Up the Gulch

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It happened to be just the right sort of speech. The women tried good-naturedly to make Roeder's evening a pleasant one. They were filled with compassion for a man who had not enjoyed the society of their sex for fifteen years. They found much amusement in leading him through the square dances, the forms of which were utterly unknown to him. But he waltzed with a sort of serious alertness that was not so bad as it might have been.

Kate danced well. Her slight body seemed as full of the spirit of the waltz as a thrush's body is of song. Peter Roeder moved along with her in a maze, only half-answering her questions, his gray eyes full of mystery.

Once they stopped for a moment, and he looked down at her, as with flushed face she stood smiling and waving her gossamer fan, each motion stirring the frail leaves of the roses he had sent her.

"It's cur'ous," he said softly, "but I keep thinkin' about that black gulch."

"Forget it," she said. "Why do you think of a gulch when --" She stopped with a sudden recollection that he was not used to persiflage. But he anticipated what she was about to say.

"Why think of the gulch when you are here?" he said. "Why, because it is only th' gulch that seems real. All this, -- these pleasant, polite people, this beautiful room, th' flowers everywhere, and you, and me as I am, seem as if I was dreamin'. Thar ain't anything in it all that is like what I thought it would be."

"Not as you thought it would be?"

"No. Different. I thought it would be -- well, I thought th' people would not be quite so high-toned. I hope you don't mind that word."

"Not in the least," she said. " It's a musical term. It applies very well to people."

They took up the dance again and waltzed breathlessly till the close. Kate was tired; the exertion had been a little more than she had bargained for. She sat very still on the veranda under the white glare of an electric ball, and let Roeder do the talking. Her thoughts, in spite of the entertainment she was deriving from her present experiences, would go back to the babies. She saw them tucked well in bed, each in a little iron crib, with the muslin curtains shielding their rosy faces from the light. She wondered if Jack were reading alone in the library or was at the club, or perhaps at the summer concert, with the swell of the violins in his ears. Jack did so love music. As she thought how delicate his perceptions were, how he responded to everything most subtle in nature and in art, of how life itself was a fine art with him, and joy a thing to be cultivated, she turned with a sense of deep compassion to the simple man by her side. His rough face looked a little more unattractive than usual. His evening clothes were almost grotesque. His face wore a look of solitude, of hunger.

"What were you saying?" she said, dreamily. "I beg your pardon."

"I was sayin' how I used t' dream of sittin' on the steps of a hotel like this, and not havin' a thing t' do. When I used t' come down here out of the gulch, and see men who had had good dinners, an' good baths, sittin' around smokin', with money t' go over there t' th' bookstan' an' get any-thin' they'd want, it used t' seem t' me about all a single man could wish fur."