: “I ain’t too old for education. Maybe she will lend me
books. And I’ll watch her ways and learn ... stand still, Monte. I can
learn a lot more than the kids on that. There’s Monte ... you
pie-biter, stop.... He has ate up your book, ma’am, but I’ll get
yu’....”
And then the Virginian was fast asleep.
XII. QUALITY AND EQUALITY
To the circle at Bennington, a letter from Bear Creek was always a
welcome summons to gather and hear of doings very strange to Vermont.
And when the tale of the changed babies arrived duly by the post, it
created a more than usual sensation, and was read to a large number of
pleased and scandalized neighbors. “I hate her to be where such things
can happen,” said Mrs. Wood.
“I wish I could have been there,” said her son-in-law, Andrew Bell.
“She does not mention who played the trick,” said Mrs. Andrew Bell.
“We shouldn’t be any wiser if she did,” said Mrs. Wood.
“I’d like to meet the perpetrator,” said Andrew.
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Wood. “They’re all horrible.”
And she wrote at once, begging her daughter to take good care of
herself, and to see as much of Mrs. Balaam as possible. “And of any
other ladies that are near you. For you seem to me to be in a community
of roughs. I wish you would give it all up. Did you expect me to laugh
about the babies?”
Mrs. Flynt, when this story was repeated to her (she had not been
invited in to hear the letter), remarked that she had always felt that
Molly Wood must be a little vulgar, ever since she began to go about
giving music lessons like any ordinary German.
But Mrs. Wood was considerably relieved when the next letter arrived. It
contained nothing horrible about barbecues or babies. It mentioned the
great beauty of the weather, and how well and strong the fine air was
making the writer feel. And it asked that books might be sent, many
books of all sorts, novels, poetry, all the good old books and any good
new ones that could be spared. Cheap editions, of course.
“Indeed she shall have them!” said Mrs. Wood. “How her mind must be
starving in that dreadful place!” The letter was not a long one, and,
besides the books, spoke of little else except the fine weather and
the chances for outdoor exercise that this gave. “You have no idea,”
it said, “how delightful it is to ride, especially on a spirited horse,
which I can do now quite well.”
“How nice that is!” said Mrs. Wood, putting down the letter. “I hope the
horse is not too spirited.”
“Who does she go riding with?” asked Mrs. Bell.
“She doesn’t say, Sarah. Why?”
“Nothing. She has a queer way of not mentioning things, now and then.”
“Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Wood, reproachfully. “Oh, well, mother, you
know just as well as I do that she can be very independent and
unconventional.”
“Yes; but not in that way. She wouldn’t ride with poor Sam Bannett, and
after all he is a suitable person.”
Nevertheless, in her next letter, Mrs. Wood cautioned her daughter about
trusting herself with any one of whom Mrs. Balaam did not thoroughly
approve. The good lady could never grasp that Mrs. Balaam lived a long
day’s journey from Bear Creek, and that Molly saw her about once every
three months. “We have sent your books,” the mother wrote; “everybody
has contributed from their store,--Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning,
Longfellow; and a number of novels by Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot,
Hawthorne, and lesser writers; some volumes of Emerson; and Jane Austen
complete, because you admire her so particularly.”
This consignment of literature reached Bear Creek about a week before
Christmas time.
By New Year’s Day, the Virginian had begun his education.
“Well, I have managed to get through ’em,” he said, as he entered
Molly’s cabin in February. And he laid two volumes upon her table.
“And what do you think of them?” she inquired.
“I think that I’ve cert’nly earned a good long ride to-day.”
“Georgie Taylor has sprained his ankle.”
“No, I don’t mean that kind of a ride. I’ve earned a ride with just us
two alone. I’ve read every word of both of ’em, yu’ know.”
“I’ll think about it. Did you like them?”
“No. Not much. If I’d knowed that one was a detective story, I’d have
got yu’ to try something else on me. Can you guess the murderer, or is
the author too smart for yu’? That’s all they amount to. Well, he was
too smart for me this time, but that didn’t distress me any. That other
book talks too much.”
Molly was scandalized, and she told him it was a great work.
“Oh, yes, yes. A fine book. But it will keep up its talkin’. Don’t let
you alone.”
“Didn’t you feel sorry for poor Maggie Tulliver?”
“Hmp. Yes. Sorry for her, and for Tawmmy, too. But the man did right to
drownd ’em both.”
“It wasn’t a man. A woman wrote that.”
“A woman did! Well, then, o’ course she talks too much.”
“I’ll not go riding with you!” shrieked Molly.
But she did. And he returned to Sunk Creek, not with a detective story,
but this time with a Russian novel.
It was almost April when he brought it back to her--and a heavy sleet
storm lost them their ride. So he spent his time indoors with her, not
speaking a syllable of love. When he came to take his departure, he
asked her for some other book by this same Russian. But she had no more.
“I wish you had,” he said. “I’ve never saw a book could tell the truth
like that one does.”
“Why, what do you like about it?” she exclaimed. To her it had been
distasteful.
“Everything,” he answered. “That young come-outer, and his fam’ly that
can’t understand him--for he is broad gauge, yu’ see, and they are
narro’ gauge.” The Virginian looked at Molly a moment almost shyly. “Do
you know,” he said, and a blush spread over his face, “I pretty near
cried when that young come-outer was dyin’, and said about himself,
‘I was a giant.’ Life made him broad gauge, yu’ see, and then took his
chance away.”
Molly liked the Virginian for his blush. It made him very handsome. But
she thought that it came from his confession about “pretty near crying.”
The deeper cause she failed to divine,--that he, like the dying hero in
the novel, felt himself to be a giant whom life had made “broad gauge,”
and denied opportunity. Fecund nature begets and squanders thousands of
these rich seeds in the wilderness of life.
He took away with him a volume of Shakespeare. “I’ve saw good plays of
his,” he remarked.
Kind Mrs. Taylor in her cabin next door watched him ride off in the
sleet, bound for the lonely mountain trail.
“If that girl don’t get ready to take him pretty soon,” she observed to
her husband, “I’ll give her a piece of my mind.”
Taylor was astonished. “Is he thinking of her?” he inquired.
“Lord, Mr. Taylor, and why shouldn’t he?”
Mr. Taylor scratched his head and returned to his newspaper.
It was warm--warm and beautiful upon Bear Creek. Snow shone upon
the peaks of the Bow Leg range; lower on their slopes the pines were
stirring with a gentle song; and flowers bloomed across the wide plains
at their feet.
Molly and her Virginian sat at a certain spring where he had often
ridden with her. On this day he was bidding her farewell before
undertaking the most important trust which Judge Henry had as yet given
him. For this journey she had provided him with Sir Walter Scott’s
Kenilworth. Shakespeare he had returned to her. He had bought
Shakespeare for himself. “As soon as I got used to readin’ it,” he had
told her, “I knowed for certain that I liked readin’ for enjoyment.”
But it was not of books that he had spoken much to-day. He had not
spoken at all. He had bade her listen to the meadow-lark, when its song
fell upon the silence like beaded drops of music. He had showed her