第29章
"Well, I do think she might show some signs of gratitude and some gentleness towards those ready to die for her.""Oh, you do!" said he, with high scorn."You all combine to ruin her temper and disposition with foolish flattery and weak yielding to her whims, right or wrong; you smile at her imperious pride and encourage her wilfulness, and then not only wonder at the results, but blame her, poor child, for all.Oh, you are a fine lot, The Duke and all of you!"He had a most exasperating ability for putting one in the wrong, and I could only think of the proper and sufficient reply long after the opportunity for making it had passed.I wondered what The Duke would say to this doctrine.All the following day, which was Sunday, I could see that Gwen was on The Pilot's mind.He was struggling with the problem of pain.
Monday morning found us on the way to the Old Timer's ranch.And what a morning it was! How beautiful our world seemed! About us rolled the round-topped, velvet hills, brown and yellow or faintly green, spreading out behind us to the broad prairie, and before, clambering up and up to meet the purple bases of the great mountains that lay their mighty length along the horizon and thrust up white, sunlit peaks into the blue sky.On the hillsides and down in the sheltering hollows we could see the bunches of cattle and horses feeding upon the rich grasses.High above, the sky, cloudless and blue, arched its great kindly roof from prairie to mountain peaks, and over all, above, below, upon prairie, hillsides and mountains, the sun poured his floods of radiant yellow light.
As we followed the trail that wound up and into the heart of these rounded hills and ever nearer to the purple mountains, the morning breeze swept down to meet us, bearing a thousand scents, and filling us with its own fresh life.One can know the quickening joyousness of these Foothill breezes only after he has drunk with wide-open mouth, deep and full of them.
Through all this mingling beauty of sunlit hills and shady hollows and purple, snow-peaked mountains, we rode with hardly a word, every minute adding to our heart-filling delight, but ever with the thought of the little room where, shut in from all this outside glory, lay Gwen, heart-sore with fretting and longing.This must have been in The Pilot's mind, for he suddenly held up his horse and burst out:
"Poor Gwen, how she loves all this!--it is her very life.How can she help fretting the heart out of her? To see this no more!" He flung himself off his bronco and said, as if thinking aloud: "It is too awful! Oh, it is cruel! I don't wonder at her! God help me, what can I say to her?"He threw himself down upon the grass and turned over on his face.
After a few minutes he appealed to me, and his face was sorely troubled.