V
NON PLUSH ULTRA
Sunday and a driving rain had combined to keep Ma Pettengill within the Arrowhead ranch house. Neither could have done this alone. The rain would merely have added a slicker to her business costume of khaki riding breeches, laced boots, and flannel shirt as she rode abroad; while a clement Sabbath would have seen her "resting," as she would put it, in and round the various outbuildings, feeding-pens, blacksmith shop, harness-room, branding-chute, or what not, issuing orders to attentive henchmen from time to time; diagnosing the gray mule's barbed-wire cut; compounding a tonic for Adolph, the big milk-strain Durham bull, who has been ailing; wishing to be told why in something the water hadn't been turned into that south ditch; and, like a competent general, disposing her forces and munitions for the campaign of the coming week. But Sunday—and a wildly rainy Sunday—had housed her utterly.
Being one who can idle with no grace whatever she was engaged in what she called putting the place to rights. This meant taking out the contents of bureau drawers and wardrobes and putting them back again, massing the litter on the big table in the living-room into an involved geometry of neat piles that would endure for all of an hour, straightening pictures on the walls, eliminating the home-circles of spiders long unmolested, loudly calling upon Lew Wee, the Chinaman, who affrightedly fled farther and farther after each call, and ever and again booming pained surmises through the house as to what fearful state it would get to be in if she didn't fight it to a clean finish once in a dog's age.
The woman dumped a wastebasket of varied rubbish into the open fire, leaned a broom against the mantel, readjusted the towel that protected her gray hair from the dust—hair on week days exposed with never a qualm to all manner of dust—cursed all Chinamen on land or sea with an especial and piquant blight invoked upon the one now in hiding, then took from the back of a chair where she had hung it the moment before a riding skirt come to feebleness and decrepitude. She held it up before critical eyes as one scanning the morning paper for headlines of significance.
"Ruined!" she murmured. Even her murmur must have reached Lew Wee, how remote soever his isle of safety. "Worn one time and all ruined up! That's what happens for trying to get something for nothing. You'd think women would learn. You would if you didn't know a few. Hetty Daggett, her that was Hetty Tipton, orders this by catalogue, No. 3456 or something, from the mail-order house in Chicago. I was down in Red Gap when it come. 'Isn't it simply wonderful what you can get for three thirty-eight!' says she with gleaming eyes, laying this thing out before me. 'I don't see how they can ever do it for the money.' She found out the next day when she rode up here in it with me and Mr. Burchell Daggett, her husband. Nothing but ruin! Seams all busted, sleazy cloth wore through. But Hetty just looks it over cheerfully and says: 'Oh, well, what can you expect for three thirty-eight?' Is that like a woman or is it like something science has not yet discovered?
"That Hetty child is sure one woman. This skirt would never have held together to ride back in, so she goes down as far as the narrow gauge in the wagon with Buck Devine, wearing a charming afternoon frock of pale blue charmeuse rather than get into a pair of my khakis and ride back with her own lawful-wedded husband; yes, sir; married to him safe as anything, but wouldn't forget her womanhood. Only once did she ever come near it. I saved her then because she hadn't snared Mr. Burchell Daggett yet, and of course a girl has to be a little careful. And she took my counsels so much to heart she's been careful ever since. 'Why, I should simply die of mortification if my dear mate were to witness me in those,' says she when I'm telling her to take a chance for once and get into these here riding pants of mine because it would be uncomfortable going down in that wagon. 'But what is my comfort compared to dear Burchell's peace of mind?' says she.
"Ain't we the goods, though, when we do once learn a thing? Of course most of us don't have to learn stuff like this. Born in us. I shouldn't wonder if they was something in the talk of this man Shaw or Shavian—I see the name spelled both ways in the papers. I can't read his pieces myself because he rasps me, being not only a smarty but a vegetarian. I don't know. I might stand one or the other purebred, but the cross seems to bring out the worst strain in both. I once got a line on his beliefs and customs though—like it appears he don't believe anything ought to be done for its own sake but only for some good purpose. It was one day I got caught at a meeting of the Onward and Upward Club in Red Gap and Mrs. Alonzo Price read a paper about his meaning. I hope she didn't wrong him. I hope she was justified in all she said he really means in his secret heart. No one ought to talk that way about any one if they ain't got the goods on 'em. One thing I might have listened to with some patience if the man et steaks and talked more like some one you'd care to have in your own home. In fact, I listened to it anyway. Maybe he took it from some book he read—about woman and her true nature. According to Henrietta Templeton Price, as near as I could get her, this Shaw or Shavian believes that women is merely a flock of men-hawks circling above the herd till they see a nice fat little lamb of a man, then one fell swoop and all is over but the screams of the victim dying out horribly. They bear him off to their nest in a blasted pine and pick the meat from his bones at leisure. Of course that ain't the way ladies was spoken of in the Aunt Patty Little Helper Series I got out of the Presbyterian Sabbath-school library back in Fredonia, New York, when I was thirteen—and yet—and yet—as they say on the stage in these plays of high or English life."
It sounded promising enough, and the dust had now settled so that I could dimly make out the noble lines of my hostess. I begged for more.
"Well, go on—Mrs. Burchell Daggett once nearly forgot her womanhood. Certainly, go on, if it's anything that would be told outside of a smoking-car."