Chapter 11
"Brumniagen" is a name given to those wares which, having no use for them at home, England ships to other countries. The term, however, is not applied to one leading export of this sort: the scores of younger sons of impoverished Noblemen who are packed off to the wilds of Australia or to the Great Desert of America, to finish sowing their wild oats in remote places, where such agriculture is not so overdone as it is in England.
This economic movement resulted in a neighbor for Jonathan and Seth, a young, blue-eyed, well-built Englishman, whose name was Hugh Walsingham.
Jonathan walked out of his topsy turvy house one day to find the claim just north of his pre-empted by the young man who was evidently a tenderfoot, since his fair complexion had not yet become tanned by the ceaseless winds.
Walsingham had staked out the claim, and was busily engaged in excavating a cave in which he purposed to dwell.
Jonathan, never busy himself, lent a helping-hand, and he and Walsingham at once became friends.
The outdoor life of the prairie pleased Walsingham, the abundance of game rejoiced him. An excellent shot, his dugout was soon filled with heads of antelope, while the hide of a buffalo constituted the covering for his floor.
Surrounded by an atmosphere of sobriety, for even at that early date the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon Kansas, he became by and by of necessity a hard working farmer, tilling the soil from morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt.
There are not many women on the prairies now. Then they were even more scarce. It was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves upon Cyclona. He fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from.
Personally he would consider the topsy turvy house a good and sufficient reason for continued absence, but according to his English ideas a girl should love her own roof whether it was right side up or inverted.
The thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of night skies scattered thick with dusty stars.
His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination.
He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious dwelling to behold her as she came back home.
On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching her throw the saddle on her broncho, fasten the straps, leap into the saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan came out of the topsy turvy house and found him.
"Walk with me awhile," implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of the girl.
Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him.
"Who is the girl?" asked Hugh.
"She is a little girl we adopted," explained Jonathan. "I don't know who she is or where she came from. Her mother blew away in a cyclone. That is all I know about her."
"A pretty girl," commented Hugh.
"And a mighty good girl," added Jonathan. "I don't know what we'd do without her."
"You seem to do without her a good deal," said Hugh, relighting his pipe which the wind had blown out. "She is away from home most of the time."
"Cyclona's playing nurse," said Jonathan. "She's taking care of a child whose mother has deserted him. He is a good big boy now, but Cyclona's taken care of that child ever since he come into the world putty near," and he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness.
"What sort of man is the father?" queried Hugh with a manner of exaggerated indifference.
"Seth? Why, Seth's one of the finest men you ever saw. And he's good-looking, too. Sunburnt and tall and kind of lank, but good-lookin'. He's got some crazy notion, Seth has, of buildin' a Magic City on his claim some time or other, but aside from that there ain't no fault to find with Seth. He's a mighty fine man."
* * * * *
On the plains all waited for letters. Walsingham was no exception to the rule. Few came. He was too far away. Younger sons of impoverished noblemen are sent to far-off places purposely to be forgotten. He employed the intervals between such stray notes as he received in studying Cyclona.
He wondered what his aristocratic sisters would do if they were obliged to saddle their own ponies. He wondered what they would do if they were obliged to wear such gowns as Cyclona wore. And yet Cyclona was charming in those old gowns, blue and pink cotton in the summer and a heavy blue one for winter wear.
Constantly in the open she possessed the beauty of perfect health. Her brown cheeks glowed like old gold from the pulsing of rich blood. An athletic poise of her shoulders and carriage of head added grace to her beauty.
But her chief charm for the young Englishman, surfeited with the affectation of English girls, lay in her natural simplicity.
Except for her association with Seth, whose innate culture could not but communicate itself, Cyclona was totally untutored. She knew nothing of coyness, caprice or mannerisms. Singleness of purpose and unselfishness shone in her tranquil and steadfast gaze which Hugh was fortunate enough now and then to encounter.
Walsingham found himself passing restless hours in the endeavor to devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In fancy he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that free, beautiful, lithe and swinging gait into the splendor of his mother's English home.