The Wall Between Part 4

"Oh, don't," Lucy protested. "Please let me take it. I'm used to carrying heavy things. I am very strong."

"Strong, are you?" questioned Ellen, without, however, turning her head or offering to surrender the large leather holdall. "An' how, pray, did you get so strong?" She pa.s.sed into the hall and up the stairs as she spoke, Lucy following.

"Oh, driving horses, doing housework, cooking, cleaning, and shooting,"

the girl replied. Then as if a forgotten activity had come to her mind as an afterthought, she added gaily: "And sawing wood, I guess."

"You can do things like that?"

"Yes, indeed. I had to after Mother died and we moved to Bald Mountain where Dad's mine was. I did all the work for my father and ten Mexicans."

"You? Why didn't your father get a woman in?"

Lucy broke into a merry laugh.

"A woman! Why, Aunt Ellen, there wasn't a woman within twenty miles. It was only a mining camp, you see; just Dad and his men."

"An' you mean to tell me you were the sole woman in a place like that?"

Lucy's silvery laughter floated upward.

"The ten Mexicans who boarded with us were engineers and bosses," she explained. "There were over fifty miners in the camp besides."

Stopping midway up the staircase Ellen wheeled and said indignantly:

"An' Thomas kep' you in a settlement like that?"

"Who?"

"Your father."

"Why not?"

"'Twarn't no place for a girl."

"It was the place for me."

"Why?"

"Because Dad was there."

Something in the reply left Ellen wordless and made her continue her way upstairs without answering. When she did speak, it was to say in a gentler tone:

"Mebbe you'll like the room I'm going to give you. It used to belong to your Dad when he was a little boy."

She lifted the latch of a paneled door and stood looking into a large bedroom. The sun slanted across a bare, painted floor, which was covered by a few braided rugs, old and worn; there was a great four-poster about which were draped chintz curtains, yellowed by age, and between the windows stood a mahogany bureau whose bra.s.ses were tarnished by years of service; two stiff ladder-back chairs, a three-cornered washstand, and a few faded photographs in pale gilt frames completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs.

With swift step Lucy crossed the room and gazed up at one of the pictures.

"That's Dad!"

Ellen nodded.

"I'd no idea he was ever such a chubby little fellow. Look at his baby hands and his drum!"

She paused, looking intently at the picture. Then in a far-away tone she added:

"And his eyes were just the same."

For several minutes she lingered, earnest and reminiscent.

"And is this you, Aunt Ellen?" she asked, motioning toward another time-dimmed likeness hanging over the bed.

"Yes."

A silence fell upon the room. Ellen fidgeted.

"I've changed a good deal since then," she observed, after waiting nervously for some comment.

"You've changed much more than Dad."

"How?"

Curiosity impelled her to cross to Lucy's side and examine the photograph.

"Your eyes--your mouth."

"What about 'em?"

"I--I--don't believe I could explain it," responded Lucy slowly.

"Mebbe you'd have liked me better as a little girl," grinned her aunt whimsically.

"I--yes. I'm sure I should have liked you as a little girl."

The reply piqued Ellen. She bent forward and scrutinized the likeness more critically. The picture was of a child in a low-cut print dress and pantalettes,--a resolute figure, all self-a.s.surance and self-will.

It was easy to trace in the face the features of the woman who confronted it: the brows of each were high, broad, and still bordered by smoothly parted hair; the well-formed noses, too, were identical; but the eyes of the little maiden in the old-fas.h.i.+oned gown sparkled with an unmalicious merriment and frankness the woman's had lost, and the curving mouth of the child was unmarred by bitter lines. Ellen stirred uncomfortably.

As she looked she suddenly became conscious of a desire to turn her glance away from the calm gaze of her youthful self. Yes, the years had indeed left their mark upon her, she inwardly confessed. She did not look like that now. Lucy was right. Her eyes had changed, and her mouth, too.

"Folks grow old," she murmured peevishly. "n.o.body can expect to keep on looking as they did when they were ten years old."

Abruptly she moved toward the door.

"There's water in the pitcher, an' there's soap and towels here, I guess,"

she remarked. "When you get fixed up, come downstairs; supper'll be on the table."

The door banged and she was gone. But as she moved alone about the kitchen she was still haunted by the clear, questioning eyes of the child in the photograph upstairs. They seemed to follow her accusingly, reproachfully.