XXXVI
HAPPY JACK IS SURPRISED
“You don’t seem to like the idea of my going to the States this winter, after all,” said Captain Ranger to his partner, who had been for several days exhibiting a degree of ill temper not assuring to a man of peaceful inclinations.
“Not by a darn sight. Business is business. Them weemen folks o’ yourn is as independent as so many hogs on ice. They are goin’ back on me about the cookin’ for the men. But say! I won’t object to your goin’ no more, if you’ll make Jean marry me afore you start. I could manage her all right if she was my wife; an’ then I could set the pace for the rest of ’em.”
The Captain paused a moment, in doubt whether to give the fellow the toe of his boot or wipe the ground with his whole body. “My daughters are to be their own choosers,” he said. “I have already engaged a crew of loggers to work while I am absent. If the winter is open, we can have everything shipshape by the time the machinery arrives.”
“Stay, daddie,” cried Jean, who, with Mary, had come up unobserved by their father. She was ghastly pale and strangely tremulous. “Mame and I have something important to say to you both before you part.”
“What is it, gals? Don’t hesitate to speak right out.”
“We—that is, Jean and I and Sally O’Dowd—have been talking things over; and we have concluded that we had better settle our side of this business proposition before matters go any further,” said Mary, speaking with unusual decision. “As you, father, have arranged to have a partner, and as—to use his own words—‘business is business,’ I want to say that I will be your cook at the partnership mess-house, but only at a reasonable salary. If you had no partner, the work would be all in the family, and we could settle its dividend among ourselves.”
“I have engaged a dozen pupils and will open a little school in a few days,” interrupted Jean, who had not heard the partner’s proposition in regard to herself, and therefore spoke without embarrassment. “But I shall have plenty of time to keep the books of the concern after school hours, and I will see that everything is done on business principles.”
“The deuce you will!” thought the partner. Then aloud: “I was intendin’ to keep the books myself.”
“Are you a practical book-keeper?” asked Jean.
“No; that is, not edzactly. But I kin keep most any set o’ transactions in my head. I never in my born days hearn tell of any woman or gal that could keep books. An’ I never knowed any woman to git a salary.”
“That was because you never knew the Ranger family,” laughed Marjorie.
“It is arranged that Hal is to have employment in the mill at a salary,” said Mary, “and he is very proud of the opportunity. We girls are all as willing to work as he is. But we do not believe at all in the custom of servitude without salary, to which all married women, and most of the single ones, are subject.”
“Is that the way you look at it, Miss Jean?” asked her would-be suitor.
“Daddie has always taught us that the highest type of humanity is built on the self-dependence of the individual. Haven’t you, daddie?”
“My daughters are right, Mr. Jackman. I have trained them to the idea of self-government. I am glad indeed to see them taking hold of these principles firmly.”
The partner turned away crestfallen. When he was fairly out of hearing, he took off his hat and exclaimed: “I’ll be gol darned! What is the weemin comin’ to?”
“I have engaged Susannah to live at my house,” said the Little Doctor, addressing the Captain as he sauntered toward a spreading fir near the front doorsteps, where the family were holding a consultation with Mrs. Joseph Ranger prior to her departure.
“Then who will assist Mrs. O’Dowd while I am away?” asked the Captain. “She’ll surely need both company and assistance at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs as badly as you will need it at the Four Corners.”
“Don’t worry about me, Captain,” said Sally. “I can manage the whole place without the help of anybody.”
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Dowd. You are a thoroughly unselfish woman.”
“Pardon me, daddie,” said Jean, as soon as she could address him privately. “You make a great mistake if you imagine Sally O’Dowd isn’t as selfish as the rest of us. The Little Doctor was quite taken aback by a remark to the contrary that you made a while ago.”
“I’m sure I meant no offence, Jean. But I confess that I am disappointed in both the Little Doctor and Susannah. They ought not to leave me in an extremity like the present when I have been so kind to them.”
“Everything we attempt is actuated by selfishness, daddie.”
“I can’t agree with you, Jean.”
“Oh, yes, you can! You took the Little Doctor under your wing away back in the States, because you could only hope by that means to get some help that you needed out o’ Scotty. You smuggled Dugs out o’ Missouri because it pleased you to please your wife. I am going to teach a little school from a purely selfish motive.”
“Was it selfishness that prompted you to fall in love with your unfaithful Green River hero, Jean?”
She turned deathly pale. “Yes, daddie dear. I thought I was going to be happy; and that was selfishness, of course. But I’m getting my punishment.”
“If selfishness is a natural attribute of humanity, we ought not to decry it, but should seek to control and guide it, Jean.”
“That is right, daddie. We have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we also need toughening. I am getting my share of toughening.”
“Do you object to my marrying Sally O’Dowd?”
“That is your affair, daddie; but there is no accounting for tastes.”
“Do you think your angel-mother would approve the step, my child?”
“Ah!” cried Jean, her face brightening, “there is one love that never dies,—the love of a mother for her child. It is the same sort of unselfish love that prompted the Son of Man to lay down His life for the redemption of the race; it is the same love that prompted my mother to risk and lose her life in the wilderness. You will please yourself by marrying Sally O’Dowd. We children will pay her allegiance as our father’s wife, chiefly because we know on which side our bread is buttered. But we will not call her mother; nor do we believe you would ask it.”
“I couldn’t think of taking the step, my child, unless I thought your mother would approve it, if she could know. But I am very sure she doesn’t know.”
“You do not want to believe she knows, daddie. It is always easier to believe or disbelieve anything when the wish is father to the thought.”
“Well, Jean, it will not do to be loitering here. Yonder come the logging crew. There’ll be a lot of hungry men to feed. Some of them are educated men, quite equal in intelligence and culture to Mr. Burns. Don’t go to losing your heart.”
“Don’t speak of hearts to me, daddie dear; mine is dead and buried. But you have no idea how cruelly it was wrung.”
“There, there, daughter, don’t worry! There are as good fish in the sea as any that have ever been caught.”
There was no time for loitering. There was an extra lodge to be built in the wilderness for the crew of loggers, and a long dining-shed to be added; the rails had to be made and fences built; the ground had to be cleared and broken for the spring’s planting; and much rude furniture for the homes had yet to be manufactured. The building of a skid road was another pressing need; and, taken all together, the Captain did not wonder that his partner should take his departure seriously.
That the partner was not lacking in executive ability was evident.
“I tell you, gals, that partner of mine is a corker for business,” said the Captain.
“He may be, daddie,” said Jean, “but that is all he’s good for. If there’s a chance to murder the Queen’s English, he’ll do it. He afflicts me with nausea whenever he speaks.”
“But if you had a man like him for a husband, you would never lack means for the indulgence of the selfish philanthropies you and I have been talking about. You know you promised your grandfather that you would assist him as soon as you could earn some money.”
“That’s so, daddie; but I must earn it honestly. And I’d be getting it through the worst kind of fraudulent practice if I married Happy Jack. Besides, he will be too stingy for anything after he’s married.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Jean. He’s got good credentials.”
“And so had Sam O’Dowd. No, daddie, I won’t have any money unless I can get it honestly. As soon as I can earn some cash by teaching, I’ll send it to the dear old grandfolks. They capped the climax of their selfishness in jeopardizing the property and happiness of all concerned to gratify their selfish pride in Uncle Joe.”
“Your theories and practices don’t tally, Jean,” laughed her father as he turned, and, with a tender good-bye aside for Sally O’Dowd and an open and hearty adieu to the children, he seated himself in the buggy beside his sister-in-law and drove rapidly away.
“I wonder how many years must elapse before the roads to Portland are as snugly finished and kept in as good repair as they are to-day from one suburb of London town to another?” asked Mrs. Joseph, merely to break an embarrassing silence.
“In another fifty years the people’ll be awake to the need, mebbe. It takes a hundred years to make a new country habitable.”
“My people always want their hunting-grounds to remain wild,” said Mrs. Joseph. “I used to like the most primitive modes of life in my childhood; but I learned a better way in London.”
“Did you learn to like the Indian life again, Wahnetta?”
“Never, sir. But I stooped to conquer, and I have succeeded. But I never could have done the best that was in me, for myself and Joseph, to say nothing of the children, if my father hadn’t made me, instead of my husband, his legatee. It takes money to do things.”