The Amazon with a handkerchief apron brought Rickard his soup. He was raising his first spoonful to his mouth when he saw the face, carefully averted, of the girl he had met at the Marshalls’ table, Innes Hardin. His eyes jumped to her companions, the man a stranger, and then, Gerty Holmes. At least, Mrs. Hardin! Somehow, it surprised him to find her pretty.
She had achieved a variety of distinction, preserving, moreover, the clear-cut babyish chin which had made its early appeal to him. There was the same fluffy hair, its ringlets a bit artificial to his more sophisticated eyes, the same well-turned nose. He had been wondering about this meeting; he found that he had been expecting some sort of shock—who said that the love of to-day is the jest of to-morrow? The discovery that Gerty was not a jest brought the surprised gratification which we award a letter or composition written in our youth. Were we as clever as that, so complete at eighteen or twenty-one? Could we, now, with all our experience, do any better, or indeed as well? That particular sentence with wings! Could we make it fly to-day as it soared yesterday? Rickard was finding that Gerty’s more mature charms did not accelerate his heart-beats, but they were certainly flattering to his early judgment. And he had expected her to be a shock!
He was staring into his plate of chilled soup. Calf-love! For he had loved her, or at least he had loved her chin, her pretty childish way of lifting it. She was prettier than he had pictured her. Queer that a man like Hardin could draw such women for sister and wife—the blood tie was the most amazing. For when women come to marry, they make often a queer choice. It occurred to him that that might have been Hardin—he had not wanted to stare at them.
That was not Hardin’s face. It held strength and power. The outline was sharp and distinct, showing the strong lines, the determined mouth of the pioneer. There was something else, something which stood for distinction—no, it couldn’t be Hardin.
And then, because an outthrust lip changed the entire look of the man, Rickard asked his table companions, who was the man with the two ladies, near the door.
“That, suh,” his neighbor from Alabama became immediately oratorical, “that is a big man, suh. If the Imperial Valley ever becomes a reality, a fixtuah, it will be because of that one man, suh. Reclamation is like a seed thrown on a rock. Will it stick? Will it take root? Will it grow? That is what we all want to know.”
Rickard thought that he had wanted to know something quite different, and reminded the gentleman from Alabama that he had not told him the name.
“The father of this valley, of the reclamation of this desert, Thomas Hardin, suh.”
Rickard tried to reset, without attracting their attention, the group of his impressions of the man whose personality had been so obnoxious to him in the old Lawrence days. The Hardin he had known had also large features, but of the flaccid irritating order. He summoned a picture of Hardin as he had shuffled into his own class room, or up to the long table where Gerty had always queened it among her mother’s boarders. He could see the rough unpolished boots that had always offended him as a betrayal of the man’s inner coarseness; the badly fitting coat, the long awkward arms, and the satisfied, loud-speaking mouth. These features were more definite. Could time bring these changes? Had he changed, like that? Had they seen him? Would Gerty, would Hardin remember him? Wasn’t it his place to make himself known; wave the flag of old friendship over an awkward situation?
He found himself standing in front of their table, encountering first, the eyes of Hardin’s sister. There was no surprise, no welcome there for him. He felt at once the hostility of the camp. His face was uncomfortably warm. Then the childish profile turned on him. A look of bewilderment, flushing into greeting—the years had been kind to Gerty Holmes!