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
