Part 7 (1/2)
Mother and daughter were pacing the colonel's veranda, behind a partial screen of rose vines--October vines fast shedding their leaves. Every breeze shook a handful down, which the women's skirts swept with them as they walked. Mrs. Bogardus turned and clasped Christine's arm above the elbow; through the thin sleeve she could feel its cool roundness. It was a soft, small, unmuscular arm, that had never borne its own burdens, to say nothing of a share in the burdens of others.
”Get your jacket,” said the mother. ”There is a chill in the air.”
”There is no chill in me,” laughed Christine. ”You know, mamsie, you aren't a girl. I should simply die in those awful things that you wear.
Did you ever know such a hot house as the colonel keeps!”
”The rooms are small, and the colonel is--impulsive,” Mrs. Bogardus added with a smile.
”There is something very like him about his fire-making. I should know by the way he puts on wood that he never would have ”--Mrs. Bogardus checked herself.
”A large bank account?” Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which was not of a highly sensitive order.
”He has a large heart,” said her mother.
”And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like the roof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head down on it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree, and he strokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a soldier he shall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna complexion, and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's waist-measure, do you suppose?”
Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent woman who has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how uncritical she was of Christine's ”unruly member.”
”It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons like your mother and the colonel,” she said placidly. ”You like it very much out here?”
”Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life.”
”And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?”
”Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way out.”
”There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something.”
Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost oracular.
”Army people are sure of their way out,” said Christine, ”and I guess they find it costs something.”
”Why do they buy so many books, I wonder? If I moved as often as they do, I'd have only paper covers and leave them behind.”
”You are not a reader, mummy. You're a business woman. You look at everything from the practical side.”
”And if I didn't, who would?” Mrs. Bogardus spoke with earnestness. ”We can't all be dreamers like Paul or privileged persons like you. There has to be one in every family to say the things no one likes to hear and do the things n.o.body likes to do.”
”We are the rich repiners and you are the household drudge!” Christine shouted, laughing at her own wit.
”Hush, hus.h.!.+” her mother smiled. ”Don't make so much noise.”
”I should like to know who's to be the drudge in Paul's privileged family. It doesn't strike me it's going to be Moya. And Paul only drudges for people he doesn't know.”
”Moya is a girl you can expect anything of. She is a wonderful mixture of opposites. She has the Irish quickness, and yet she has learned to obey. She has had the freedom and the discipline of these little lordly army posts. She is one of the few girls of her age who does not measure everything from her own point of view.”
”Is that a dig at me, ma'am?”
At that moment Moya came out upon the porch.
She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes that mail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly aroused curiosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintest tinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board walk, the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with the mail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment not to present his back to the ladies.