MYRA TO CONSTANCE
Dear Connie: Really, the S. P. C. C. ought to take you in hand! To think of the cold-blooded way in which you hoodwinked us up to the very last moment, making us believe that the Lodestar involvement was next to nothing, and keeping the home intact solely for the purpose of providing a proper stage-setting for the final act of our little comedy-drama! It's fairly heart-breaking; the more since you won't let us share with you, as we'd be glad to. Before you saw fit to confide in us, Dick had used every argument short of a pick-handle to convince me that I should presently go back to Denver and creature comforts, leaving him here to go on delving in the Myriad. I only laughed at him, but I'll recant if you will listen to reason, and let me make a home for you and Uncle Stephen. But as between living a three-quarter widow in Denver on mere visiting terms with you and your father, and hibernating here with Dick, you may be sure I shall choose the latter.
We are both as enthusiastic as can be over the prospects of the mine. The new machinery is on the way, and we are down twenty feet on the incline. Another month will surely carry it into pay-rock. (You see I am learning to talk "mineral-English" with the best of them.) Under the circumstances, I don't blame Dick for wanting to stay right here every day; and it won't be so lonesome for me as you may imagine. You see I have Dick, and he can be a whole cityful upon occasion.
You wouldn't know "The Eyrie" (Dick says the altitude is so great that we had to have a high-sounding name) since we have begun to remodel it. We are to have another room, a larger kitchen for Wun Ling (oh, he is a celestial treasure!—quite the archangel of the culinary host), a huge chimney, with immense fireplaces, against a possible winter here, and a wider porch,—board-floored, if you please. And inside I have rugged and portièred, and pictured and bric-a-bracked, until the pristine barkiness of the place is all but effaced.
So far, with the exception of an occasional call from Mr. McMurtrie, we have been "each other's own best company;" but if I stay up all summer it will be conditional upon your and Uncle Stephen's spending at least a month with us when the hot weather makes your block uncomfortable. Don't say no beforehand, unless you want to make me quite disgusted.
Mr. Lansdale is a lineal descendant in the direct line of the Chevalier,—the sans peur et sans reproche one; you know I've always said that of him. It chokes me when I think of what is lying in wait for him. Isn't there the least little glimmer of hope? He looked so bright and eager on our wedding day that I could almost make myself believe he was going to get well. You must be very, very careful, Connie dear; not to encourage him too much, I mean; not unless you—but I sha'n't say it without your warrant.
What you say about Margaret Gannon's Irish true-heartedness reminds me of our own wild Irishman. He is the mine blacksmith, a perfect Sheridan for wit and repartee when he is sober, and a maniac of maniacs when he is drunk,—which happens whenever Dick relaxes his vigilance for a single hour.
The other day Pat (if he has any other name I've never heard it) did a thing heroic. They are using dynamite in the tunnel, and after the noon blasts one of the miners went in before the deadly gas had been properly "ventilated" out. One of the others saw him stumble and go headlong down the incline, and the cry went back to the entrance. Pat heard it (he was sober that day), flung his tools to the four winds, dashed into the pit of death, and came out black in the face, but with the man on his shoulder, just as Dick got down to the entrance. Wasn't that fine?
As you surmise, we have read all that the newspapers are saying about Mr. Jeffard. Isn't it queer that he should develop into a millionaire miser! Dick has told me a great deal about him,—at least about the Mr. Jeffard he used to know,—and whatever sins he may have had to answer for in those days, avarice was not one of them. I suppose it is another case of money-spoiling, but I can't help wanting to doubt your latest suspicion of him. I read your letter to Dick, and he shook his head when I came to that part; said he couldn't believe it, even on your testimony,—that the man might be capable of all sorts of villainy, but not that. So I am going over to Dick's point of view far enough to ask you not to be too hard upon the "unworthy one" just because he is no longer one of your poverty-stricken sinners,—he was that once, wasn't he? The rich sinners need charity quite as really as the poor; of a different kind, to be sure, and not always as easy to exercise as the other, but none the less necessary.
This is all you are going to get to-night. Dick has just come up from the mine, and he says I sha'n't write any more whatever.