The Morrison children, coming home from school, would find no aches, no carping, no headache. Their noise was not a scandal nor their dirty faces a care. And when the giggles overcame them, why, their mother was giggling too.
Mr. Morrison, coming home, would tell of the day and get listened to, and he would try to retell the drummer’s stories—some of them at least. The supper would be delicious—omelets never fell and cakes rose to balloons of lightness, biscuits fluffed up, and no one could season a stew like Agnes Morrison. After supper, when the children had laughed themselves to sleep, like as not Mr. Morrison would touch Agnes on the shoulder in their old, old signal and they would go to bed and make love and be very happy.
The visit to Dessie might carry its charge into two days more before it petered out and the little headaches came back and business was not so good as last year. That’s how Dessie was and that’s what she could do. She carried excitement in her arms just as Samuel had. She was the darling, she was the beloved of the family.
Dessie was not beautiful. Perhaps she wasn’t even pretty, but she had the glow that makes men follow a woman in the hope of reflecting a little of it. You would have thought that in time she would have got over her first love affair and found another love, but she did not. Come to think of it, none of the Hamiltons, with all their versatility, had any versatility in love. None of them seemed capable of light or changeable love.
Dessie did not simply throw up her hands and give up. It was much worse than that. She went right on doing and being what she was—without the glow. The people who loved her ached for her, seeing her try, and they got to trying for her.
Dessie’s friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad. In time the Mrs. Morrisons found unassailable reasons for not going to the little house by the bakery. They weren’t disloyal. They didn’t want to be sad as much as they wanted to be happy. It is easy to find a logical and virtuous reason for not doing what you don’t want to do.
Dessie’s business began to fall off. And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness. Times were changing and the ready-made dress was becoming popular. It was no longer a disgrace to wear one. If Mr. Morrison was stocking ready-mades, it was only reasonable that Agnes Morrison should be seen in them.
The family was worried about Dessie, but what could you do when she would not admit there was anything wrong with her? She did admit to pains in her side, quite fierce, but they lasted only a little while and came only at intervals.
Then Samuel died and the world shattered like a dish. His sons and daughters and friends groped about among the pieces, trying to put some kind of world together again.
Dessie decided to sell her business and go back to the ranch to live with Tom. She hadn’t much of any business to sell out. Liza knew about it, and Olive, and Dessie had written to Tom. But Will, sitting scowling at the table in the San Francisco Chop House, had not been told. Will frothed inwardly and finally he balled up his napkin and got up. “I forgot something,” he said to Adam. “I’ll see you on the train.”
He walked the half-block to Dessie’s house and went through the high grown garden and rang Dessie’s bell.
She was having her dinner alone, and she came to the door with her napkin in her hand. “Why, hello, Will,” she said and put up her pink cheek for him to kiss. “When did you get in town?”
“Business,” he said. “Just here between trains. I want to talk to you.”
She led him back to her kitchen and dining-room combined, a warm little room papered with flowers. Automatically she poured a cup of coffee and placed it for him and put the sugar bowl and the cream pitcher in front of it.
“Have you seen Mother?” she asked.
“I’m just here over trains,” he said gruffly. “Dessie, is it true you want to go back to the ranch?”
“I was thinking of it.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She smiled uncertainly. “Why not? What’s wrong with that? Tom’s lonely down there.”
“You’ve got a nice business here,” he said.
“I haven’t any business here,” she replied. “I thought you knew that.”
“I don’t want you to go,” he repeated sullenly.
Her smile was wistful and she tried her best to put a little mockery in her manner. “My big brother is masterful. Tell Dessie why not.”
“It’s too lonely down there.”
“It won’t be as lonely with the two of us.”
Will pulled at his lips angrily. He blurted, “Tom’s not himself. You shouldn’t be alone with him.”
“Isn’t he well? Does he need help?”
Will said, “I didn’t want to tell you—I don’t think Tom’s ever got over—the death. He’s strange.”
She smiled affectionately. “Will, you’ve always thought he was strange. You thought he was strange when he didn’t like business.”
“That was different. But now he’s broody. He doesn’t talk. He goes walking alone in the hills at night. I went out to see him and—he’s been writing poetry—pages of it all over the table.”
“Didn’t you ever write poetry, Will?”
“I did not.”
“I have,” said Dessie. “Pages and pages of it all over the table.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Let me decide,” she said softly. “I’ve lost something. I want to try to find it again.”
“You’re talking foolish.”
She came around the table and put her arms around his neck. “Dear brother,” she said, “please let me decide.”
He went angrily out of the house and barely caught his train.
2
Tom met Dessie at the King City station. She saw him out of the train window, scanning every coach for her. He was burnished, his face shaved so close that its darkness had a shine like polished wood. His red mustache was clipped. He wore a new Stetson hat with a flat crown, a tan Norfolk jacket with a belt buckle of mother-of-pearl. His shoes glinted in the noonday light so that it was sure he had gone over them with his handkerchief just before the train arrived. His hard collar stood up against his strong red neck, and he wore a pale blue knitted tie with a horseshoe tie pin. He tried to conceal his excitement by clasping his rough brown hands in front of him.
Dessie waved wildly out the window, crying, “Here I am, Tom, here I am!” though she knew he couldn’t hear her over the grinding wheels of the train as the coach slid past him. She climbed down the steps and saw him looking frantically about in the wrong direction. She smiled and walked up behind him.
“I beg your pardon, stranger,” she said quietly. “Is there a Mister Tom Hamilton here?”
He spun around and he squealed with pleasure and picked her up in a bear hug and danced around her. He held her off the ground with one arm and spanked her bottom with his free hand. He nuzzled her cheek with his harsh mustache. Then he held her back by the shoulders and looked at her. Both of them threw back their heads and howled with laughter.
The station agent leaned out his window and rested his elbows, protected with black false sleeves, on the sill. He said over his shoulder to the telegrapher, “Those Hamiltons! Just look at them!”
Tom and Dessie, fingertips touching, were doing a courtly heel-and-toe while he sang Doodle-doodle-doo and Dessie sang Deedle-deedle-dee, and then they embraced again.
Tom looked down at her. “Aren’t you Dessie Hamilton? I seem to remember you. But you’ve changed. Where are your pigtails?”
It took him quite a fumbling time to get her luggage checks, to lose them in his pockets, to find them and pick up the wrong pieces. At last he had her baskets piled in the back of the buckboard. The two bay horses pawed the hard ground and threw up their heads so that the shined pole jumped and the doubletrees squeaked. The harness was polished and the horse brasses glittered like gold. There was a red bow tied halfway up the buggy whip and red ribbons were braided into the horses’ manes and tails.
Tom helped Dessie into the seat and pretended to peek coyly at her ankle. Then he snapped up the check reins and unfastened the leather tie reins from the bits. He unwrapped the lines from the whip stock, and the horses turned so sharply that the wheel screamed against the guard.