Dick’s splendid physique stood him in good stead, and the ruthless stretching of his leg when he was pulled from under the bear, combined with the almost miraculous accident of the rude splints being placed in exact position, had already begun the cure. The Doctor happily prognosticated that within a month, if all went well, Dick would be on the high road to recovery, if not able to move about a little.
“We can never tell,” he said “what will happen in the way of recovery with a man like that. His simple life, with his great energy and his plain living, make recovery seem extraordinary to town-bred men. But we must not judge of his health and recovery by the standard of the towns, but rather by the animals, who simply lie quiet and lick their wounds, and are running about again when a man is beginning to realise that he is helpless!”
Miss Gimp had been up to this the head-nurse, with Mrs. Elstree as a relief; but Esse now joined the nursing staff. Her mother was not altogether satisfied about it, but did not like to make any objection just at present. She was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that perhaps Esse had seen too much of Dick at her impressionable age, though, as yet, she did not imagine that there could be anything serious arising out of their unchecked companionship. But out of her uneasiness came one certain thing — the complete realization that Esse was no longer the child that she had hitherto considered her. She was a woman now, for good or ill; and whatever she thought or did was from the standpoint of a woman, and would have to be adhered to with a woman’s constancy, or abandoned with a woman’s resolve. Esse had by this time told her mother all the incidents at the killing of the bears, and she could not but see that the circumstance of her own life being saved by Dick — for, with woman’s imagination, she realised more than any other episode the agonised waiting till the bear should discover her before Dick came — was an important step in the growth of a romantic affection. She realised as a still stronger one the fact, as Dick repeated to all over and over again, with increasing freedom of speech and added emphasis of delivery, about her saving his life. Mrs. Elstree therefore thought that to forbid the girl the sick room would be to beget or increase a desire to see the man, which might develop later into something more serious.
So Esse sat with Dick daily, reading or talking to him whilst he was awake, which was always charming to her; and watching him whilst he slept, which was a much more dangerous pleasure, for then her memory and imagination worked together to weave romances which she durst not think when his eyes were on her, and which were not nearly so real when she was alone. The closed eyelids could not take note of blush or pallor, and had no terror for the maiden spirit in its hour of stress.
Dick was distinctly an interesting invalid. There are men who look their worst under such circumstances, and whose natural petulance under pain or restraint destroys any charm which their weakness may have for the feminine mind, but Dick was not such. There was about him a large-hearted patience and a masculine dominance, on which illness seemed to have no effect. Miss Gimp, who was a born nurse, kept him so clean, and his room so picturesque with summer flowers, that even the memory of his personal carelessness died away from Esse’s mind. More than ever the man who had saved her, and whom she had saved, and with whom she had undergone the adventure so sweet to look back upon, became idealised in all those smaller details with which the romantic simulacrum in a woman’s mind is in some degree built up. His great amusement at this time was to polish the bears’ claws, and to drill them in a particular way, until finally he made a magnificent necklace of them, which he handed over to Esse, telling her that they were fairly hers as she had won them.
When the time of convalescence came, Esse became herself head-nurse. At least, all the labour of amusing the patient seemed to devolve on her. She sat by his side in the veranda reading to him and playing draughts or chess, all of which pastimes were dangerous enough; or often listening to his stories of adventure, which was a thousand times more dangerous. After a while Mrs. Elstree came to understand something of the feelings of Brabantio, as he afterwards reflected on the method of Desdemona’s wooing by Othello — with the exception that she assured herself that in no way had Dick the smallest intention of making love. Had she known the deeper strata of human passion she would not have so easily thrown aside her fears with a sigh of relief, for the very indifference of the man to the girl’s preference, so palpable to the mother’s eye, was perhaps the one element remaining to complete the daughter’s fascination. Mrs. Elstree was, however, a wise woman within her own limitations, and as the summer was drawing to a close she determined not to take any notice at present of what was going on, but to let affairs run their course till the return to San Francisco. She felt that it would be a less dangerous course than doing anything whilst there was present the opportunity, in the shape of Dick, of matters coming to a head prematurely.
At this time there were two surly people on Shasta: one, Miss Gimp, who seemed never to get farther in her love-making to Dick; and the other, Heap Hungry, whose offerings to the parrot had been cut short by Esse, lest their continuous presence should lead to some awkward revelation.
One morning when Esse looked out of her window she saw the whole plateau white with snow. It was but a tiny dusting of the ground, and had vanished before the sun was high. But it was a warning that the summer had gone, and that Shasta was henceforth to be, for a time, at any rate, but a sweet memory. When departure had been decided upon, all the mother and guardian became awake in Mrs. Elstree; day and night she watched, and waited, and bestirred herself so, that there was never an opportunity for Esse to have a sentimental leave-taking. To this end, Dick’s natural imperturbability aided, and it was with only a hearty handshake, and a last wave of his cap, that Dick took leave of Esse at the railway station at Edgewood.
Esse herself was too sorry to be very demonstrative. She knew her own secret now, and it took her all her time and effort to so bear herself as to deceive her mother.
Chapter 6
The change from Shasta to San Francisco for a time altered the course of Esse’s thoughts. It was not merely that the atmosphere was different or that the duties of life, in great and little degree, were not the same, but that there were compensations for the loss of the bracing air, the natural exhilaration which is given by a rarefied atmosphere, and the unconventional companionship of Grizzly Dick. There were shops! Shops whose contents were to be investigated thoroughly and their new treasures displayed. There were concerts with divine possibilities, and Esse was a musician cultivated far beyond the opportunities of even San Francisco. Hollander, and Paderewski, and Sarasate were all personal friends of her mother, and from each of them she had friendly counsel. Now that she was come again in touch with all these delightful results of civilization, she began to feel as though the Shoulder of Shasta were barren of the higher delights of life — of some of them at least. Then there were the theatres, for to Esse a theatre was a veritable wonderland. Like all persons of pure imagination, the theatre itself was but a means to an end. She did not think of a play as a play, but as a reality, and so her higher education — the education of the heart, the brain, and the soul — was pursued; and by the sequence of her own emotion and her memory of them, she became, each time she saw a play, to know herself a little better, and so to better know the world and its dwellers. Visits, too, and dances, and the thousand and one harmless frivolities which go to make up a woman’s life, claimed her time and her passing interest.
And so it was that within a few weeks of return to San Francisco, Grizzly Dick and all his romantic environment became for the time only a distant memory. But out of this very state of things, in which her mother had a new sense of security, there came a new danger. Since Dick was only a memory, he became one with that particular nimbus of softening effects which is apt to accompany and environ a memory which is a pleasant one — that which is to a memory what a halo is to a pictorial saint, at once a distinguishing trait and an aid to fancy. Esse began to feel that since Dick was a memory he was one that could be shared;