“Oh, yes! I want to see him so. The whole world seems so small and cramped without him! If I could only see him for a moment it would be like feeling the wind blowing down from Shasta — like hearing the roar of the falling water — like the sound of the forest coming up at the dawn! It all seems so little here, and he is so brave and strong, and moves through life as though he were born to rule it!”
Peter Blyth sat silent, amazed. The young girl’s poetic phrases, her full, passionate way of speaking; the very openness of her avowal, were all strange and new to him, and he felt that he must learn more, and then consider well his store of knowledge; so again he asked her:
“Esse, do you think you love him?”
She immediately began to cry quietly, and it was only when he had petted and comforted her a little that she was able to reply:
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” and Peter muttered to himself:
“Hanged if I do, either!” then he went on with his questioning: “Now, tell me just one thing — I only want your opinion — do you think he loves you?”
“He never told me so.”
“No, but what do you think?”
Esse turned to him with all the coquetry of her nature ablaze, and asked:
“What do you think?”
Peter Blyth instantly laughed a merry, wholesome laugh which seemed somehow to find an echo in the very recesses of Esse’s soul. Somewhere there was hope and comfort for her. This winning trust in a man’s power to smooth matters, and the consequent shifting of the burden from her own shoulders was beginning already to work for her recovery. She laughed too, though the laugh smote Peter with pain, for it was like the ghost of her old cheery laugh; but he was glad to hear any approach to merriment, and took advantage of the occasion.
“Come on! Let us get to lunch, and then we shall be able to think better. We know now; our next step will be to see what is best to be done, and then to do it!”
Esse took his outstretched hand, and so, hand-in-hand, they walked by the sea together. Suddenly he stopped and said:
“Look here, little girl, you mustn’t go into the hotel with your eyes like that. They’d think that I was the lover, and that I had been quarrelling with you!”
He put his hand into his pocket and took out a tiny parcel which he handed to her. Esse took it with curiosity and opened it. Out fluttered a gauzy veil.
“Well, I do declare!” she said, “I believe this is a put-up job, and that you expected me to cry, and were prepared for it.”
“Of course I did,” said Peter, boldly. “What else did I come out here for except that you and I might be alone, and that you could tell me your troubles! I knew you would cry! all girls do — under the circumstances!” and he laughed a resonant and ease-giving laugh. So she took his arm and they walked back to the hotel.
Chapter 7
When her mother saw Esse, her heart was filled with gladness, for her pallor had given way to a cheerful tinge of rose, and her manner was buoyant and exhilarated.
“Well, I declare,” said she, turning to Peter Blyth, “an hour or two with you has done her more good than all the doctors in San Francisco in three months. You must take her in hand, and prescribe for her a bit, if you will.”
By this time Esse had tripped upstairs to get ready for tea, and Peter, seeing his opportunity, wished to get from Mrs. Elstree a comprehensive consent to whatever he might see well to do. All the way home, after lunch, whilst Esse had been chattering to him with all the energy of an emancipated soul, he had been thinking. The problem which he had to solve was a difficult one, and he felt that all his diplomatic acumen would be required.
He could not believe that his highly cultured, refined little friend Esse whose fastidiousness, even in her babyhood, had been a little joke in the family, could be really in love with a rough, unmannered trapper. And yet he could not deceive himself that at the present time Esse had an absorbing desire to meet the man; that the unsatisfied desire was sapping her health, and that it would be necessary to take the matter seriously as the only chance of an ultimate solution of the difficulty. It might be that Esse’s craving was for the mountain as well as the man; that the place and its possibilities, its adventures, its bracing qualities, the stimulation of the high mountain air and the whole wild, free exuberance which had come into her life at the moment when her womanhood was developing, and as cure for her failing health, had seized on her imagination. In such case, her sense of contrast and the strongly humorous side of her character would be her best protection. In any case, the man was at present so inextricably mixed up in her mind with his surroundings that without his presence no disentanglement could take place. Of course, it might be that when Esse should see him the vague desire for his presence might become an actuality, and that nothing short of marriage with him would content her. If so, then the chance must be taken, for it could not be allowed that her present declining health should not be considered; and if marriage became a necessity, at least Esse had at her disposal all the means of comfort for them both. In a word, the argument ran in his mind: if she should not see Dick she would in all probability fade away and die. If she should see him, one of two things must happen — she would become disenchanted, which was all desirable, or her infatuation would increase until it ended in an undesirable marriage. In any case she must see him.
She must see him — that was certain; and this conclusion having been arrived at, Peter’s next point was as to the most advisable way of this accomplishment. There was already experience of the ill effects of her seeing him when his foot was on his native heath. There he was paramount, and his whole personality gathered round itself the romance of the surroundings. If Esse were to see him on Shasta under her present psychic and nervous condition, she would simply tumble head over ears in love with him. There was nothing at all to the contrary; whereas if she were to see him in the midst of her present refined surroundings, she could not help contrasting him with them, with a result that could not altogether tend to further infatuation. Dick therefore must come to San Francisco! Peter felt that his logic was complete, and that no further thought on that part of the subject was required. Thus he had driven up to California Street with his mind so far at rest, and his only present intent that Mrs. Elstree should, without even guessing at his knowledge, be content to leave the affair in his hands. So when Esse had gone to her room he turned to Mrs. Elstree and said:
“Do you really wish me to prescribe?”
“Most certainly! Look at the effect of your first dose!”
“And you will not blame me if anything should happen that you don’t contemplate; or as you should not wish?”
Mrs. Elstree put both her hands in his and said:
“Peter Blyth whatever you do will be for Esse’s good. That is your intention I am sure. I know it; and my dear husband knew it. None of us are infallible; but you are at least a true friend and a clever man. Do what you will for my dear child’s good. Nothing can be worse than to see her fading away from me, as it has been my misery to watch for months past.”
She turned away her head, but Peter could see that she was crying as she left the room. When she returned she was cheerful, though there were traces of tears in her eyes. Women have a sort of fixed idea that bathing the eyes with watered eau-de-cologne will remove traces of tears; it is a happy belief, saving much small humiliation, and there are men generous enough to pretend that they are deceived!
After dinner Peter Blyth sat with Esse in the back of the drawing-room, whilst her mother in the music-room opening from it played Liszt and Chopin. His manner was hearty, and his laugh so cheery, that it would have been impossible for Esse to have in his presence been under the domination of any brooding or love-sick fancies, so she fell into the buoyant mood. Now that the strain of keeping her secret was past she felt able to discuss it without doing violence to her feelings. Peter opened the battle with a pointblank shot: