Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him, leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in the direction of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that it was singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in the presence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he could have gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so. Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He had recourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.
To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, and then shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evident distress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.
Im sorry I frighted ye, maam, but I was afraid I might skeer ye more if I lay low, and said nothin.
Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would have relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by every other line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial. Her figure was hidden by a shapeless garment that partook equally of the shawl, cloak, and wrapper.
I am very foolish, she began, in a voice and accent that at once asserted a cultivated woman, but I so seldom meet anybody here that a voice quite startled me. That, and the heat, she went on, wiping her face, into which the color was returning violentlyfor I seldom go out as early as thisI suppose affected me.
Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood which I fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient, undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being in the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.
Like as not, maam, he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in her burning face. The sun IS powful hot at this time o day; I felt it myself comin yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it back, its likely to come out agin. Ye cant check it no more than the sap in that choked limb tharhe pointed ostentatiously where a fallen pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. Do you live far from here, maam? he added.
Only as far as the first turning below the hill.
Ive got my buggy here, and Im goin that way, and I can jist set ye down thar cool and comfortable. Ef, he continued, in the same assuring tone, without waiting for a reply, yell jist take a good grip of my arm thar, curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherds crook, Ill go first, and break away the brush for ye.
She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns in this fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally dropping a word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face. When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,and perpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had been a transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,and then gravely took his place beside her.
Bein in the timber trade myself, maam, he said, gathering up the reins, I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My name is Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there aint much that grows in the way o standin timber on the Pacific Slope that I dont know and cant locate, though I DO say it. Ive got ez big a mill, and ez big a run in my district, ez there is anywhere. Ef youre ever up my way, you ask for BowersJim Bowersand thats ME.
There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation between strangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each others foibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman, naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure her that she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and so satisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the woman regained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowerss vanity, and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of the buggy along the road, thanked him graciously.
I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel, she said, after a pause.
I didnt get to see em, as I only put up my hoss there, he replied. But I know the stage took some away this mornin: it seemed pretty well loaded up when I passed it.
The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possible return of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once be distracted at any costeven conversation.
Perhaps, he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, Im a-talkin to Mrs. McFadden?
No, said the woman, abstractedly.
Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on that crossroad.
My name IS Delatour, she said, somewhat wearily.
Mr. Bowers was conversationally stranded. He was not at all anxious to know her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there was nothing more to say. He would, of course, have preferred to ask her if she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew the poetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appeared to be an eddicated woman made him sensitive of displaying technical ignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was subjective or objectivetwo words he had heard used at the Debating Society at Mendocino on the question, Is poetry morally beneficial? For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiative in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation she had held with another.
She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married. The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been obliged to part with much of it to support her childrenfour girls and a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too youngshe feared, too shiftlessto do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor; she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans, where her father had been a judge, and she didnt understand country life. Of course she had been married too youngas all girls were. Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia, was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.
As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved. But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his main object, and, looking up cautiously, said: