“I wonder when he is coming,” Sarah said, as she helped Margaret put up some pictures in their sitting-room. With magazines and books, flowers from the garden, where delphiniums and hollyhocks grew wild, and the little personal knick-knacks (with which Margaret always travelled as insurance against bleak hotel bedrooms), the small room was becoming definitely their own. Now the pictures (reproductions from the Museum of Modern Art) were being inspected, judged for size and colour to suit the shapes and lighting of the three available walls.
Neither of them had mentioned Prender for almost an hour, but Mrs. Peel, as she stood back to frown at a picture, could answer, “We’ll have a telegram any day now.”
“Perhaps we ought to have told him how to reach here.” Sarah felt that the responsibility somehow would be hers.
“He never asked us. Besides, it is all quite simple. First, you take the big ’plane to Denver, and then the little ’plane to Sweetwater. Then that very efficient Milton Jerks sends you here by car.”
“He may not fly.”
“Then that, darling, is his problem. There are such things as information-booths in New York’s stations. Now don’t worry about Prender. Why, anyone would think you really wanted to see him arrive.”
“I’ve been hoping for a telegram that said he couldn’t come.”
“You do jump from one extreme to the other, Sarah. After all, if he wants to come here, then that is that. We cannot offend him, you know.”
“Why not?”
“Sarah! You know we’ve never antagonised anyone! Except those Nazis in Paris. And then it did annoy me that we had to do it so secretly. Besides Prender isn’t a Nazi: he’s so much the opposite politically. You know how advanced he always is.”
“Yes, that makes him sure he is intelligent.”
“Sarah, what has come over you? I’m sure that when you met Prender in New York you must have been so exhausted by all that shopping that you became a little bit fretful. Now, you know you do, Sarah, whenever you are tired. You do get cross.”
“Only if people make me cross,” Sarah said determinedly, and reached for the hammer and nails. “Now, if anything, you are much too kind. I cannot understand how you always make such an effort to be nice to Prender. He did hurt you once, you know.”
Poor Elizabeth Whiffleton, Mrs. Peel thought. Ah, well!... She said nobly, “If someone hurts one, then one must try all the harder to be nice to that someone.”
Sarah, hammer in hand, looked down from the chair on which she now stood in stockinged feet. “Translate that, will you? And hold the rest of the nails meanwhile.”
Mrs. Peel said patiently, “You have to try all the harder to be nice to anyone who has hurt you.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s so tempting not to be nice.”
“It would seem easier to give into temptation just once, and even the score. Then you could all start over again.”
“But Prender knew nothing whatever about Elizabeth Whiffleton; at least, I hope not. If I had ever been rude to him he would have immediately wondered why. And he is very clever at finding out, you know.”
“In other words, we are afraid of him. Just as most others are. But why? I’ve kept asking myself that for the last few weeks. He has never done a thing for us, Margaret, except tolerate us or use us. In fact, that is what he does with everyone.”
“Sarah, you mustn’t talk like that.” Mrs. Peel was scandalised. “Besides, I do want a pleasant summer for a change. You know how upsetting last year was.”
Because we knew too many people like Prender Atherton Jones, Sarah thought, and banged the nail home. The plaster cracked, splintered, and fell.
“That’s a decided improvement,” Mrs. Peel said acidly.
Sarah said nothing. I am not fretful, she told herself.
At that moment footsteps left Mrs. Gunn’s kitchen and came towards the sitting-room. Jim Brent halted in the doorway. “Hello!” he said. “May I pay you a visit?” He looked at the two flushed faces turned towards him, and then at the fallen plaster. Excitable creatures, women.
“How nice of you to come in,” said Mrs. Peel, recovering herself first. “Do have a seat, Mr. Brent. You see, we are making ourselves comfortable.” She waved her arm round the room.
He dropped his hat on a chair and looked at Sarah. “Need a little help? Plaster on that wall never did dry right.” He took the hammer from Sarah’s hand and helped her down from the chair. “Now, where would you like the nails hammered in?”
Mrs. Peel showed him, while Sarah struggled into her boots. “I’m breaking them in,” she explained, as she stamped and tugged. Probably she looked ridiculous to him in her checked shirt, blue jeans, and bright new boots. Somehow she wanted to justify her appearance. “These clothes are so sensible,” she said, which was true enough. She had been amazed how practical and comfortable they were.
“That’s maybe why we wear them,” Brent said, with a hint of a smile.
Mrs. Peel, who had taken one look at her back view in blue jeans and given a piercing scream, glanced down at her tweed suit. It was beginning to show signs of wear, and the nearest cleaner’s was at Three Springs, the town with the railway-station ten miles beyond Sweetwater. It took such a long time to lose five pounds, she thought dejectedly. Sarah, whose appetite had been quite as large as hers, showed not one extra ounce. In fact, she looked extremely neat in these blue jeans. Life could be very unfair.
“I’m afraid they are too gay for my age,” Mrs. Peel said diffidently.
“You’ll get used to them,” he said. “They sort of bleach out with weather.” He finished hammering in the nails, which this time did not even crack the plaster. Mrs. Peel watched him gratefully: he hadn’t tried to minimise her age, and yet he hadn’t made her feel she might look odd in a checked shirt and trousers. She could hardly see herself doing anything in “weather,” which probably meant wind and rain, except retiring to her room with a new book. However, it was flattering to be taken for a pioneer woman, just as it was relaxing to have her age accepted as something natural. Age happened to everyone if they lived.
“That’s splendid,” Mrs. Peel said. “Now, Mr. Brent, if you’d help us lift the pictures into place we can all sit down and admire them.”
He looked at the pictures, and then at Mrs. Peel, before he lifted them, one by one, to set them squarely in place.
“That’s such a help,” Mrs. Peel went on. She glanced at Sarah. Why was she so quiet? Surely she hadn’t taken the remark about being fretful too seriously. “Isn’t it, Sarah? We really should have asked Joe to do this—is he really Mrs. Gunn’s nephew, Mr. Brent? He looks the same age as she is!— but he has got so involved in the plumbing over at the guest-cabin. I’m afraid we’ve kept him very busy since he arrived from Laramie.”
As Jim Brent stepped back to look at the effect on the walls he thought that Joe might be well out of this.
Sarah Bly spoke then. “You don’t like them, do you?” She said it softly, half shyly.
He looked embarrassed. “Do you?”
“Of course!” Mrs. Peel cried. “Look at the composition, the feeling of unity, and yet the sense of separate individualities. The colours are odd, but they are balanced in a very unexpected way, so—” She looked at Sarah for help.
“That one is called The Three Dancers,” Sarah said.
“I’m certainly glad you told me.” He smiled back at her.
“Of course, not three modern dancers,” Mrs. Peel explained. “See, the details of their costume—it’s seventeenth-century Italian comedy—are marvellously correct once your eye penetrates the composition.”
“Supposing,” he said, “you were to see that picture for the first time in your life. Supposing no one could tell you its title. Would you know that it was three dancers?”
The question was so honestly put that Mrs. Peel hesitated.
“Would you?” he asked Sarah. She was equally taken aback. After all, she had to admit she had heard about th
e picture by its title, even before she went to see it in an exhibition where it had been labelled and catalogued. The picture and its name had never been apart in her mind.
“Well,” he said, “that makes me feel better. But I still think you’ve been cheated. All you’ve got is two and a half dancers.”
Sarah laughed, much to Mrs. Peel’s amazement.
“And what pictures do you like, Mr. Brent?” Mrs. Peel asked, as they all sat down at last. She suddenly thought that he seemed perfectly at home, but then, why shouldn’t he be? She looked embarrassed.
“The kind I used to want to imitate when I was in art school,” he admitted, with a grin.
“In art school?” Mrs. Peel was caught off balance completely; but she was smiling as Sarah was, for the grin was infectious.
“It only lasted three years. Nothing serious.”
“Why—” Sarah began, and then stopped. She would be disappointed if he did start talking about himself, for that was what all men did when they wanted to impress you. Little allusions here, little sidelights there, all adding up to prove to you that they were someone who mattered.
He said, “I came over to see you about the horses you’ll need for your guests.”
“Seven, I think,” Sarah said quickly, halting the questions she saw rising in Margaret’s eye about art school, and did you go to college, and what made you return to the ranch?
“But not wild horses,” Mrs. Peel added. “I’m sure few of us have ever ridden very much.”
“We’ll pick quiet ones,” he assured her. “They’ll be in the west pasture—that’s nearest the corral. It will make it easier for Jackson when he brings them in to be saddled.”
“Do you think he will manage?” Mrs. Peel asked anxiously. What she had seen of these horses had convinced her that they were quite capable of lassoing Jackson and bringing him into the corral. “Of course, I have every faith in him, and he was a farmer’s son and did know about horses—I suppose—but, after all, this isn’t Hungary, and that was years ago.”
“Horses are horses anywhere,” Jim Brent reassured her. “Jackson is quick to learn. Uses his eyes. Follows advice. He’ll do, all right. I’ll send him out with the boys during the next few days to learn the trail around here. Then he can guide your guests, and we won’t have to worry about sending out searching parties.”
“You mean people can get lost?” Mrs. Peel asked, in horror.
“It has happened.”
“Oh, dear!” Here was another hazard... “Perhaps,” she said hopefully, “our guests will be too busy to go riding.”
“Perhaps. I’ve looked over the saddles we once used, just in case they aren’t too busy. I set Jackson to cleaning them off.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Peel said, and felt extremely helpless for having foreseen neither saddles, nor corral, nor pasture, nor Jackson as a cowboy. What would Jackson, the New York chauffeur, have to say to that? He had already accepted the position of gardener with a frown; but perhaps he had only been thinking of poison-ivy. (Fortunately Mrs. Gunn’s nephew had taken charge of the chickens, the milk-cow, and the three pigs. Mrs. Gunn had said it would be practical to have these new acquisitions, and there was Joe, anyway: he was good with eggs and milk as well as being handy with a saw and a two-by-four.)
“Well, that’s about all.” Jim Brent rose. “Would you care to walk over to the west pasture now? Your horses are already there.”
“I’d love to,” Sarah said delightedly. He must be six feet three, she thought as she looked up at him.
“I’d love to too, but”—Mrs. Peel looked at her neat shoes, remembering the six inches of mud all over the ranch this morning—“it did rain rather hard last night.”
“Laid the dust,” Jim Brent agreed. “By the way, I was over to Three Springs railroad station this afternoon. I heard there was a trunk waiting for Rest and be Thankful. Seemed to belong to someone called Jones.”
“Oh!” the two women said together, and looked at each other.
“I suppose we’ll have to send for it,” Mrs. Peel said, wondering if Sarah could possibly manage the car on the twisting canyon road which led down to Sweetwater from Rest and be Thankful. Jackson was too busy with saddles and vegetables and trails and horses to be lassoed. Thank goodness he had fixed the car, after days of work on it. Oh, dear, she must get Joe to see to that awful bridge: someone might choose that road into the ranch when the light was failing. Signposts, she must remember them too: small, discreet ones to cheer people on if they were coming by car. Maps had been sent to the guests, of course, but you couldn’t mark all the hazards into them.
Jim Brent watched the worries chasing over Mrs. Peel’s pleasant, kindly face. She reminded him constantly of his mother’s sister, who used to take so much trouble to give him a good time at Christmas when he was at school, two thousand miles from home.
He said, “I brought the trunk along with me, Mrs. Peel. That always saves a journey. I’ll give Jackson a hand with it tomorrow.” Joe wasn’t much use at weight-lifting these days. He wondered if he should mention that Joe didn’t seem to be feeling too good. Then he decided they had enough worries. He’d keep an eye on Joe himself.
He left with a nod and a smile, without waiting for thanks, and Sarah followed him.
* * *
“Really,” Mrs. Peel said aloud, remembering Mrs. Gunn and the boys and Mr. Brent during these last weeks, “they are all remarkably patient.” She looked at her pictures, straightened one of them, rearranged the flowers, tidied some magazines, and then sat down with the Sunday New York Times to catch up on the troubles of the world.
The evening sunlight streamed over the rim of the mountains to the west and glanced through a corner of the porch. Robins sang in the chokeberry bushes, an aspen-tree quivered with each breath of wind, blue delphiniums pointed to a blue sky, and the scattered white clouds changed softly to pink and gold.
Mrs. Peel put aside the newspaper thoughtfully.
Then she rose and walked through the porch into the garden, across the grass towards the edge of the stream. She turned to look at the house. Her house, she suddenly thought.
It gave the effect of being low, spread out, nestling naturally into the grass and the trees between the arms of the stream. It was part of its setting; just as the meadows and hills, folding into each other, and the mountain peaks, towering massively behind the rounded hills, were all part of the house. In the slanting rays of the sun each fold and hollow was emphasised with highlights and shadows, each spine of rock stood boldly in relief. The pine forests were bands of rich velvet. The valleys and canyons grew deeper and darker, reaching farther into the heart of the mountains. The peaks were more jagged, third-dimensional, elaborately carved by wind and torrents into giant cathedrals with ridged buttresses of primeval rock.
As she watched, the sun disappeared and the valley was suspended in golden light. For a deep moment she no longer existed. Then the shiver in her spine, the hot tears stinging her eyes, reminded her she was alive, a human being humbled into worship. She was glad she was alone.
Then she walked on. She became more composed. This place did make you thankful, she reflected. But how odd that she had had to live so far away, for so many years, before she found it. Was she really growing old? Was the thought of living here for four months every year necessary to help her through the other eight months back in civilisation? “Civilisation! Pew to you!” she said scornfully. She then had the guilty thought that by October she would be opening her eyes wide as she saw the tall buildings of New York rising one behind the other, and she would be saying “Civilisation!” in quite a different way as she read Cue’s enchanting lists of where to go and what to see. “Pew to you!” she repeated determinedly, but she laughed as she wondered if she weren’t speaking to herself this time. Sarah would say that we were all the—But where on earth was Sarah? By Mrs. Peel’s watch it was an hour and a half since she had left with Mr. Brent.
The light was failing now, and th
e clear lines of the hills were fading. All the colours—the greens of grass and trees, the blue shades of mountains, the golden yellows of cliffs and canyon walls—were losing their sharp vitality, gradually merging into the anonymous grey of dusk. The landscape was already half asleep.
* * *
Mrs. Peel walked towards her house, noticing the sudden dampness in the grass, promising herself the comfort of a log fire. Sarah returned then, walking somewhat stiffly, trying to appear very nonchalant. But her voice was excited, and as she came into the hall Mrs. Peel noticed that her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were pink, her even teeth were very white against the honey-coloured tan of her smooth skin, and her hair was just wind-blown enough to make it very attractive. Mrs. Peel thought that she had seldom seen Sarah look so—so healthy. Which is a woman’s way of saying that another woman is astonishingly pretty.
“Guess what?” Sarah said. “I’ve been out riding!”
“On a horse?” Mrs. Peel was horrified.
“It wasn’t a dolphin, darling. Margaret, it’s perfectly superb! When you get up there”—she waved her arms roughly in the direction of the mountains, which she obviously expected Mrs. Peel to see as clearly as she had in spite of the walls that surrounded them—“the whole valley ripples out like a cloth of gold underneath you.”
“But how did you get up there?”
“Jim Brent took me. We were trying out my horse. And you’ve nothing to worry about...the horses can pick their way over any mountain trail. I just relaxed and held on and Whitesock—that’s its name—did all the work.”
“It?”
“Well,” Sarah said doubtfully, “perhaps he. Or it. They are geldings. That’s the horse equivalent of a steer.”
“What colour is he?” Mrs. Peel was interested, even if she still felt somewhat deserted.
“Henna brown, with a white ankle. Your horse is a deep cream, with a platinum-blond mane and tail. He’s called Golden Boy.”
“Well, hadn’t you better go upstairs and take a bath? With Epsom salts?” Mrs. Peel asked, slightly cheered by the description of her horse. It might bewilder Mr. Brent, but it gave her a very clear picture.
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