Jessica, the Heiress

CHAPTER I.

JESSICA DISAPPEARS

Mrs. Benton and Jessica were upon the south porch of the Sobrante ranch house, the former busy as usual, the latter idly enjoying her charming surroundings as she swung to and fro in her hammock.

Mighty vines of pale yellow roses, intermingled with climbing fuchsias, cast shade and sweetness over them; the porch was bordered by a wide swath of calla lilies, also in full flower, while just beyond these a great shrub of poinsettia dazzled the sight with its gleaming blossoms.

When a momentary silence of the other’s nimble tongue allowed her to speak, Jessica exclaimed:

“Aunt Sally, you’re the only person I know who can do three things at once. You sew as fast as you rock, and talk faster than either. You’re a very clever woman.”

The old lady answered complacently, as she bit off a fresh needleful of thread and looked at her companion over her spectacles:

“Yes, dearie, I expect I am. I can do more’n that, too. I can keep up a powerful thinking.”

“About what, pray?”

“How that life is a patchwork quilt. All the colors of the rainbow, and some that any self-respectin’ rainbow would scorn to own. Some scraps so amazing homely you hate to put ’em in, but just have to, else there wouldn’t be blocks enough to square it out.”

“What sort of a scrap am I, Aunt Sally?”

“Huh! Fair to middlin’. Neither very light, nor very dark. You’d be prettier, to my notion, if you’d fetch a needle and thread and sew a seam with me, ’stead of swinging yourself dizzy out of pure laziness.”

“Now, Aunt Sally! I call that unkind! I hate to sew.”

“I believe you. You’ll never put a stitch where a pin will do. But, never mind. If everybody else sets out to spoil you, I don’t know as it’s my call to interfere.”

There was so much tenderness in the glance that accompanied these words that nobody could resent them; least of all the girl, who now sprang from the hammock and curled herself at the other’s feet.

“Tell me those powerful thoughts, auntie, dear.”

Mrs. Benton sighed, but responded nothing loath:

“There’s your mother, Gabriella. Only child, left an orphan, raised by a second cousin once removed, who’d more temper than sense, and when your mother fell in love with your father, who’d more goodness than cash, shut the door on them both forthwith. So off they come to Californy and pitch their tent right here in the spot.”

“They couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place,” their daughter answered, with a sweeping glance over the fair land which formed her home.

“That’s true enough. Then him getting that New York company to buy Paraiso d’Oro Valley, so’s a lot of folks that was down in the world could come out here and live in it. Poor Cass’us dying, just as he’d got things to his liking; the losing of the title deed and your journeying to Los Angeles to get it back.”

“Not ‘lost,’ Aunt Sally. Poor Antonio hid it at El Desierto, in the cave of the Three Rocks. He–”

“Cat’s foot! Don’t you go to ‘pooring’ that snaky sneak, or you and me’ll fall out. I should hate that.”

“So should I. But you’ve set me thinking, too. How wonderful that Mr. Ninian Sharp was, the newspaper man. If it hadn’t been for him, we’d never have won that battle. What could I have done, with Ephraim Marsh in the hospital, and I knowing nothing about the city? That Mr. Hale was another splendid man. I can understand how he had to keep his word and do his best for the company which thought father had wronged it; and I can also understand that he was as glad as we to find their money safe with the poor banker who was killed, Luis Garcia’s father.”

“‘Pooring’ again are you? Another scamp, too.”

“Oh, Aunt Sally! He’s–dead!” remonstrated Jessica, in awestruck tones.

“And a fine job he is. There’s plenty of good-for-noughts still living. A man that’s been wicked all his life ain’t apt to turn saint at the end of it. I like folks that do their duty as they go along. If the robber, Garcia, had got well he’d likely claimed our Luis and reared him to be as bad as himself.”

“Aunt Sally, you’re uncharitable this morning. What’s made you so?”

“The plumb meanness of human natur’.”

“Your own?” asked the girl teasingly.

“No, saucebox. My boy, John’s. His, and all the rest of ’em.”

“Toward whom?”

“Oh! ’tisn’t toward anybody, out and out. If it was I’d roll up my sleeves and switch the lot of ’em, just as if they were the little tackers they act like. It’s them pesky hints and shrugged shoulders, every time the Dutch Winklers or ‘Forty-niner’ is spoke of. I wish to goodness that man’d come home and clear his name, or give me a chance to do it. He no more stole that knitting-woman’s money than I did.”

“Aunt Sally! Stole? Stole! My Ephraim! Why, you must be crazy!”

“There, it’s out. Needn’t hop up like that, mad as a hornet, at me. I’m not the one hints and shrugs. It’s the whole lot of your precious ‘boys’–boys; indeed! and needing spanking more’n they ever did in their lives.”

Jessica’s swift pacing of the wide porch came to a sudden halt, and she dropped down again at Mrs. Benton’s feet, feeling as if the floor had given way beneath her tread.

“This, then, was what my mother meant, that very day when I came back, that Ephraim was happier where he was! The dear old fellow; thrown to the street by his graceless Stiffleg; picked up with a leg full of broken bones; a prisoner in a hospital all these weeks; giving all his savings of years to us; and the ‘boys’ he’s lived with since before I was born accusing him of–theft! Aunt Sally, it’s too monstrous to be true!”

“’Tis, indeedy. Seem’s if the Evil One had been let loose, here at Sobrante, when the word of a half-wit–poor half, at that–is held proof against the entire life of an honest old man.”

Aunt Sally was so deeply moved that, for once, she allowed herself a moment’s respite from unceasing industry, unconsciously holding a patchwork block to her moist eyes, and slowly swaying the great rocker as she sorrowfully reflected that:

“I raised him the best I could, that boy John. I gave him a pill once a week, regular, to keep his bile down. I washed him every Saturday night and spanked him after I got through. I never let him eat butter when he had gravy, and I made him say his prayers night and morning. I had a notion that such wholesome rearin’ would turn him out a decent man; and now, just see!”

In spite of her own distress, Jessica laughed.

“Aunt Sally, if anybody but yourself hinted that John wasn’t a ‘decent’ man you’d do something dreadful to punish the slanderer.”

“Suppose I should? Wouldn’t I have a right? Ain’t he my own?”

Jessica smiled faintly, but sat for a long time silent. The talkative woman in the rocker also kept silence, brooding over many things. Finally she burst forth:

“I don’t see why it is that just as soon as a body gets into smooth sailing, along comes a storm and upsets things again. There was your mother, beginning to feel she could go ahead and do what her husband wanted to, and now here’s this bad feeling among her trusted hired men. Suspicion is the pisenest yarb that grows. The folks that could suspect old ‘Forty-niner’ of wrong things’ll be plumb ready to watch out for one another. Somebody’ll be caught nappin’, sure. ’Tisn’t in human natur’ to walk upright all the time, and it’s foolish to expect it. But–shouldn’t wonder if I’d be the next one accused. And it comin’ Christmas time too. Land! I’m so bestead I’ve sewed that patch in wrong side up. What? Hey? You laughin’? I don’t see anything funny in this business, myself,” said the old lady, fretfully.

“You would if you could look in a glass! Your face is all streaked purple and green, where you cried on your patch,” explained Jessica, whose grief had changed to amusement.

“You don’t say! I knew them colors’d run. John fetched the piece from Marion, last time he went for the mail. Of the two stores there, I don’t know which is the worst. Their ‘Merrimac’ won’t wash, and their flannel shrinks, and their thread breaks every needleful. But, to ‘Boston’–dear me! Whatever did make me think of that place! Now I’ve thought, it’ll stick in my mind till it drives me wild–or back there, and that’s about the same thing. To go live with that slimsy cousin of mine, after being in the same house with your mother, is like falling off a roof into a squashy mud puddle. That’s all the sense and substance there is to Sarah, that was a Harrison before she was a Ma’sh. I warrant she’s clean out of medicine an money, for she’s a regular squanderer when it comes to makin’ rag rugs. I wish you could see ’em! I just wish’t you could. Such dogs and cats as she weaves into ’em would have druv’ Noah plumb crazy if he had to take ’em into the Ark. Their eyes are just round rings of white, with another round ring of black in the middle–”

“Aren’t rings always round, auntie, dear?”

“No, they ain’t. Not after they’ve been trod on!” was the swift retort, as the old lady pointed downwards toward the floor of the porch.

Both stooped and rose again, astonishment deepening upon their faces as Jessica held out her open palm with the injured trinket lying upon it.

“Elsa Winkler’s wedding ring! How came it here?”

“How indeed? I don’t believe that woman’s been on these premises since I came.”

“Even if she had, Aunt Sally, why should she bring the ring with her? It was always too small for her, and she never had it on except during the marriage ceremony. I’ve often heard her laugh about it; how Wolfgang bought a ring as big as his money would pay for, and let it go at that. She didn’t see what difference it made whether it went only on the tip of her finger or all the way down it. But she must have been here, even if we didn’t know it. I’ll take it straight to mother to keep. Then, too, I’ve idled enough. I promised my dear I’d write all her Christmas invitations for her, because she says it will save her the trouble, and be such a help to my education.”

“Christmas! Well, well. Does seem as if I couldn’t leave before then, nohow. And hear me, Jessie, darlin’, don’t you let your poor ma worry her head over your book learning. Being she was a schoolma’am herself makes her feel as if she wasn’t doing the square thing by you letting you run wild, so to speak. If the Lord means you to get schoolin’ He’ll put you in the right way of it, don’t you doubt. Who all does Gabriella set out to ask here to visit?”

“Mr. Hale, of course; and dear Mr. Sharp. I hope Ephraim will be well enough to come, too. Then there are the Winklers, from the mine; the McLeods, from their inn at Marion; and, maybe–we’ve never had a Christmas without him–maybe poor Antonio.”

“Well, all I say is–if you ask him you needn’t ask me. There wouldn’t be room on this whole ranch for the pair of us.”

“Then, of course, it’s you first. Yet, it’s all so puzzling to me. If it’s a time of ‘peace and good will,’ why do people keep on feeling angry with one another?”

“Jessica Trent, dast you stand there and look me in the face and say that you have forgive that sneaky snakey manager for cheating your mother like he did?”

“He was sorry, Aunt Sally. Every letter he sends here tells that.”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“And he’s punished, isn’t he, even if the New York folks let him go free, by his disappointment? I can fancy how dreadful it would seem, did seem to think this beautiful ranch was one’s own, and then suddenly to learn that it was not.”

“Oh! Jessie! You try my soul with your forgivin’ and forgivin’. Next you know you’ll be sorry for Ferd, the dwarf, though ’tis he himself what’s started all this bobery against ‘Forty-niner,’ and eggs them silly Winklers on to be so–so hateful. I’m glad that witless woman did lose her ring, and I hope it’ll never be straightened out. I guess I’m out of conceit with everybody living, not exceptin’ old Sally Benton, herself!”

With this home thrust at her own ill temper, the whimsical woman betook herself and her dangling array of patchwork to Mrs. Trent’s sitting-room; there to discuss the prospects for holiday festivities and to take account of stock, in the way of groceries on hand. Deep in the subject of pies and puddings, they forgot other matters, till a wild whoop outside the window disturbed them, and they beheld Ned and Luis, painted in startling “Indian fashion,” mounted upon a highly decorated horse, which had never been seen in the Sobrante stables.

“Hi, there, mother! Your money or your life!”

“Money–life!” echoed Luis, clinging to his playmate’s waist and peeping over his shoulder.

The horse was rearing and plunging more dangerously each second, and both women rushed to the rescue of the imperiled children, who realized nothing of their danger, but shouted and screamed the louder the more frantic their steed became. Mrs. Trent caught the bridle, and Aunt Sally snatched first one, then the other, child from the creature’s back, who, as soon as he was relieved of his yelling burden, started at a gallop across the garden, ruining its beds and borders on his way.

“Oh, oh! Children, how could you? Whose horse is that? Where did you get that paint? How shall I ever make you clean?”

“I’ll tend to that part, Gabriella. You just call a boy to fix them flower beds before the plants wither. Oh, you rascals! You won’t forget this morning’s fun in a hurry, I warn you! You’ve been in John Benton’s paint pots again. Well, you like paint, you shall have it, and all you want of it too. Red and yeller, green and pink, with a streak of blue. H’m! You’re a tasty lot, ain’t you!”

The lads squirmed and twisted, but Aunt Sally’s grip merely tightened upon them so that finally, they ceased struggling and allowed her to lead them whither she would, which was to the small laundry, that stood at some slight distance from the house. Here she sternly regarded each bedaubed, but otherwise nude, little figure, with so fierce an expression upon her usually pleasant face that the young miscreants winced, and Ned cried out:

“Quit a-talking eyes at me that way, Aunt Sally Benton! I don’t like it.”

“Oh! you don’t, eh? Well, what’d you disgrace yourselves this way for, if ’twasn’t to make folks stare? Where’s your clothes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Very well, then I’ll help you to remember.”

“I won’t be whipped! I’ll tell my mother!” shrieked Ned, retreating toward the closed door of the building.

“Won’t be whipped, old Aunt Sally!” added Luis, clasping his leader; whereupon the customary scuffle ensued; for, no matter what their business in hand, personal contact always insured a slight passage at arms. At present, this diverted their thoughts from what might be in store at the will of their mutual enemy, and it came with appalling suddenness. Each small boy was lifted, bidden to shut his eyes and mouth, then plunged downward into a barrel of some cold slippery stuff. Here he was soused vigorously up and down, until every portion of his skin was smeared with the stick mess; after which he was placed on his feet and once more commanded:

“Now, son, just you stand there and dreen a spell. Lucky I made that barrel of soft soap last week. It’s just the stuff to take this paint off, and what drips from you to the old adobe floor won’t hurt. Pasqual’s a master hand at scrubbin’, and I’ll give him the job of you and the floor both. Reckon you’ll wish you hadn’t ever seen paint pots time he gets through. Now–where’s your clothes?”

Ned was silent, but Luis “guessed they’s under a tree.”

“Well, son, Garcia, knowing it better than guessing ’bout now. Me and Santa Claus is sort of partners, and he’s due here soon. ’Twon’t take me a jerk of a lamb’s tail to write and tell him how things stand at Sobrante, and whose stockings’d better have switches ’stead of goodies in ’em. Hear me? Where’s your clothes?”

A laugh caused Aunt Sally to glance through the window, where Jessica was an amused spectator of the scene within. She now begged:

“Don’t be hard on the little tackers, auntie, dear. That was Prince, Mr. Hale’s horse, that Pedro has tended on the mesa all these days. I’ll find out how they came by it, and their clothes at the same time. Tell mother, please,” and with a merry nod to the unhappy urchins, so shamfacedly “dreening” at Mrs. Benton’s pleasure, she disappeared.

Disappeared not only from the window, but, apparently, from life, as suddenly and completely as if the earth had opened and engulfed her.

CHAPTER II.

THE HUSH OF ANXIETY

Mrs. Trent and Aunt Sally sat down alone to dinner. The little lads were in their beds, recovering from the sound scrubbing Pasqual had given them. Clothed in fresh nightgowns, and refreshed by generous bowls of bread and milk, they had been left in a darkened room to reflect upon the hard ways of transgressors. But reflection was unusual work for their active brains, and they had promptly fallen asleep; hence the profound peace which rested upon the house.

“I wonder where Jessica is? She was to have written my letters for me, but I haven’t seen her since breakfast,” said the mother, somewhat anxiously.

“Oh! she’s around somewhere. Was at the laundry window while I was tending to the children, and said she’d go find their clothes. In all my born days I never saw two small heads could hatch the mischief Ned’s and Luis’ can. It’s out of one scrape into another, and seems if they must break their necks some day.”

“Oh! don’t forecast evil. Their pranks keep my nerves on tension all the time, yet I shouldn’t worry so. They always escape from harm. But I’d like to know how they got that horse.”

“So would I. They must have had help painting it. Stands to reason two midgets like them couldn’t have kept a high-spirited creatur’ quiet while they wasted enough good paint on him to cover a meeting house.”

“John won’t be pleased. He’s so careful of his belongings, even I never touch them without permission,” said the ranch mistress, smiling afresh at the memory of the ridiculous picture the boys had made.

“Don’t surprise me’t you laugh, Gabriella, but you’d ought to put the reins on tighter to them chaps, lest first you know they’ll be driving you, not you them. Do it already, seems if.”

“How can I be stern with Cassius’ little son? Every day I see more resemblance to his father in the childs face; yes, and in his nature, too. Nobody was ever fonder of fun than my husband, yet surely there never was a better man.”

“Oh! Neddy’s all right. Trouble is to keep him from thinkin’ so himself. But, there. Why don’t you eat your dinner? You haven’t more’n half touched it. It’s a shame to waste good victuals, and these are good. I fixed ’em myself.”

The other smiled again at the complacency visible upon her friend’s face, which so innocently dsplayed the same feeling that had just been deplored in Ned. However, Aunt Sally was too busy with her own food to notice anything else, and it seemed long to her companion before she had finished and risen, to call, sharply:

“Pas-qual! Oh, Pasqual-ly! Why aren’t you on hand to clear the table? Don’t you know I’ve got–and here followed a long list of things to be done, more than many could accomplish in several days.” Each had some reference to the coming holidays, and the house boy understood this. He entered, more willingly than usual, grinning with the anticipation of the raisins he would have to stone, the nuts he must crack, and the goodly samples of each that he would surreptitiously procure.

Mrs. Trent asked him to put aside Miss Jessica’s dinner, till she came in, and to be sure that it was also kept nice and warm.

“All right, lady. I’ll do that good enough. Don’t mind what I has to do for ‘Lady Jess’;” and immediately seized the plate, which Aunt Sally had already filled, to place it in the warming oven.

Then the mother went out, and among the adobe buildings, which formed the “boys” quarters and the business part of the ranch, calling gently, as she went, in the brooding sort of note which had long been a signal between her and her child. But no Jessica responded; and, to her fancy, it seemed that the whole place was strangely silent.

“After all, that is not to be wondered at. The men are done with dinner, and gone about their work. The boys are asleep, and only Jessica would be anywhere near. What can keep her, I wonder?” and with this thought the lady again uttered the tender call which would summon her daughter, if she were within hearing.

Then she returned to the house and tried to accept Aunt Sally’s theory that, likely some of them ‘boys’ is in trouble about his job, and wants his ‘captain’ to go oversee. ’Mazin’ strange, Gabriella, what a influence that child has over ’em. “They ’pear to think, the whole lot of ’em, that she can straighten out all the kinks that get into brains or business.”

“She is quick to understand,” said the mother, proudly.

“Course. Nothin’ strange, is it, seeing who her folks was? Best go take a nap, honey.”

“Oh, no! Thank you for suggesting it, but I’m too wakeful.”

“Well, then, I’ll fetch them kerns and citron right out here on the kitchen porch. The sun’s off it now, and there ain’t a prettier spot on earth where to prepare Christmas fixin’s. I’ll fetch the raisins and stone ’em myself. That Pasky boy’d eat more’n half of ’em, if I left ’em to him. Then we can visit right sociable; and I can free my mind. The truth is, Gabriella Trent, that I ought to be harnessin’ Rosetty an’ Balaam this minute, and be startin’ for ‘Boston.’”

“Oh, Aunt Sally!” protested the ranch mistress, in real distress.

“There, dearie, hush! Don’t worry. I said ‘I ought,’ I didn’t say I was goin’. Seem’s if I couldn’t just tear myself away from Sobrante. If Sarah Ma’sh, she that was a Harrison, and married Methuel, hasn’t got gumption enough to bile her own plum puddin’, I ’most feel as if she’d ought to go without. Though I don’t know as that’s real Christian in me.”

“Dear Mrs. Benton, I wish everybody was as sincere a Christian as you are.”

In her surprise, Aunt Sally tipped her rocker so far back that she just escaped upset.

“Why, Gabriella Trent! Me! Me! Don’t say that, and make me feel meaner’n dirt. It’s you, honey, is that–”

Mrs. Trent laughed as she answered:

“We make a mutual admiration society, don’t we? But Aunt Sally, you mustn’t think of leaving Sobrante before the holidays are past. I can’t spare you. I need the help of your head, as well as your hands, and what would Christmas be to the children, if you weren’t here to cuddle and scold them after their greediness has made them ill.”

“Well, well, child, say no more. Here I am, and here I’ll stay, if Sarah Ma’sh don’t get a stiver of pudding or fowl. Here, honey, I reckon you best slice this citron. You’ve got a dainty hand for such work and–my sake’s alive! That fruit cake’d ought to been made weeks ago, if it was to get any sort of ripeness into it before it was et! Hurry up, do. We haven’t a minute to waste.”

This adjuration had the good result of amusing Mrs. Trent so that, for an hour at least, she forgot to be anxious over her daughter’s unexplained absence. Aunt Sally was a person who was always “driven to death” by the mere thought of tasks for which there was, in reality, ample time. But now that she had decided to remain at the ranch for a further indefinite stay, her spirits rose and her brain busied itself with a thousand plans for the comfort or amusement of the household, over which she domineered, yet so ardently loved.

“We haven’t got much money for presents, I know. So I’ll just get out the piece-bag to-night, and press off them canton flannel scraps. They’ll make splended ducks for the youngsters–”

“I fear that would be wasted labor, friend. The little lads have outgrown homemade toys. Nothin that will not make a noise is acceptable to them. I’d thought of sending over to Marion for drums and whistles, if the stores there can furnish them.”

“Well, Gabriella Trent! I declare you are the benightenest woman that ever set out to raise children! Drums! For them two? My, my! But what won’t a mother do for her little ones, I’d like to know!”

The words were no sooner out of Mrs. Benton’s mouth than she regretted them. At the name of “mother” Mrs. Trent’s forced gayety vanished, and she lifted her eyes to her companion’s face with a pitiful appeal.

“Aunt Sally, what has happened to Jessica?”