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6
Stirring the Cauldron
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"What am I gonna do, Miss Eli?"
She regarded, with a bright twinkling eye, the young man who had been pouring his heart out to her for the last ten minutes.
"Enlist Agnes Mulholland!"
"Huh?" If she had suggested Jess go three rounds with an angry grizzly he could not have looked more alarmed. But he had appealed for her help and he was not in a position to disregard her advice, even if he had been so disrespectful as to do so.
"Don't worry! I'll come with you."
This was just as well. Jess Harper, despite the ingenuity and impudence perfected by a life of drifting, would not, on his own, have passed the threshold of the Mulholland residence. Indeed, they were lucky to make it past the front yard, where the besieged Mulhollands had taken the drastic step of loosing the guard dogs in order to keep would-be wooers away.
But it took more than a guard dog to deter Miss Eli and, in any case, her authoritative schoolmistress tones reduced them to quivering obedience at once. Jess was just prepare to risk anything in order to resolve the situation, even if Mrs. Mulholland did not want him ever to darken her doorway. As a precaution, when she delivered her calling card, Miss Eli took care not to mention her escort until it was too late and they had been ushered into the unsuspecting hostess's drawing room.
Miss Eli seized the initiative. "Agnes! We need your help!" She advanced with both arms open in appeal and Agnes Mulholland had little option but to exchange a restrained and ladylike embrace.
"Do sit down."
Miss Eli at once took a place on the settle, but Jess remained standing dutifully behind it. No doubt he felt slightly safer with something solid between him and the potential wrath of Laramie's leading lady.
"Now, Agnes, I know that you and dear Herbert are aware of the difficulties which have arisen socially in our community because of the penchant of the young men of the town for your niece."
"She is not my niece!" Mrs. Mulholland corrected coldly. It did not bode well for their enterprise.
"Young Hope, then. Whatever she is, she is causing considerable problems and setting young men who have been perfectly good friends hitherto at each other's throats."
"And I suppose that you have come to sponsor your …" Mrs. Mulholland looked at Jess and blanched visibly, "your … protégé in this matter and to advance his suit over that of the charming Mr. Sherman!"
"Hell, ma'am, the only suit I've got is the one I ain't wearin' right now!" Jess blurted out. He was so unnerved as to forget grammar, propriety and the fact that Mrs. Mulholland had absolutely no sense of humour.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, ma'am!" There could be no more fervent affirmation than if he had been pleading for his life.
"Jess has no interest whatsoever in your – I mean in Hope," Miss Eli stated firmly, "except in so far as it is his heartfelt wish to prevent further violence and limit, if possible, the unfortunate effect she is having on an otherwise amicable and cohesive network of neighbours."
This was perhaps rather a fancy way of putting it, but Miss Eli had been a trained orator in her time and could speak to impress and command.
"Is that so?" Mrs. Mulholland gave Jess the benefit of a full minute of her most searching scrutiny. Then she murmured, as if dazed by her conclusions: "Mr. Harper, you are unique!"
Of course he is, Miss Eli snapped mentally, but refrained from saying so out loud.
"Do you have a young lady of your own, Mr. Harper?"
Jess hesitated. It was clear that he was thinking hard. This was not, in fact, because it was such a highly personal question, but because he was struggling to decide whether any of his female acquaintances would met Mrs. Mulholland's criteria for a lady.
Eventually he shook his head. "None you'd call permanent, ma'am."
"Remarkable!" Mrs. Mulholland continued to regard him with amazement.
Jess raised his eyebrows and Miss Eli, much provoked, was heard to mutter: "Of course he is!"
"I was sure," Mrs. Mulholland continued, as if unable to believe that she had been wrong, "that you must be engaged or at the very least have made a serious commitment to some other young woman."
Jess's eyebrows climbed even higher, if that was possible. He had the strangest sensation, as if a door had suddenly opened and he was able, just for a second, to glance through into something … something extraordinary and complex and infinitely precious.
"Why else would you, of all the young men in Laramie, be totally impervious to this particular young lady?"
"Because he's got more sense!" Miss Eli thought – and accidently said it aloud.
"Indeed. That much is obvious," Mrs. Mulholland agreed. "I apologise, Mr. Harper. I have underestimated you."
Jess smiled. That crooked, self-effacing half-smile which had wrenched so many female hearts. "I expect I gave you cause, ma'am. But I sure would appreciate your help right now!"
"You shall have it!" his interrogator declared, much to the hearty relief of her hearers. "But we need reinforcements for this enterprise!" She appeared to be listening, as if the US Cavalry were about to thunder to their rescue. Actually, the US Cavalry would probably have been no use at all, since they were likely to fall, to a man, under Hope's spell.
Instead, there was another knock at the door. Mrs. Mulholland smiled in a manner reminiscent of a cruising alligator which had just spotted an unwary antelope at the water's edge, although they were all probably unaware of this likeness, having never been anywhere near Florida.
"Agnes, dear – I hope you don't mind me calling without notice?"
"Martha Travers! Just the woman!"
For once, Jess entirely agreed with her. It seemed that Providence was smiling on him once again, in gifting him another of his staunch allies and favourite women, to counteract the menace of Mrs. M., who, even when on your side, was seriously intimidating. He offered up another thankful prayer, not even pausing to reflect that his spiritual responsiveness was being distinctly encouraged by the stresses of the current situation.
Martha, the wife of their nearest neighbour Dan Travers, paused only to check that Jess was not dripping blood or otherwise in need of some physical care and repair (a not unusual occurrence, in her experience of him), before she gave her undivided attention to Agnes Mulholland. She had of course heard all the gossip of the town, although her own boys thankfully lived too far out to be drawn into the magic sphere.
"Hope doesn't mean ill," Agnes assured them all. "She's just very naïve and has no idea of anything other than a life of fun and flirtation and pretty things and being popular."
"She'll never make a rancher's wife then," Martha observed tartly.
"And it is an unhelpful, possibly even dangerous, attitude to have to relationships in our neighbourhood, since there isn't a young man around here who doesn't have to make his living by the sweat of his brow," Miss Eli agreed.
"Hmmm!" All three ladies drew breath and their brows wrinkled in thought and their eyes narrowed with all the force of a life-time spent observing the human race.
Momentarily forgotten, Jess watched them with fascination. He was aware of having called up something both more primitive and more powerful than he had expected. Somewhere in the back of his mind he half remembered, uneasily, a story he had heard once – some young man who had consulted three old women with a view to improving the future and ended up with most unfortunate, not to say fatal, results. He put up another trusting prayer: these were good woman and he'd willingly place his life in the hands of two of them.
When he dragged his mind back to the business in hand, the three were discussing when they needed to meet again, after they'd had a good think – perhaps for afternoon tea upon the lawn (why was the word 'heath' running through his head?) and certainly before the sun set on their deliberations.
"I'm sure we have the core of it in her fairy-tale notions of what life here is like." Miss Eli was unwilling to depart without some kind of a working strategy.
"Yes – you had the right of it when you said marriage to one of our men was about sweat and dust and more often than not sheer hard labour," Martha agreed. Her own life certainly exemplified this.
Agnes looked somewhat askance at this forthright summary, but she had to admit it was true. "She has no idea what women really do and what is expected of them every day in a town like this."
"Still less on a ranch," Martha added.
The three ladies looked at each other, mutual comprehension beginning to gleam in their eyes.
"Maybe she needs to experience it …?"
"Yes … I think that could be arranged with a little planning!"
They all looked at Jess, who jumped like a guilty thing surprised out of sheer reaction to their intense purposefulness.
"Go away, Mr. Harper, and find my nephew. Come back in the afternoon. We shall have a plan in time for tea."
"Tea?" It was a beverage which did not cross Jess's path, much less his lips, although he knew that some people affected such colonial habits. But a combined look from Miss Eli and Martha made him swallow his misgivings, even if he had no intention of swallowing any tea.
"Yes, ma'am!"
He made a smart exit and a bee-line for the saloon, where he was pretty certain to find Jago, propping up the wall.