Snow-Bound at Eagles | Page 8

by rustic pillars of pine, with the bark
still adhering, and covered with vines and trailing roses. Yet it was
evident that the coolness produced by this vast extent of cover was
more than the architect, who had planned it under the influence of a
staring and bewildering sky, had trustfully conceived, for it had to be
mitigated by blazing fires in open hearths when the thermometer
marked a hundred degrees in the field beyond. The dry, restless wind
that continually rocked the tall masts of the pines with a sound like the
distant sea, while it stimulated out-door physical exertion and defied
fatigue, left the sedentary dwellers in these altitudes chilled in the shade
they courted, or scorched them with heat when they ventured to bask
supinely in the sun. White muslin curtains at the French windows, and
rugs, skins, and heavy furs dispersed in the interior, with certain other
charming but incongruous details of furniture, marked the

inconsistencies of the climate.
There was a coquettish indication of this in the costume of Miss Kate
Scott as she stepped out on the veranda that morning. A man's
broad-brimmed Panama hat, partly unsexed by a twisted gayly-colored
scarf, but retaining enough character to give piquancy to the pretty
curves of the face beneath, protected her from the sun; a red flannel
shirt--another spoil from the enemy--and a thick jacket shielded her
from the austerities of the morning breeze. But the next inconsistency
was peculiarly her own. Miss Kate always wore the freshest and
lightest of white cambric skirts, without the least reference to the
temperature. To the practical sanatory remonstrances of her
brother-in-law, and to the conventional criticism of her sister, she
opposed the same defence: "How else is one to tell when it is summer
in this ridiculous climate? And then, woollen is stuffy, color draws the
sun, and one at least knows when one is clean or dirty." Artistically the
result was far from unsatisfactory. It was a pretty figure under the
sombre pines, against the gray granite and the steely sky, and seemed to
lend the yellowing fields from which the flowers had already fled a
floral relief of color. I do not think the few masculine wayfarers of that
locality objected to it; indeed, some had betrayed an indiscreet
admiration, and had curiously followed the invitation of Miss Kate's
warmly-colored figure until they had encountered the invincible
indifference of Miss Kate's cold gray eyes. With these manifestations
her brother-in-law did not concern himself; he had perfect confidence
in her unqualified disinterest in the neighboring humanity, and
permitted her to wander in her solitary picturesqueness, or
accompanied her when she rode in her dark green habit, with equal
freedom from anxiety.
For Miss Scott, although only twenty, had already subjected most of
her maidenly illusions to mature critical analyses. She had voluntarily
accompanied her sister and mother to California, in the earnest hope
that nature contained something worth saying to her, and was
disappointed to find she had already discounted its value in the pages of
books. She hoped to find a vague freedom in this unconventional life
thus opened to her, or rather to show others that she knew how

intelligently to appreciate it, but as yet she was only able to express it
in the one detail of dress already alluded to. Some of the men, and
nearly all the women, she had met thus far, she was amazed to find,
valued the conventionalities she believed she despised, and were
voluntarily assuming the chains she thought she had thrown off. Instead
of learning anything from them, these children of nature had bored her
with eager questionings regarding the civilization she had abandoned,
or irritated her with crude imitations of it for her benefit. "Fancy," she
had written to a friend in Boston, "my calling on Sue Murphy, who
remembered the Donner tragedy, and who once shot a grizzly that was
prowling round her cabin, and think of her begging me to lend her my
sack for a pattern, and wanting to know if 'polonays' were still worn."
She remembered more bitterly the romance that had tickled her earlier
fancy, told of two college friends of her brother-in-law's who were
living the "perfect life" in the mines, laboring in the ditches with a copy
of Homer in their pockets, and writing letters of the purest philosophy
under the free air of the pines. How, coming unexpectedly on them in
their Arcadia, the party found them unpresentable through dirt, and
thenceforth unknowable through domestic complications that had filled
their Arcadian cabin with half-breed children.
Much of this disillusion she had kept within her own heart, from a
feeling of pride, or only lightly touched upon it in her relations with her
mother and sister. For Mrs. Hale and Mrs.