A Literary Courtship/Chapter 16

by Anna Fuller

XVI.

A Bird in a Cage.

THE 24th was cold as Greenland, but one does not mind the thermometer in Colorado when there is no wind, and we found the double buckboard before Mrs. Ellerton's door, and the two ladies equipped for their drive. I remember how well Miss Lamb looked, dressed in the cheerful black which cannot be mistaken for mourning. I liked the little round velvet hat she wore, and she was particularly becoming to the shoulder cape of long shiny black fur which she had on. Mrs. Ellerton, who appeared as a dimly defined but very expensive mass of sealskin, invited John to sit with her, while Miss Lamb, with a half apology to me, kept the reins herself.

"The horses are going to dance," she said, "and I am sure I shall enjoy them more than you would." The horses did dance, and Miss Lamb managed them beautifully.

"I am afraid Mr. Brunt wishes he were nearer the scene of action," said Mrs. Ellerton, as the nigh horse gave a playful kick, and the other one cocked his ears at an eccentric angle which boded mischief.

John protested, politely, and I reflected that he must have a fine view of the driver. The stinging air had heightened her color, and there was an intent look on her face, and an alertness in her eyes which must have been agreeable to look upon. I was myself debarred by my close proximity from an unrestricted contemplation thereof.

The horses afforded us a good deal of entertainment as we bowled along, past the flourishing collection of "sample rooms" in Colorado City. There was not much talking done. As we approached Manitou it was curious to see how the mountains seemed to gather themselves together and frown at our intrusion, a sort of dumb protest which never appears to make a deep impression on any one but the writers of descriptions in prose and verse. Manitou looked wonderfully Alpine, lying in a cleft of the hills, so narrow that the village had been obliged to find room for itself by climbing up the hillsides on either hand. The big hotels were nearly all closed, and there was a Sunday-like calm in the street, but the noisy brook went rollicking through the valley, and as we got opposite the soda spring, the beginning of a huge drove of cattle emerged from the Ute Pass with deep and various lowings and bellowings. By the time we had reached "the Perch," the streets were swarming with the great beasts, accompanied by shouting cowboys, riding scrawny but agile broncos, under whose generalship—for the ponies seemed to take the initiative in the affair—the moving mass of creatures was kept in marching order.

We stood for a moment on the little verandah, waiting for admission "The Perch" is a tiny cottage well up on a brick-red hillside, whence the peak is just visible above the enfolding hills.

The door opened and a little woman on crutches stood before us. She was Miss Willet, the presser of flowers, the friend and presumably the protégé of Miss Lamb. She seemed prepared for our coming, as much so as so small and frail a creature, in so tiny a room, could be prepared for an avalanche of four great hearty men and women. And we soon found that she was mistress of the situation.

"Don't sit down, Lilian," she said, in a high, bird-like treble, "don't sit down till you've fetched the tea. You must be nearly frozen. It's all ready" she added, as Miss Lamb vanished, "but I am not fond of hobbling about in company, so Lilian waits on me."

Not exactly the tone of a protégé I thought, and I said:

"How pleasant it is to hear the cattle go by."

"Yes, indeed," said Miss Willet. "That is about all the music we have here in the winter. In the summer we are very gay, with our hops and Sunday concerts."

"Do you go down to the hops?" I asked.

"Dear me, no! I haven't been down the hill for three years. But the music comes up to me—which is much easier. Mahomet and the mountain you know."

John looked with a benignant smile at the minute speaker, and said: "So you are the mountain?"

"Sometimes the mountain and sometimes the squirrel, just as I please. I often think of Emerson's squirrel when I sit here, face to face with that big Pike's Peak and crack my own little nuts. What good things you have said about Emerson, Mr. Brunt. That essay of yours was one of the most toothsome nuts I ever cracked—saving your presence."

The sort of twinkle of appreciation that accompanied this remark was delightful, and I don't think I ever saw John more pleased with a compliment.

Just at that moment Miss Lamb appeared with the tea, and he took the tray from her hands in his masterful way, and set it on the table beside Miss Willet. Then we watched our little hostess pour out tea, with dainty, bird-like motions. One was constantly reminded of Miss Lamb's "bird in a cage." She looked as though she might be thirty or forty or fifty years old; it did not matter which. She had bright dark eyes, and a peculiarly crisp enunciation; the two most noticeable things about her. After a while one observed a slightly drawn look about the mouth, but it smiled and talked so much that it was only at rare intervals that one could surprise it at rest.

The tea warmed a body up delightfully, and the little cakes were most pleasing.

"What a famous cook you are, Miss Willet," said Mrs. Ellerton, as she tasted the cakes.

"Did you make these delectable little things yourself?" asked John.

"Who else should make them?" she demanded, with a quick turn of the head. "You don't suppose I keep a retinue of servants in this dry-goods box?"

"Would it take a retinue?"

"Lilian," said she, with apparent irrelevance. "You are the most considerate young person of my acquaintance. You never find it necessary to embellish your conversation with an account of your friends' idiosyncrasies. Now some of my very well-meaning acquaintances show me off to their friends as a sort of curiosity, as being a woman who lives quite alone, and is an extremely odd fish. I'll warrant that Lilian has never even told you of the five cats which have lightened my solitude from time to time, only to go the way of Colorado cats as promptly as though they had an appointment to keep."

"And what is the way of Colorado cats? We don't even know that."

"A premature death. They are as rare as peacocks here. You can't induce them to live. And I won't have a dog, because he would bark if a burglar approached the house, and scare me out of my wits."

"And you really live here entirely alone?" asked Brunt, in that great, friendly, benevolent voice he has for all fragile creatures. We both thought of the wild Indians and wilder cowboys, with which our imaginations had formerly peopled Colorado. Yet, even so, the wild beasts seldom harm the birds.

"Well, not quite alone," the tiny woman was saying. "There are Gog and Magog up there"—pointing to two monstrous rocks on the opposite mountain side,—"and there is my cuckoo-clock that little Rosamund brought me on her first birthday. And then a woman comes in for an hour every morning to tidy me up. I name them in the order of their importance. I could dispense with the woman much more lightly than with Gog and Magog, or the clock either."

We looked with interest at Gog and Magog, remembering that Leslie Smith had celebrated their "uncouth majesties." Miss Willet's talk ran on with unfailing fluency and spirit, and, withal, a quite irresistible charm. It was like firelight. It flickered from one theme to another and brightened everything it touched. John was clearly enchanted with the whole situation. He sat there looking from the "bird" to Miss Lamb and from Miss Lamb to the "bird," with such a blissful content in his face, that it seemed to me he must have a deeper source of satisfaction than the mere pleasure of listening to this bird-like chirping.

She showed us her books of pressed flowers and we longed to buy out her entire stock. But delicacy forbade, and we were obliged to content ourselves with taking two of the very largest and most expensive. I am sure that when Miss Willet told us that "Lilian" had gathered most of her flowers for her, John would have joyfully paid half his fortune for a single specimen. That, however, was happily not necessary. We do not have to pay half our fortune for the things we most desire. If we get them at all, they come as a free gift.

When we were taking leave, Miss Willet, still sitting in her chair, put her tiny hand into John's big one, and said, very warmly: "I don't suppose I shall ever see you again, Mr. Brunt, but I should like you to know that it has been a very particular gratification to me to see you to-day."

"It cannot possibly be to you what it has been to me, Miss Willet," said John, in his very deepest voice, "and I think we shall meet again."

I stood stupidly wondering at this exchange of rather ardent compliments, without an inkling of what it all meant; nor could I divine why John was in such spirits on the homeward drive. He talked so entertainingly, and with such delightful abandonment, that his companion, Mrs. Ellerton, seemed quite swept out of her usual placid indolence, and responded with an animation which I had not thought her capable of. Miss Lamb and I did more listening than talking.

To cap the climax of this exhilarating morning, we found an advance copy of Leslie Smith's poems awaiting us at the hotel, John tore open the wrapper with feverish impatience, as we walked along the corridor to our rooms, and by the time we got to his door he had taken a bird's-eye view of the entire contents.

"Isn't that a pretty bit of binding and printing?" said he, exultantly, as we shut the door behind us.

It was, indeed, all and more than our fancy had painted. Whoever might be their author, the poems of Leslie Smith had made their début, equipped, as the newspapers say, "with every advantage the bookmaker's art could bestow."

I was still admiring them, when John, who had stood, meanwhile, fairly fuming with impatience, cried: "And now we know who wrote them!"

"Has she confessed?" I asked, looking up from my favorite Knighted.

"Confessed? No. But there can't be any doubt about it. Everything goes to prove it. 'Gog and Magog,' 'Solitude,' 'The Cripple's Cup.' I tell you that 'Cripple's Cup' is an inside view."

"Good gracious, Jack!" said I. "You don't think the 'bird in the cage' wrote them?"

"If she didn't, nobody did! Why it was all in Her eye as plain as print."

"What was in her eye, Jack? Do talk sense."

"The inspired ones, the best ones; and the melancholy ones were in the corners of her mouth; and the witty ones were in the cut of her nose; and the descriptive ones in her whole environment; and the philosophy was in her crutches!"

I did not propose to be convinced by such random talk as this, but somehow I began to feel as though I had made the discovery all on my own account.

"How are you going to make sure?" I asked.

"This is how I am going to make sure," and John sat down, and scribbled off these few lines:

"My Dear Miss Lamb:

"An advance copy of the poems of Leslie Smith has just arrived. Could we not take them to her this afternoon? You were intending to ride, were you not?

"Yours,

"John Brunt."

In half an hour the answer came:

"My Dear Mr. Brunt:

"I saw you had guessed our secret. The days are very short. We must start by two o'clock.

"Yours very sincerely,

"Lilian Leslie Lamb."

At two o'clock they were off and I was left to chew the cud of my reflections. These were not altogether soothing. I felt perfectly sure now that sooner or later John would take the plunge, and I felt for him. Such an awkward thing to do under the most favorable circumstances, and who could tell how Miss Lamb would like it after such a very short acquaintance. She did not impress me as a girl who would say "Yes, thank you" as a matter of course just because John was a distinguished man and a fine fellow, and I could not form any surmise as to the state of her feelings toward him. I did not think she was indifferent to him; no intelligent person ever was, to my knowledge; but from indifference to "for better, for worse," is a far cry. I recalled what Ned Randall had said about her "lucidity," and that was some little comfort. Yet, on the whole, I was not sure that John was the man to be deterred by "lucidity," unless it were very marked indeed. He had not Ned's vanity to cause him to shrink from a rebuff, nor Benny Mortimer's excessive modesty to make him self-distrustful. He would survive a rejection, of course. It would take more than that to demolish John, or at least I hoped so, but it would be rough, and I couldn't bear to think of it.

Then I imagined her saying yes, and that was about as bad as the other.

"O Lord!" I caught myself saying. "Why need she have been such a provoking paragon? What did she want to go and do all those charming things for? Was it not enough that she should write such uncommonly good letters, and drag us out by them to this fatal place, without being so unnecessarily good-looking, and riding so absurdly well, and talking just after John's own heart, and being, altogether, I verily believe, the one woman on this planet whom John would lose his head over?"

My mind reverted to the grace and sweetness with which she picked up that picturesque infant at the Polo Ground and rode off with it; to the manner in which she poked the fire the first evening of our acquaintance, letting the flame light up her face; to her firm hand and quick eye as she drove those prancing steeds to Manitou. All seemed like so many wanton shots let fly without regard to the mischief they might do. And of course it was her perfect unconsciousness which rendered them fatal. I actually felt a grudge against her for having tumbled out of the apple tree at the age of seven, and for having so politely thanked her torturer for his services. I remembered with a shudder a remark John made one day when we first came to Colorado, and I was harping on the old string of Leslie Smith's identity.

"I don't care whether Miss Lamb writes poetry or not," John had suddenly declared. "She is a better poem herself than any I ever read."

Yes, John was in for it, that was sure as sunrise, and as I couldn't make up my mind which would be my choice of two evils, I went forth and paid some duty calls, thanking my stars that all girls were not so exasperatingly admirable as this one.