“I might do that if I get any worse, but I hate to have you stay in the house another night. It’s only fit for these goats of cowboys and women like Hett Jackson. Did the bugs eat you last night?”
Virginia flushed. “Yes.”
Eliza’s face fell. “I was afraid of that. You can’t keep ’em out. The cowboys bring ’em in by the quart.”
“They can be destroyed – and the flies, too, can’t they?”
“When you’ve bucked flies and bugs as long as I have, you’ll be less ’peart about it. I don’t care a hoot in Hades till somebody like you or Reddy or Ross comes along. Most of the men that camp with me are like Injuns, anyway – they wouldn’t feel natural without bugs a ticklin’ ’em. No, child, you get ready and pull out on the Sulphur stage to-morrow. I’ll pay your way back to Philadelphy.”
“I can’t leave you now, mother. Now that I know you’re ill, I’m going to stay and take care of you.”
Lize rose. “See here, girl, don’t you go to idealizin’ me, neither. I’m what the boys call an old battle-axe. I’ve been through the whole war. I’m able to feed myself and pay your board besides. Just you find some decent boarding-place in Sulphur, and I’ll see that you have ten dollars a week to live on, just because you’re a Wetherford.”
“But I’m your daughter!”
Again Eliza fixed a musing look upon her. “I reckon if the truth was known your aunt Celia was nigher to being your mother than I ever was. They always said you was all Wetherford, and I reckon they were right. I always liked men better than babies. So long as I had your father, you didn’t count – now that’s the God’s truth. And I didn’t intend that you should ever come back here. I urged you to stay – you know that.”
Lee Virginia imagined all this to be a savage self-accusation which sprang from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she do with elemental savagery of this sort?
The knowledge that she must spend another night in the bed led her to active measures of reform. With disgustful desperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, Virginia moved on the dining-room. As the ranger had said, this, too, could be reformed.
Unheeding her mother’s protests, she organized the giggling waiters into a warring party, and advanced upon the flies. By hissing and shooing, and the flutter of newspapers, they drove the enemy before them, and a carpenter was called in to mend screen doors and windows, thus preventing their return. New shades were hung to darken the room, and new table-cloths purchased to replace the old ones, and the kitchen had such a cleaning as it had not known before in five years.
In this work the time passed swiftly, and when Redfield and Cavanagh came again to lunch they exclaimed in astonishment – as, indeed, every one did.
“How’s this?” queried Cavanagh, humorously. “Has the place ’changed hands?’”
Lize was but grimly responsive. “Seem’s like it has.”
“I hope the price has not gone up?”
“Not yet.”
Redfield asked: “Who’s responsible for this – your new daughter?”
“You’ve hit it. She’s started right in to polish us all up to city standards.”
“We need it,” commented Cavanagh, in admiration of the girl’s prompt action. “This room is almost civilized, still we’ll sort o’ miss the flies.”
Lize apologized. “Well, you know a feller gits kind o’ run down like a clock, and has to have some outsider wind him up now and again. First I was mad, then I was scared, but now I’m cheerin’ the girl on. She can run the whole blame outfit if she’s a mind to – even if I go broke for it. The work she got out o’ them slatter-heels of girls is a God’s wonder.”
Ross looked round for Virginia, but could not find her. She had seen him come in, and was out in the kitchen doing what she could to have his food brought in and properly served.
Redfield reassured the perturbed proprietor of “the joint.” “No fear of going broke, madam – quite the contrary. A few little touches like this, and you’ll be obliged to tear down and build bigger. I don’t believe I’d like to see your daughter run this eating-house as a permanent job, but if she starts in I’m sure she’ll make a success of it.”
Lee Virginia came in flushed and self-conscious, but far lighter of spirit than at breakfast; and stood beside the table while the waitress laid the dishes before her guests with elaborate assumption of grace and design. Hitherto she had bumped them down with a slash of slangy comment. The change was quite as wonderful as the absence of the flies.
“Do we owe these happy reforms to you?” asked Cavanagh, admiring Virginia’s neat dress and glowing cheeks.
“Partly,” she answered. “I was desperate. I had to do something, so I took to ordering people around.”
“I understand,” he said. “Won’t you sit at our table again?”
“Please do,” said Redfield. “I want to talk with you.”
She took a seat – a little hesitantly. “You see, I studied Domestic Science at school, and I’ve never had a chance to apply it before.”
“Here’s your opportunity,” Redfield assured her. “My respect for the science of domestics is growing – I marvel to think what another week will bring forth. I think I’ll have to come down again just to observe the improvement in the place.”
“It can’t last,” Lize interjected. “She’ll catch the Western habits – she’ll sag, same as we all do.”
“No she won’t,” declared Ross, with intent to encourage her. “If you give her a free hand, I predict she’ll make your place the wonder and boast of the county-side.”
“When do you go back to the mountains?” Lee Virginia asked, a little later.
“Immediately after my luncheon,” he replied.
She experienced a pang of regret, and could not help showing it a little. “Your talk helped me,” she said; “I’ve decided to stay, and be of use to my mother.”
Redfield overheard this, and turned toward her.
“This is a rough school for you, Lee Virginia, and I should dislike seeing you settle down to it for life: but it can’t hurt you if you are what I think you are. Nothing can soil or mar the mind that wills for good. I want Mrs. Redfield to know you; I’m sure her advice will be helpful. I hope you’ll come up and see us if you decide to settle in Sulphur – or if you don’t.”
“I should like to do so,” she said, touched by the tone as well as by the words of his invitation.
“Redfield’s house is one of the few completely civilized homes in the State,” put in Cavanagh. “When I get so weary of cuss-words and poaching and graft that I can’t live without killing some one, I go down to Elk Lodge and smoke and read the Supervisor’s London and Paris weeklies and recover my tone.”
Redfield smiled. “When I get weak-kneed or careless in the service and feel my self-respect slipping away, I go up to Ross’s cabin and talk with a man who represents the impersonal, even-handed justice of the Federal law.”
Cavanagh