Jeanne: A Tale of the Hills

Jeanne A Tale of the Hills BY GRACE ZENOR ROBERTSON

You who may chance to look upon the valley of the S will feel in that first glance aweird loneliness. Her lava beds speak of some past calamity; her ever-shifting hills of sand seem to be seeking to hide the past. Wildernesses of gray sage-brush, and the mournful cry of the coyote, linger in the memory always — I know not why. With a broader view of the valley, you will rejoice in the free, wild sweep of plain, and be thrilled by the grandeur of the eternal hills and lofty snow-crowned peaks. You will look with amazement upon the broad canals of crystal water and the blos- — soming fertility of spacious fields the splendid growth of towns and villages. Now, let your eyes travel eastward toward yonder group of peaks so hazy and indistinct in the Indian summer, they are as ;

dream mountains, far away. Each sunrise from behind those peaks is an aurora of itself, and each sunset makes their summits rosy with a glow no artist yet has painted. Below the peaks, stretching for miles, gradually rising upward, gradually sweeping onward toward those mightier mountains, the rolling hills lie golden in the autumn sunshine. It is here I wish you to go with me, and I will tell you why, through

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all my days and through all my nights, I catch glimpses of their — beauty I feel their solitude and all pervading silence.

Jeanne and I were married in the springtime, when early blossoms ran riot in her little garden, and snatches of sunshine fell softly across the rain-swept hills of her beloved homeland. Jeanne would have it so. She, herself, was like a fair, sweet flower of the springtime — all innocent and ignorant of responsibilityand sorrow. Jeanne was no more suited to the life to which I would eventually take her than a lily for a desert. I brushed the thought away. This girl who lived so near the angels, this girl with her flower-like face, loved me. I fancied her as I would fancy some rare, fragile treasure I longed to call my own, neither knowing the value nor aesthetic quality of my prize. I sometimes wonder still if a man can ever truly understand a woman's heart. Perhaps I might have made some woman happy

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—perhaps I might have found happiness in some woman's love.

I only know my love was not the love of Jeanne. Jeanne's love was the most unselfish love a woman ever gives. She adored and worshiped with every fiber of her being, and her face shone with the splendor of her happiness. Jeanne was a dreamer. Her music, her songs, her books were all a part of her life. Her gentle words, and low, light laughter, bespoke her heart. She was different from all other women I have ever known. She amused me, rested me when I was weary appealed to me in some mysterious way, and I felt ;

the charm of her personality. I felt this woman understood my heart. I was mistaken. She believed me to be most gentle, and that I loved her above all ambition and worldly gain. When I spoke to Jeanne of the western ranch among the hills, I tried to explain that this new life would be very different from the life she had lived always. In my mind there were grave forebodings, but my heart whispered she was mine —she would become more practical of necessity. My duty seemed complete when she answered merrily, with many plans for our new home and opportunity.

I shall not forget the day in early summer when Jeanne and I rode over the hills side by side. The sky was blue as a sapphire sea, and the mountains blue and white in the clear distance — the wild, wide slope of many hills delightfully green and softened by many acres of growing grain, with here and there the glimpse of a white tent or temporary dwelling. I saw only the fields which meant prosperity for us ; their precious growth meant much to me. I saw the work awaiting me, and I recognized the aesthetic beauty only as Jeanne, with glowing cheeks, drew rein and pointed out the harmony of color, the softened greenness of the slopes — the valley with its scattered cities far below us. I was impatient at the delay, and with one

last look over the valley, she followed me — followed me into my own life, of which Jeanne knew nothing. The days I would forget, grew into weeks. My hands were busy with my work, my mind was busy with the affairs I must superintend, and in those days I fear I forgot Jeanne. I felt my disappointment keenly. The woman I had brought into my life — was not a woman of the hills she could not share with me my responsibility and care. She was neglected. I left her in the early mountain dawns, hurriedly, impatient of her plea of loneliness. I came to her at night too worn and

spent to bear the clinging of her arms or listen to her happy laughter. I was brutal in my indifference. I wonder not, now,

that Jeanne's beauty faded and her eyes grew dim with many secret tears. Happiness may flourish in desert places or on

1058 IMPROVEMENT ERA mountain tops, with love to nourish it, but a human soul as sensitive and gentle as Jeanne, cannot live without devotion, any more than a flower can flourish without the rain and sunshine. Through weary days, she saw the illimitable sweep of billow- — ing grain, the chain of rugged mountains the valleys far below. She heard, ofttimes the rattle of the lithe, gray snake through the ripening grain, and felt the scorching rays of the noonday sun. At evening, when the stars shone silver and shadows lengthened,

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the mournful cry of the coyote broke the awful stillness of the hills.

At last my heart awakened to the love I had not prized. With the love she craved and the blessed love of little children, Jeanne was a woman so tender, so true, she could have made a wilderness an Eden. It was too late. I understood a woman's heart, perhaps, when it was frozen in her breast. When I awoke to the value of the treasure I had lost, and my great selfishness, I realized why Jeanne had left the tented home of the hills and my indifference. When we found her in her wandering loneliness, the life was gone forever from the eyes that once shone with the priceless beauty of the soul. The form once so supple and full of grace was bent and drooping,- and the arms that had so clung to me for protection and sympathy, fell aimlessly at her side.

— Jeanne has fallen asleep and the songs of the wild birds lull her to a sweeter rest than she has ever known. The wealth that surrounds me, and the pleasures it might bring are as fires to my soul. Always I see, day or night, the sloping, golden hills, the rugged canyon, with its crimson flash of oak, the weird sweep of the plain. I feel the sweltering heat of noon, and the chill of the mountain night. — And then I see Jeanne, as I rode with her across the hills on that first summer clay. I hear her voice calling always from the silence of the hills. PARKER, IDAHO

Could We But Understand Could we but understand the trials of another, Look into the heart and read the anguish written there, We each hasty word would smother, and as kindly as a mother, Ease the burden of the cross each one doth bear. Could we but understand the motives of another, Could we know the whys and wherefores, every reason for each fall, Could we realize the struggle of the soul before it yielded, We would judge our fellow creatures not at all. Could we but understand, we might ofttimes count as brothers Those we look upon with awe and treat as foes; Could we understand, oh, never would we plant a thistle ever When we might have caused to bloom instead a rose. Grace Ingles Frost