Perch of the Devil

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

And it was on the cards that she would have her own fortune before long. She knew that Mark (who had her power of attorney) had made better terms with the engineers than he had anticipated, and he dropped mysterious hints which, knowing his level head, made her indulge in ornate dreams now and again. But he only smiled teasingly when she demanded a full explanation, and told her that she would realise how good or how bad her mine was when she went to the bank to sign her letter of credit.

For one thing she felt suddenly grateful. She knew that the mine had been leased for a year only and without bond. If, during that time it “panned out,” she would stipulate to mine it herself when the contract expired.

She sat up very straight and smiled. That was what she would have liked! If her father had but willed her this mine and capital enough to work it alone! Her fingers fluttered as they always did when handling ore; she had wondered before if the prospector’s fever were in her blood. How she should have enjoyed watching the rock come up in the buckets as the shaft sank foot by foot, until they struck the vein; always expecting chambers of incredible richness, gold, copper, silver. She would even learn to do the pleasant part of her own assaying; and she suddenly experienced an intense secretive jealous love for this mine that was hers and in which might be hidden shining blocks of those mysterious primary deposits deep in the sulphide zone; forced up through the veins of earth, but born how or where man could only guess. It was a mystery that she wanted to feel close to and alone with, far in the winding depths of her mine.

She got up and moved about impatiently. Her propensity to dream extravagantly was beginning to alarm her, and she wished uneasily that she could discover the gift to write and work it off. Where would it lead her? But she would not admit for a moment that her released imagination, pulsing with vitality, and working on whatever she fed it, only awaited the inevitable moment when it could concentrate on the one object for which the imagination of woman was created.

The pendulum swung back and more evenly. She told herself it was both possible and probable that she had a good property, however short it might fall of Butte Hill. She renewed her determination to mine it herself, and work, work, work. Therein lay safety. The future seemed suddenly full of alarms.

And there was Mark, his career, his demands, dictated not so insistently by him as by herself.

Ora’s soul rose in a sudden and desperate revolt beside which her rising aversion from unmitigated intellect was a mere megrim. She felt herself to be her father’s daughter in all her newly-opened aching brain-cells. He had lived his life to please himself, and if his temptations and weaknesses might never be hers—how could she tell?—his intense vitality survived in her veins, his imperious spirit, his scornful independence. She glanced at the rows of calf-bound books he had handled so often. Something of his sinister powerful personality seemed to steal forth and encompass her, sweep through the quickened corridors of her brain. Mark Blake was not the man he would have chosen for his daughter. Western, Mark might be to the core, but he was second-rate, and second-rate he would remain no matter what his successes.

And, she wondered, what would this proud ambitious parent, whose deepest feeling had been for his one legitimate child, say to her plan to play second fiddle for life to a man of the Mark Blake calibre? He had wanted her to marry in the West, but he had been equally insistent that she should develop a personality and position of her own. No devoted suffragist could have been a more ardent advocate of woman’s personal development than Judge Stratton had been where his daughter was concerned. To the rights of other women he had never cast a thought.

This was the hour of grim self-avowal. She admitted what had long moved in the back of her mind, striving toward expression, that she hated herself for having married any man for the miserable reason that has driven so many lazy inefficient women into loveless marriages. She should have gone to work. More than one of her father’s old friends would have given her a secretaryship. She could have lived on her little capital and taken the four years’ course at the School of Mines, equipping herself for a congenial career. If that had not occurred to her she could have taught French, Italian, German, dancing, literature. In a new state like Montana, with many women raised abruptly from the nethermost to the highest stratum, there was always a longing, generally unfulfilled, for the quick veneer; and women of older fortunes welcomed opportunities to improve themselves. She could have taken parties to Europe.

She had played the coward’s part and not only done a black injustice to herself but to Mark Blake. He was naturally an affectionate creature, and, married to a comfortable sweet little wife, he would have been domestic and quite happy. In spite of his enjoyment of his club, his cards and billiards, and his buoyant nature, she suspected that he was wistful at heart. He was intensely proud of his wife, in certain ways dependent upon her, but she knew he had taken for granted that her girlish coldness would melt in time and womanly fires kindle. Well, they never would for him, poor Mark. And possessing an inherent sense of justice, she felt just then more sympathy for him than for herself, and placed all his good points to his credit.