The Mulberry Bush by Helen Topping Miller Page B

forever?
    â€œStop it, you idiot!” she raged at her mirror. And deliberately and with frigid calm, dressed herself up smartly to go out and beard the lions that Teresa had ordered bearded and signed on the various dotted lines.
    She was glad when Sunday came, and Bruce Gamble drove up to the door of the hotel in a rented car.
    â€œI hope you’re not a nervous passenger,” he said, as he helped her in. “This road we’re driving today is a trifle steep and crooked.”
    â€œI went up Pike’s Peak and didn’t grab a thing. If the brakes hold, I promise not to squeal a squeal.”
    â€œI looked into that. They’ve widened the road, too, since the stagecoaches used to come galloping down with the lady passengers uttering delicate shrieks and fainting at the foot of the mountain.”
    â€œI couldn’t faint if I tried, and I’m not sure I could shriek—I never have, that I remember.”
    A late, silvery, October glow was in the air, the sun, wine-clear and golden, laid over the peaks, some of them already beginning to show pale caps of snow, a thin bluish-chromium haze.
    â€œThis,” she said, as they began the sharp ascent from the flat floor of the valley, “must have been the way it looked when it was first made, all clean and new.”
    â€œThe way the pioneers saw it when they rode in here, dusty and weary, on footsore horses. They followed the gulches and the streams on the hunt for gold and they were a tough and salty lot. But I’ve often wondered how their women felt when they saw these remote and savage peaks against the sky. To them, they must have looked pretty grim.”
    â€œBecause,” said Virginia, “women are always looking around for some quiet place where a little house could be tucked away. When they came out here in covered wagons, they brought along their flower seeds, and peony roots, and rose cuttings. And they looked all around this rocky wilderness and wondered how anything could be persuaded to grow here.”
    â€œBut after their men had taken a few millions in gold out of these hills, they stopped mourning about their posy beds,” Gamble said. “They built a college and the finest opera-house east of Philadelphia, with a hundred gaslights in the chandelier to shine down on the ladies in their jewels, and their chignons and bustles. And they gave splendid balls in the hotel, which was a magnificent place for those days.”
    The road was narrow and the curves sharp, the view downward a little terrifying, but Virginia kept her eyes on the distant peaks and would not let herself think of those giddy slopes below. Cars passed, tearing along recklessly, the drivers undisturbed by the hairpin turns.
    â€œThey live here,” Gamble said. “They’re annoyed at us for a couple of nervous tourists. Now, we’re up—and how do you like that world down there?”
    â€œThere’s too much of it,” she said, in a small, hushed voice. So many canons and ragged peaks, so much rugged land going on and on. And beyond was the flatness of the plains, the deltas of the rivers, the marshes and shores, and then the endless miles of ocean! Between herself and Mike. “It seems—too big and almost cruel, doesn’t it?” she said. “Such tremendous, indifferent, unfeeling distances between people.”
    â€œLeft some one behind, did you?” He smiled at her.
    â€œOh, yes—numbers of people. I suppose you did too?”
    â€œOnly my little girl, Meredith. She’s eight now. We lost her mother when she was three years old.” He handled the wheel with his left hand deftly, took a leather folder from an inside pocket. “There she is—not a pretty kid, but smart as they make ’em.”
    Virginia looked at the Kodak picture of an earnest, blonde child in white shorts and jersey, who clutched a bewildered puppy in stout, short arms.
    â€œShe’s sweet.