The Girl from Hollywood, Edgar Rice Burroughs [i love reading .TXT] 📗
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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“Oh, I would love the country!” exclaimed Shannon.
“Then why don’t you stay?” urged the colonel.
“I had never thought of it,” she said hesitatingly.
It was indeed a new idea. Of course it was an absolute impossibility, but it was a very pleasant thing to contemplate.
“Possibly Miss Burke has ties in the city that she would not care to break,” suggested Custer, noting her hesitation.
Ties in the city! Shackles of iron, rather, she thought bitterly; but, oh, it was such a nice thought! To live here, to see these people daily, perhaps be one of them, to be like them—ah, that would be heaven!
“Yes,” she said, “I have ties in the city. I could not remain here, I am afraid, much as I should like to. I—I think I better sell.”
“Rubbish!” exclaimed the colonel. “You’ll not sell. You are going to stay here with us until you are thoroughly rested and then you won’t want to sell.”
“I wish that I might,” she said; “but—”
“All right,” said the colonel. “It’s decided—you stay. Now run off to bed, for you’re going to ride with us in the morning, and that means that you’ll have to be up at half past five.”
“But I can’t ride,” she said. “I don’t know how, and I have nothing to wear.”
“Eva’ll fit you out, and as for not knowing how to ride, you can’t learn any younger. Why, I’ve taught half the children in the foothills to ride a horse, and a lot of the grown-ups. What I can’t teach you Cus and Eva can. You’re going to start in tomorrow, my little girl, and learn how to live. Nobody who has simply survived the counterfeit life of the city knows anything about living. You wait—we’ll show you!”
At a quarter before six she was awakened by a knock on her door. It was already light, and she awoke with mingled surprise that she had slept so well and vague forebodings of the next hour or two, for she was unaccustomed to horses and a little afraid of them.
“Who is it?” she asked, as the knock was repeated.
“Eva. I’ve brought your riding things.”
Shannon rose and opened the door. She was going to take the things from the girl, but the latter bounced into the room, fresh and laughing.
“Come on!” she cried. “I’ll help you. Just pile your hair up anyhow—it doesn’t matter—this hat’ll cover it. I think these breeches will fit you—we are just about the same size; but I don’t know about the boots—they may be a little large. I didn’t bring any spurs—papa won’t let any one wear spurs until they ride fairly well. You’ll have to win your spurs, you see! It’s a beautiful morning just spiffy! Run in and wash up a bit. I’ll arrange everything, and you’ll be in ‘em in a jiffy.”
She seized Shannon around the waist and danced off toward the bathroom. “Don’t be long,” she admonished.
Shannon washed quickly. She was excited at the prospect of the ride. That and the laughing, talking girl in the adjoining room gave her no time to think. Her mind was fully occupied and her nerves were stimulated. For the moment she forgot about morphine, and then it was too late, for Eva had her by the hand and she was being led, almost at a run down the stairs, through the patio, and out over the edge of the hill down toward the stable.
“Fine!” cried the colonel, as he saw her coming. “Really never thought you’d do it! I’ll wager this is the earliest you have been up in many a day. ‘Barbarous hour’—that’s what you’re saying. Why, when my cousin was on here from New York, he was really shocked—said it wasn’t decent. Come along—we’re late this morning. You’ll ride Baldy—Custer’ll help you up.”
She stepped to the mounting block as the young man led the dancing Baldy close beside it.
“Ever ridden much?” he asked.
“Never in my life.”
Suddenly it dawned upon her that she had neither fallen off nor come near falling off. She had not even lost a stirrup. As a matter of fact, the motion was not even uncomfortable. It was enjoyable, and she was in about as much danger of being thrown as she would have been from a rocking chair as violently self-agitated. She laughed then, and in the instant all fear left her.
That first morning ride with the Penningtons and their friends was an event in the life of Shannon Burke that assumed the proportions of adventure. The novelty, the thrill, the excitement, filled her every moment. The dancing horse beneath her seemed to impart to her a full measure of its buoyant life. The gay laughter of her companions, the easy fellowship of young and old, the generous sympathy made her one of them, gave her but another glimpse of the possibilities for happiness that requires no artificial stimulus.
That ride ended in a rushing gallop along a quarter mile of straight road leading to the stables, where they dismounted, flushed, breathless, and laughing. As they walked up the winding concrete walk toward the house, Shannon Burke was tired, lame and happy. She had adventured into a new world and found it good.
“Come into my room and wash,” said Eva, as they entered the patio. “We’re late for breakfast now, and we all like to sit down together.”
For just an instant, and for the first time that morning, Shannon thought of the hypodermic needle in its black case upstairs. She hesitated, and then resolutely turned into Eva’s room.
DURING the hour following breakfast that morning, while Shannon was alone in her rooms, the craving returned. The thought of it turned her sick when she felt it coming. She had been occupying herself making her bed and tidying the room, as she had done each morning since her arrival; but when that was done, her thoughts reverted by habit to the desire that had so fatally mastered her.
There crept into her mind a thought that had found its way there more than once during the past two years—the thought of self-destruction. She put it away from her; but in the depth of her soul she knew that never before had it taken so strong a hold upon her. Her mother, her only tie, was gone, and no one would care. She had looked into heaven and found that it was not for her. She had no future except to return to the hideous existence of the Hollywood bungalow and her lonely boarding house, and to the hated Crumb.
It was then that Eva Pennington called her.
She was descending the stairs toward Eva, who stood at the foot, holding open the door that led into the patio. She welcomed the interruption that had broken in upon her morbid thoughts. The sight of the winsome figure smiling up at her dispelled them as the light of the sun sweeps away miasmatic vapours.
They walked down the hill, past the saddle horse barn, and along the gravelled road that led to the upper end of the ranch. The summer sun beat hotly upon them, making each old sycamore and oak and walnut a delightful oasis of refreshing shade. In a field at their left two mowers were clicking merrily through lush alfalfa. At their right, beyond the pasture fence, gentle Guernseys lay in the shade of a wide-spreading sycamore, a part of the pastoral allegory of content that was the Rancho del Ganado; and over all were the blue California sky and the glorious sun.
They swung up then through the orange grove, and along the upper road back toward the house. It was noon and lunch time when they arrived. Shannon was hot and tired and dusty and delighted as she opened the door at the foot of the stairs that led to her rooms above.
Then she paused. The old, gripping desire had seized her. She had not once felt it since she had passed through that door more than two hours before. For a moment she hesitated, and then, fearfully, she turned toward Eva.
“May I clean up in your room?” she asked.
There was a strange note of appeal in Shannon’s voice that the other girl did not understand.
“Why, certainly,” she said; “but is there anything the matter? You are not ill?”
“Just a little tired.”
“There! I should never have walked you so far. I’m so sorry!”
“I want to be tired. I want to do it again this afternoon—all afternoon. I don’t want to stop until I am ready to drop!” Then, seeing the surprise in Eva’s expression, she added: “You see, I shall be here such a short time that I want to crowd every single moment full of pleasant memories.”
Shannon thought that she had never eaten so much before as she had that morning at breakfast; but at luncheon she more than duplicated her past performance.
“My!” Shannon exclaimed at last. “I have seen the pigs and I have become one.”
“And I see something, dear,” said Mrs. Pennington, smiling.
“What?”
“Some colour in your cheeks.”
“Not really..?” she cried, delighted.
“Yes, really.”
“And it’s mighty becoming,” offered the colonel. “Nothing like a brown skin and rosy cheeks for beauty. That’s the way God meant girls to be, or He wouldn’t have given ‘em delicate skins and hung the sun up there to beautify ‘em.
“What a dapper little thought!” exclaimed Eva. “Popsy should have been a poet.”
“Or an ad writer for a cosmetic manufacturer,” suggested Custer. “Oh, by the way, not changing the subject or anything, but did you hear about Slick Allen?”
No, they had not. Shannon pricked up her ears, metaphorically. What did these people know of Slick Allen?
“He’s just been sent up in L. A. for having narcotics in his possession. Got a year in the county jail.”
“I guess he was a bad one,” commented the colonel; “but he never struck me as being a drug addict.”
“Nor me; but I guess you can’t always tell them,” said Custer.
“It must be a terrible habit,” said Mrs. Pennington.
“It’s about as low as any one can sink,” said Custer.
“I hear that there’s been a great increase in it since prohibition,” remarked the colonel. “Personally, I’d have more respect for a whisky drunkard than for a drug addict; or perhaps I should better say that I’d feel less disrespect. A police official told me not long ago, at a dinner in town, that if drug-taking continues to increase as it has recently, it will constitute a national menace by comparison with which the whisky evil will seem paltry.”
Shannon Burke was glad when they rose from the table, putting an end to the conversation. She had plumbed the uttermost depths of humiliation. She had felt herself go hot and cold in shame and fear. At first her one thought had been to get away—to find some excuse for leaving the Penningtons at once.
She was hastening to her room to pack. She knew there was an evening train for the city, and while she packed she could be framing some plausible excuse for leaving thus abruptly.
Custer Pennington called to her.
“Miss Burke!” She turned, her hand upon the knob of the door to the upstairs suite.
“I’m going to ride over the back ranch this afternoon. Eva showed you the Berkshires this morning; now I want to show you the Herefords. I told the stableman to saddle Baldy for you. Will half an hour be too soon?”
For a long time they rode in silence, the girl taking in every beauty of meadow, ravine, and hill, that she might store them all away for the days when they
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