A Phyllis of the Sierras | Page 9

but the
deep blue chasm before the window seemed to be swelling up to meet
him, the bed slowly sinking into its oblivious profundity. He knew no
more.
He came to with the smell and taste of some powerful volatile spirit,
and the vague vision of Mr. Bradley still standing at the window of the
mill and vibrating with the machinery; this changed presently to a
pleasant lassitude and lazy curiosity as he perceived Mr. Bradley smile
and apparently slip from the window of the mill to his bedside. "You're
all right now," said Bradley, cheerfully.
He was feeling Mainwaring's pulse. Had he really been ill and was
Bradley a doctor?
Bradley evidently saw what was passing in his mind. "Don't be
alarmed," he said gayly. "I'm not a doctor, but I practise a little
medicine and surgery on account of the men at the mill, and accidents,
you know. You're all right now; you've lost a little blood: but in a
couple of weeks in this air we'll have that tubercle healed, and you'll be
as right as a trivet."
"In a couple of weeks!" echoed Mainwaring, in faint astonishment.
"Why, I leave here to-morrow."

"You'll do nothing of the kind" said Mrs. Bradley, with smiling
peremptoriness, suddenly slipping out from behind her husband.
"Everything is all perfectly arranged. Jim has sent off messengers to
your friends, so that if you can't come to them, they can come to you.
You see you can't help yourself! If you WILL walk fifteen miles with
such lungs, and then frighten people to death, you must abide by the
consequences."
"You see the old lady has fixed you," said Bradley, smiling; "and she's
the master here. Come, Mainwaring, you can send any other message
you like, and have who and what you want here; but HERE you must
stop for a while."
"But did I frighten you really?" stammered Mainwaring, faintly, to Mrs.
Bradley.
"Frighten us!" said Mrs. Bradley. "Well, look there!"
She pointed to the window, which commanded a view of the veranda.
Miss Macy had dropped into the vacant chair, with her little feet
stretched out before her, her cheeks burning with heat and fire, her eyes
partly closed, her straw hat hanging by a ribbon round her neck, her
brown hair clinging to her ears and forehead in damp tendrils, and an
enormous palm-leaf fan in each hand violently playing upon this
charming picture of exhaustion and abandonment.
"She came tearing down to the mill, bare-backed on our half-broken
mustang, about half an hour ago, to call me 'to help you,'" explained
Bradley. "Heaven knows how she managed to do it!"

CHAPTER II.
The medication of the woods was not overestimated by Bradley. There
was surely some occult healing property in that vast reservoir of balmy
and resinous odors over which The Lookout beetled and clung, and
from which at times the pure exhalations of the terraced valley seemed

to rise. Under its remedial influence and a conscientious adherence to
the rules of absolute rest and repose laid down for him, Mainwaring
had no return of the hemorrhage. The nearest professional medical
authority, hastily summoned, saw no reason for changing or for
supplementing Bradley's intelligent and simple treatment, although
astounded that the patient had been under no more radical or systematic
cure than travel and exercise. The women especially were amazed that
Mainwaring had taken "nothing for it," in their habitual experience of
an unfettered pill-and-elixir-consuming democracy. In their knowledge
of the thousand "panaceas" that filled the shelves of the general store,
this singular abstention of their guest seemed to indicate a national
peculiarity.
His bed was moved beside the low window, from which he could not
only view the veranda but converse at times with its occupants, and
even listen to the book which Miss Macy, seated without, read aloud to
him. In the evening Bradley would linger by his couch until late,
beguiling the tedium of his convalescence with characteristic stories
and information which he thought might please the invalid. For
Mainwaring, who had been early struck with Bradley's ready and
cultivated intelligence, ended by shyly avoiding the discussion of more
serious topics, partly because Bradley impressed him with a suspicion
of his own inferiority, and partly because Mainwaring questioned the
taste of Bradley's apparent exhibition of his manifest superiority. He
learned accidentally that this mill-owner and backwoodsman was a
college-bred man; but the practical application of that education to the
ordinary affairs of life was new to the young Englishman's traditions,
and grated a little harshly on his feelings. He would have been quite
content if Bradley had, like himself and fellows he knew, undervalued
his training, and kept his gifts conservatively impractical. The
knowledge also that his host's education naturally came from some
provincial institution unlike