May Iverson's Career Part 18

The brown-eyed woman drew in a deep breath.

"Tha's whut I want," she exclaimed, ecstatically, "but it looked like I couldn't git near her."

We sat down on an empty bench half-way down the hall, and watched the human stream flow toward and engulf the lecturer. "Ain't she jest wonderful?" breathed my companion. "She knows us women better 'n we know ourselves. She knows all we done an' how we feel about it. I felt like she was tellin' them people all my secrets, but I didn't mind."

She hesitated, then added dreamily, "It's high time men was told whut their women are thinkin' an' can't say fer themselves."

In the excited group around the speaker a baby, held high in its mother's arms to avoid being injured in the crush, shrieked out a sudden protest. My new acquaintance regarded it with sympathetic eyes.

"I've raised six of 'em," she told me. "My oldest is a girl nineteen.

My youngest is a boy of twelve. My big girl she's lookin' after the house an' the fam'ly while I'm gone. I druv sixty miles 'cross the plains to hear Dr. Harland. It took me two days, an' it's jest about wore out my horse--but this is worth it. I ain't had sech a night sence I was a girl."

She looked at me, her brown eyes lighting up again with their queer, excited fires.

"My Jim he 'most fell dead when I told him I was comin'," she went on.

"But I says to him, 'I ain't been away from this place one minute in twenty years,' I says. 'Now I guess you folks can git 'long without me fer a few days. For, Jim,' I says, 'ef I don't git away, ef I don't go somewhere an' have some change, somethin's goin' to snap, an' I guess it'll be me!'"

"You mean," I exclaimed, in surprise, "that you've never left your ranch in twenty years?"

She nodded.

"Not once," she corroborated. "Not fer a minute. You know whut the summers are--work, work from daylight to dark; an' in the winters I had t' hol' down the claim while Jim he went to the city an' worked.

Sometimes he'd only git home once or twice the hull winter. Then when we begin to git on, seemed like 'twas harder than ever. Jim he kept addin' more land an' more stock to whut we had, an' there was more hands to be waited on, an' the babies come pretty fast. Lately Jim he's gone to Chicago every year to sell his cattle, but I ain't bin able to git away till now."

During her eager talk--a talk that gushed forth like a long-repressed stream finding a sudden outlet--she had been leaning toward me with her arm on the back of the bench and her s.h.i.+ning eyes on mine. Now, as if remembering her "company manners," she sat back stiffly, folded her work-roughened hands primly in her lap, and sighed with supreme content.

"My!" she whispered, happily, "I feel like I was in a diff'rent world.

It don't seem possible that only sixty miles out on the plains that ranch is right there, an' everything is goin' on without me. An' here I be, hearin' the music, an' all the folks singin' together, an' that wonderful woman talkin' like she did! I feel"--she hesitated for a comparison, and then went on, with the laugh of a happy girl--"I feel like I was up in a balloon an' on my way to heaven!"

I forgot the heat of the crowded hall, the smell of the smoking lamps, the shuffle of hobnailed shoes on the pine floors, the wails of fretful babies. I almost felt that I, too, was floating off with this ecstatic stranger in the balloon of her imagination.

"I see," I murmured. "You're tired of drudgery. You haven't played enough in all these years."

She swung round again until she faced me, her sallow cheeks flushed, her eager, brilliant eyes on mine.

"I ain't played none at all," she said. "I dunno what play is. An'

work ain't the only thing I'm tired of. I'm tired of everything. I'm tired of everything--except this."

Her voice lingered on the last two words. Her eyes left my face for an instant and followed the lecturer, of whose white head we obtained a glimpse from time to time as the crowd opened around her. Still gazing toward her, but now as if unseeingly, the plainswoman went on, her voice dropping to a lower, more confidential note.

"I'm sick of everything," she repeated. "Most of all, I'm sick of the plains and the sky--stretching on and on and on and on, like they do, as if they was no end to 'em. Sometimes when I'm alone I stand at my door an' look at 'em an' shake my fists an' shriek. I begun to think they wasn't anything but them nowhere. It seemed 's if the little town back East where I come from was jest a place I dreamed of--it couldn't really be. Nothin' _could_ be 'cept those plains an' the cattle an'

the sky. Then, this spring--"

She turned again to face me.

"I dunno why I'm tellin' you all this," she broke off, suddenly.

"Guess it's because I ain't had no one to talk to confidential fer so long, an' you look like you understand."

"I do understand," I told her.

She nodded.

"Well, this spring," she went on, "I begun to hate everything, same as I hated the plains. I couldn't exactly hate my children; but it seemed to me they never did nothin' right, an' I jest had to keep tellin'

myself they was mine, an' they was young an' didn't understand how they worried me by things they done. Then the hands drove me 'most crazy. They was one man--why, jes' to have that man pa.s.s the door made me feel sick, an' yet I hadn't nothin' again' him, really. An'

finally, last of all, Jim--even Jim--"

Her voice broke. Sudden tears filled her eyes, quenching for the moment the sparks that burned there.

"Jim's a good man," she continued, steadily, after a moment's pause.

"He's a good, hard-workin' man. He's good to me in his way, an' he's good to the children. But of course he ain't got much time for us. He never was a talker. He's a worker, Jim is, an' when night comes he's so tired he falls asleep over the fire. But everything he done always seemed pretty near right to me--till this spring."

Her voice flattened and died on the last three words. For a moment she sat silent, brooding, a strange puzzled look in her brown eyes. The crowd around Dr. Harland was thinning out, and people were leaving the hall. We could easily have reached her now, but I sat still, afraid to dam the verbal freshet that was following so many frozen winters.

"This spring," she went on, at last, "it jest seems like I can't bear to have even Jim around." She checked herself and touched my arm timidly, almost apologetically. "It's a terrible thing to say, ain't it?" she almost whispered, and added slowly, "It's a terrible thing to _feel_. I can't bear to see him come into the room. I can't bear the way he eats, or the way he smokes, or the way he sets down, or the way he gits up, or the way he breathes. He does 'em all jest like he always has. They ain't nothin' wrong with 'em. But I can't bear 'em no more." She beat her hands together softly, with a queer, frantic gesture. Her voice took on a note of rising excitement. "I can't," she gasped. "I can't, _I can't_!"

I rose.

"Come," I said, cheerfully. "Dr. Harland is free now. I want you to talk to her. She can help you. She's a very wise woman."

A momentary flicker of something I did not recognize shone in my companion's eyes. Was it doubt or pity, or both?

"She ain't a married woman, is she?" she asked, quietly, as she rose and walked down the aisle by my side.

I laughed.

"No," I conceded, "she isn't, and neither am I. But you know even the Bible admits that of ten virgins five were wise!"

Her face, somber now, showed no reflection of my amus.e.m.e.nt. She seemed to be considering our claims to wisdom, turning over in her mind the possibility of help from either of us, and experiencing a depressing doubt.

"Well, you're women, anyway," she murmured, at last, a pathetic note of uncertainty lingering in her voice.

"Will you tell me your name?" I asked, "so that I may introduce you properly to Dr. Harland?"

"Tildy Mears," she answered, promptly; then added, with stiff formality, "Mrs. James Mears of the X. X. M. Ranch."

We were already facing Dr. Harland, and I presented Mrs. Mears without further delay. The leader met her with the brilliant smile, the close hand-clasp, the warm, human sympathy which rarely failed to thrill the man or woman she was greeting. Under their influence Mrs. Mears expanded like a thirsty plant in a gentle shower. Within five minutes the two women were friends.

"You're at the hotel, of course," Dr. Harland asked, when she heard of the sixty-mile drive across the country. "Then you must have supper with Miss Iverson and me. We always want something after these long evenings, and I will have it sent up to our sitting-room, so that we can have a comfortable talk."

Half an hour later we were grouped around the table in the little room, and over the cold meat, canned peaches, lemonade, and biscuits which formed our collation Tildy Mears retold her story, adding innumerable details and intimate touches under the stimulus of the doctor's interest. At the end of it Dr. Harland sat for a long moment in silent thought. Then, from the briskness with which she began to speak, I knew that she had found some solution of the human problem before us.

"Mrs. Mears," she said, abruptly, and without any comment on the other's recital, "I wish you would travel around with us for a fortnight. We're going to remain in this part of the state, and you would find our meetings extremely interesting. On the other hand, you could give me a great deal of help and information, and, though I cannot offer you a salary, I will gladly pay your expenses."

This was a plan very characteristic of Dr. Harland, to whom half-way measures of any kind made no appeal. I looked at Tildy Mears. For an instant, under the surprise of the leader's unexpected words, she had sat still, stunned; in the next, her eyes had flashed to us one of their ecstatic messages, as if she had grasped all the other woman's proposition held of change, of interest, of growth. Then abruptly the light faded, went out.

"I'd love to," she said, dully, "I'd jest _love_ to! But of course it ain't possible. Why, I got to start home to-morrer. Jim," she gulped, bringing out the name with an obvious effort, "Jim expecks me back Sat'day night."

"Listen to me, Mrs. Mears"--Dr. Harland leaned forward, her compelling eyes deep in those of the Western woman--"I'm going to speak to you very frankly--as if we were old friends; as if we were sisters, as, indeed, we are."