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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Sappho of Green Springs, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Sappho of Green Springs
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2006 [EBook #2867]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS
+
+THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE
+
+THROUGH THE SANTA CLARA WHEAT
+
+A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE
+
+
+
+
+
+A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+“Come in,” said the editor.
+
+The door of the editorial room of the “Excelsior Magazine” began to
+creak painfully under the hesitating pressure of an uncertain and
+unfamiliar hand. This continued until with a start of irritation the
+editor faced directly about, throwing his leg over the arm of his chair
+with a certain youthful dexterity. With one hand gripping its back,
+the other still grasping a proof-slip, and his pencil in his mouth, he
+stared at the intruder.
+
+The stranger, despite his hesitating entrance, did not seem in the least
+disconcerted. He was a tall man, looking even taller by reason of the
+long formless overcoat he wore, known as a “duster,” and by a long
+straight beard that depended from his chin, which he combed with two
+reflective fingers as he contemplated the editor. The red dust which
+still lay in the creases of his garment and in the curves of his soft
+felt hat, and left a dusty circle like a precipitated halo around his
+feet, proclaimed him, if not a countryman, a recent inland importation
+by coach. “Busy?” he said, in a grave but pleasant voice. “I kin wait.
+Don't mind ME. Go on.”
+
+The editor indicated a chair with his disengaged hand and plunged again
+into his proof-slips. The stranger surveyed the scant furniture and
+appointments of the office with a look of grave curiosity, and then,
+taking a chair, fixed an earnest, penetrating gaze on the editor's
+profile. The editor felt it, and, without looking up, said--
+
+“Well, go on.”
+
+“But you're busy. I kin wait.”
+
+“I shall not be less busy this morning. I can listen.”
+
+“I want you to give me the name of a certain person who writes in your
+magazine.”
+
+The editor's eye glanced at the second right-hand drawer of his desk.
+It did not contain the names of his contributors, but what in the
+traditions of his office was accepted as an equivalent,--a revolver.
+He had never yet presented either to an inquirer. But he laid aside his
+proofs, and, with a slight darkening of his youthful, discontented face,
+said, “What do you want to know for?”
+
+The question was so evidently unexpected that the stranger's face
+colored slightly, and he hesitated. The editor meanwhile, without
+taking his eyes from the man, mentally ran over the contents of the last
+magazine. They had been of a singularly peaceful character. There seemed
+to be nothing to justify homicide on his part or the stranger's. Yet
+there was no knowing, and his questioner's bucolic appearance by no
+means precluded an assault. Indeed, it had been a legend of the office
+that a predecessor had suffered vicariously from a geological hammer
+covertly introduced into a scientific controversy by an irate professor.
+
+“As we make ourselves responsible for the conduct of the magazine,”
+ continued the young editor, with mature severity, “we do not give up the
+names of our contributors. If you do not agree with their opinions”--
+
+“But I DO,” said the stranger, with his former composure, “and I reckon
+that's why I want to know who wrote those verses called 'Underbrush,'
+signed 'White Violet,' in your last number. They're pow'ful pretty.”
+
+The editor flushed slightly, and glanced instinctively around for any
+unexpected witness of his ludicrous mistake. The fear of ridicule was
+uppermost in his mind, and he was more relieved at his mistake not being
+overheard than at its groundlessness.
+
+“The verses ARE pretty,” he said, recovering himself, with a critical
+air, “and I am glad you like them. But even then, you know, I could not
+give you the lady's name without her permission. I will write to her and
+ask it, if you like.”
+
+The actual fact was that the verses had been sent to him anonymously
+from a remote village in the Coast Range,--the address being the
+post-office and the signature initials.
+
+The stranger looked disturbed. “Then she ain't about here anywhere?” he
+said, with a vague gesture. “She don't belong to the office?”
+
+The young editor beamed with tolerant superiority: “No, I am sorry to
+say.”
+
+“I should like to have got to see her and kinder asked her a
+few questions,” continued the stranger, with the same reflective
+seriousness. “You see, it wasn't just the rhymin' o' them verses,--and
+they kinder sing themselves to ye, don't they?--it wasn't the chyce o'
+words,--and I reckon they allus hit the idee in the centre shot every
+time,--it wasn't the idees and moral she sort o' drew out o' what she
+was tellin',--but it was the straight thing itself,--the truth!”
+
+“The truth?” repeated the editor.
+
+“Yes, sir. I've bin there. I've seen all that she's seen in the
+brush--the little flicks and checkers o' light and shadder down in
+the brown dust that you wonder how it ever got through the dark of the
+woods, and that allus seems to slip away like a snake or a lizard if you
+grope. I've heard all that she's heard there--the creepin', the sighin',
+and the whisperin' through the bracken and the ground-vines of all that
+lives there.”
+
+“You seem to be a poet yourself,” said the editor, with a patronizing
+smile.
+
+“I'm a lumberman, up in Mendocino,” returned the stranger, with sublime
+naivete. “Got a mill there. You see, sightin' standin' timber and
+selectin' from the gen'ral show of the trees in the ground and the lay
+of roots hez sorter made me take notice.” He paused. “Then,” he added,
+somewhat despondingly, “you don't know who she is?”
+
+“No,” said the editor, reflectively; “not even if it is really a WOMAN
+who writes.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Well, you see, 'White Violet' may as well be the nom de plume of a man
+as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification.
+The handwriting, I remember, WAS more boyish than feminine.”
+
+“No,” returned the stranger doggedly, “it wasn't no MAN. There's ideas
+and words there that only come from a woman: baby-talk to the birds, you
+know, and a kind of fearsome keer of bugs and creepin' things that don't
+come to a man who wears boots and trousers. Well,” he added, with a
+return to his previous air of resigned disappointment, “I suppose you
+don't even know what she's like?”
+
+“No,” responded the editor, cheerfully. Then, following an idea
+suggested by the odd mingling of sentiment and shrewd perception in
+the man before him, he added: “Probably not at all like anything you
+imagine. She may be a mother with three or four children; or an old maid
+who keeps a boarding-house; or a wrinkled school-mistress; or a chit
+of a school-girl. I've had some fair verses from a red-haired girl of
+fourteen at the Seminary,” he concluded with professional coolness.
+
+The stranger regarded him with the naive wonder of an inexperienced
+man. Having paid this tribute to his superior knowledge, he regained his
+previous air of grave perception. “I reckon she ain't none of them. But
+I'm keepin' you from your work. Good-by. My name's Bowers--Jim Bowers,
+of Mendocino. If you're up my way, give me a call. And if you do write
+to this yer 'White Violet,' and she's willin', send me her address.”
+
+He shook the editor's hand warmly--even in its literal significance
+of imparting a good deal of his own earnest caloric to the editor's
+fingers--and left the room. His footfall echoed along the passage and
+died out, and with it, I fear, all impression of his visit from the
+editor's mind, as he plunged again into the silent task before him.
+
+Presently he was conscious of a melodious humming and a light leisurely
+step at the entrance of the hall. They continued on in an easy harmony
+and unaffected as the passage of a bird. Both were pleasant and both
+familiar to the editor. They belonged to Jack Hamlin, by vocation a
+gambler, by taste a musician, on his way from his apartments on
+the upper floor, where he had just risen, to drop into his friend's
+editorial room and glance over the exchanges, as was his habit before
+breakfast.
+
+The door opened lightly. The editor was conscious of a faint odor of
+scented soap, a sensation of freshness and cleanliness, the impression
+of a soft hand like a woman's on his shoulder and, like a woman's,
+momentarily and playfully caressing, the passage of a graceful shadow
+across his desk, and the next moment Jack Hamlin was ostentatiously
+dusting a chair with an open newspaper preparatory to sitting down.
+
+“You ought to ship that office-boy of yours, if he can't keep things
+cleaner,” he said, suspending his melody to eye grimly the dust which
+Mr. Bowers had shaken from his departing feet.
+
+The editor did not look up until he had finished revising a difficult
+paragraph. By that time Mr. Hamlin had comfortably settled himself on
+a cane sofa, and, possibly out of deference to his surroundings, had
+subdued his song to a peculiarly low, soft, and heartbreaking whistle as
+he unfolded a newspaper. Clean and faultless in his appearance, he had
+the rare gift of being able to get up at two in the afternoon with
+much of the dewy freshness and all of the moral superiority of an early
+riser.
+
+“You ought to have been here just now, Jack,” said the editor.
+
+“Not a row, old man, eh?” inquired Jack, with a faint accession of
+interest.
+
+“No,” said the editor, smiling. Then he related the incidents of the
+previous interview, with a certain humorous exaggeration which was part
+of his nature. But Jack did not smile.
+
+“You ought to have booted him out of the ranch on sight,” he said. “What
+right had he to come here prying into a lady's affairs?--at least a lady
+as far as HE knows. Of course she's some old blowzy with frumpled hair
+trying to rope in a greenhorn with a string of words and phrases,”
+ concluded Jack, carelessly, who had an equally cynical distrust of the
+sex and of literature.
+
+“That's about what I told him,” said the editor.
+
+“That's just what you SHOULDN'T have told him,” returned Jack. “You
+ought to have stuck up for that woman as if she'd been your own mother.
+Lord! you fellows don't know how to run a magazine. You ought to let ME
+sit on that chair and tackle your customers.”
+
+“What would you have done, Jack?” asked the editor, much amused to
+find that his hitherto invincible hero was not above the ordinary human
+weakness of offering advice as to editorial conduct.
+
+“Done?” reflected Jack. “Well, first, sonny, I shouldn't keep a revolver
+in a drawer that I had to OPEN to get at.”
+
+“But what would you have said?”
+
+“I should simply have asked him what was the price of lumber at
+Mendocino,” said Jack, sweetly, “and when he told me, I should have said
+that the samples he was offering out of his own head wouldn't suit. You
+see, you don't want any trifling in such matters. You write well enough,
+my boy,” continued he, turning over his paper, “but what you're lacking
+in is editorial dignity. But go on with your work. Don't mind me.”
+
+Thus admonished, the editor again bent over his desk, and his friend
+softly took up his suspended song. The editor had not proceeded far in
+his corrections when Jack's voice again broke the silence.
+
+“Where are those d----d verses, anyway?”
+
+Without looking up, the editor waved his pencil towards an uncut copy of
+the “Excelsior Magazine” lying on the table.
+
+“You don't suppose I'm going to READ them, do you?” said Jack,
+aggrievedly. “Why don't you say what they're about? That's your business
+as editor.”
+
+But that functionary, now wholly lost and wandering in the non-sequitur
+of an involved passage in the proof before him, only waved an impatient
+remonstrance with his pencil and knit his brows. Jack, with a sigh, took
+up the magazine.
+
+A long silence followed, broken only by the hurried rustling of sheets
+of copy and an occasional exasperated start from the editor. The sun
+was already beginning to slant a dusty beam across his desk; Jack's
+whistling had long since ceased. Presently, with an exclamation of
+relief, the editor laid aside the last proof-sheet and looked up.
+
+Jack Hamlin had closed the magazine, but with one hand thrown over the
+back of the sofa he was still holding it, his slim forefinger between
+its leaves to keep the place, and his handsome profile and dark
+lashes lifted towards the window. The editor, smiling at this unwonted
+abstraction, said quietly,--
+
+“Well, what do you think of them?”
+
+Jack rose, laid the magazine down, settled his white waistcoat with both
+hands, and lounged towards his friend with audacious but slightly
+veiled and shining eyes. “They sort of sing themselves to you,” he said,
+quietly, leaning beside the editor's desk, and looking down upon him.
+After a pause he said, “Then you don't know what she's like?”
+
+“That's what Mr. Bowers asked me,” remarked the editor.
+
+“D--n Bowers!”
+
+“I suppose you also wish me to write and ask for permission to give you
+her address?” said the editor, with great gravity.
+
+“No,” said Jack, coolly. “I propose to give it to YOU within a week, and
+you will pay me with a breakfast. I should like to have it said that I
+was once a paid contributor to literature. If I don't give it to you,
+I'll stand you a dinner, that's all.”
+
+“Done!” said the editor. “And you know nothing of her now?”
+
+“No,” said Jack, promptly. “Nor you?”
+
+“No more than I have told you.”
+
+“That'll do. So long!” And Jack, carefully adjusting his glossy hat over
+his curls at an ominously wicked angle, sauntered lightly from the room.
+The editor, glancing after his handsome figure and hearing him take
+up his pretermitted whistle as he passed out, began to think that the
+contingent dinner was by no means an inevitable prospect.
+
+Howbeit, he plunged once more into his monotonous duties. But the
+freshness of the day seemed to have departed with Jack, and the
+later interruptions of foreman and publisher were of a more practical
+character. It was not until the post arrived that the superscription on
+one of the letters caught his eye, and revived his former interest.
+It was the same hand as that of his unknown contributor's
+manuscript--ill-formed and boyish. He opened the envelope. It contained
+another poem with the same signature, but also a note--much longer than
+the brief lines that accompanied the first contribution--was scrawled
+upon a separate piece of paper. This the editor opened first, and read
+the following, with an amazement that for the moment dominated all other
+sense:--
+
+
+MR. EDITOR,--I see you have got my poetry in. But I don't see the
+spondulix that oughter follow. Perhaps you don't know where to send it.
+Then I'll tell you. Send the money to Lock Box 47, Green Springs P.
+O., per Wells Fargo's Express, and I'll get it there, on account of my
+parents not knowing. We're very high-toned, and they would think it's
+low making poetry for papers. Send amount usually paid for poetry in
+your papers. Or may be you think I make poetry for nothing? That's where
+you slip up!
+
+Yours truly,
+
+WHITE VIOLET.
+
+P. S.--If you don't pay for poetry, send this back. It's as good as what
+you did put in, and is just as hard to make. You hear me? that's me--all
+the time.
+
+WHITE VIOLET.
+
+
+The editor turned quickly to the new contribution for some corroboration
+of what he felt must be an extraordinary blunder. But no! The few lines
+that he hurriedly read breathed the same atmosphere of intellectual
+repose, gentleness, and imagination as the first contribution. And yet
+they were in the same handwriting as the singular missive, and both were
+identical with the previous manuscript.
+
+Had he been the victim of a hoax, and were the verses not original? No;
+they were distinctly original, local in color, and even local in the use
+of certain old English words that were common in the Southwest. He had
+before noticed the apparent incongruity of the handwriting and the text,
+and it was possible that for the purposes of disguise the poet might
+have employed an amanuensis. But how could he reconcile the incongruity
+of the mercenary and slangy purport of the missive itself with the
+mental habit of its author? Was it possible that these inconsistent
+qualities existed in the one individual? He smiled grimly as he thought
+of his visitor Bowers and his friend Jack. He was startled as he
+remembered the purely imaginative picture he had himself given to the
+seriously interested Bowers of the possible incongruous personality of
+the poetess.
+
+Was he quite fair in keeping this from Jack? Was it really honorable, in
+view of their wager? It is to be feared that a very human enjoyment of
+Jack's possible discomfiture quite as much as any chivalrous friendship
+impelled the editor to ring eventually for the office-boy.
+
+“See if Mr. Hamlin is in his rooms.”
+
+The editor then sat down, and wrote rapidly as follows:--
+
+
+DEAR MADAM,--You are as right as you are generous in supposing that
+only ignorance of your address prevented the manager from previously
+remitting the honorarium for your beautiful verses. He now begs to send
+it to you in the manner you have indicated. As the verses have attracted
+deserved attention, I have been applied to for your address. Should
+you care to submit it to me to be used at my discretion, I shall feel
+honored by your confidence. But this is a matter left entirely to your
+own kindness and better judgment. Meantime, I take pleasure in accepting
+“White Violet's” present contribution, and remain, dear madam, your
+obedient servant,
+
+THE EDITOR.
+
+
+The boy returned as he was folding the letter. Mr. Hamlin was not only
+NOT in his rooms, but, according to his negro servant Pete, had left
+town an hour ago for a few days in the country.
+
+“Did he say where?” asked the editor, quickly.
+
+“No, sir: he didn't know.”
+
+“Very well. Take this to the manager.” He addressed the letter, and,
+scrawling a few hieroglyphics on a memorandum-tag, tore it off, and
+handed it with the letter to the boy.
+
+An hour later he stood in the manager's office. “The next number is
+pretty well made up,” he said, carelessly, “and I think of taking a day
+or two off.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the manager. “It will do you good. Where do you think
+you'll go?”
+
+“I haven't quite made up my mind.”
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+“Hullo!” said Jack Hamlin.
+
+He had halted his mare at the edge of an abrupt chasm. It did not appear
+to be fifty feet across, yet its depth must have been nearly two
+hundred to where the hidden mountain-stream, of which it was the banks,
+alternately slipped, tumbled, and fell with murmuring and monotonous
+regularity. One or two pine-trees growing on the opposite edge, loosened
+at the roots, had tilted their straight shafts like spears over the
+abyss, and the top of one, resting on the upper branches of a sycamore a
+few yards from him, served as an aerial bridge for the passage of a boy
+of fourteen to whom Mr. Hamlin's challenge was addressed.
+
+The boy stopped midway in his perilous transit, and, looking down upon
+the horseman, responded, coolly, “Hullo, yourself!”
+
+“Is that the only way across this infernal hole, or the one you prefer
+for exercise?” continued Hamlin, gravely.
+
+The boy sat down on a bough, allowing his bare feet to dangle over the
+dizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this
+occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful
+combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed
+trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing
+and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply.
+Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses,
+and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He smiled, however, and
+said, quietly,--
+
+“Come here, George Washington. I want to talk to you.”
+
+Without rejecting this august yet impossible title, the boy presently
+lifted his feet, and carelessly resumed his passage across the
+chasm until, reaching the sycamore, he began to let himself down
+squirrel-wise, leap by leap, with an occasional trapeze swinging from
+bough to bough, dropping at last easily to the ground. Here he appeared
+to be rather good-looking, albeit the sun and air had worked a miracle
+of brown tan and freckles on his exposed surfaces, until the mottling of
+his oval cheeks looked like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr.
+Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion as
+the hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay like
+trappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and the
+stinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns,
+but at that moment would have bet something on the chances of their
+survival.
+
+“I did not hear what you said just now, general,” he remarked, with
+great elegance of manner, “but I know from your reputation that it could
+not be a lie. I therefore gather that there IS another way across.”
+
+The boy smiled; rather, his very short upper lip apparently vanished
+completely over his white teeth, and his very black eyes, which showed a
+great deal of the white around them, danced in their orbits.
+
+“But YOU couldn't find it,” he said, slyly.
+
+“No more could you find the half-dollar I dropped just now, unless I
+helped you.”
+
+Mr. Hamlin, by way of illustration, leaned deeply over his left stirrup,
+and pointed to the ground. At the same moment a bright half-dollar
+absolutely appeared to glitter in the herbage at the point of his
+finger. It was a trick that had always brought great pleasure and profit
+to his young friends, and some loss and discomfiture of wager to his
+older ones.
+
+The boy picked up the coin: “There's a dip and a level crossing about a
+mile over yer,”--he pointed,--“but it's through the woods, and they're
+that high with thick bresh.”
+
+“With what?”
+
+“Bresh,” repeated the boy; “THAT,”--pointing to a few fronds of bracken
+growing in the shadow of the sycamore.
+
+“Oh! underbrush?”
+
+“Yes; I said 'bresh,'” returned the boy, doggedly. “YOU might get
+through, ef you war spry, but not your hoss. Where do you want to go,
+anyway?”
+
+“Do you know, George,” said Mr. Hamlin, lazily throwing his right
+leg over the horn of his saddle for greater ease and deliberation in
+replying, “it's very odd, but that's just what I'D like to know. Now,
+what would YOU, in your broad statesmanlike views of things generally,
+advise?”
+
+Quite convinced of the stranger's mental unsoundness, the boy glanced
+again at his half-dollar, as if to make sure of its integrity, pocketed
+it doubtfully, and turned away.
+
+“Where are you going?” said Hamlin, resuming his seat with the agility
+of a circus-rider, and spurring forward.
+
+“To Green Springs, where I live, two miles over the ridge on the far
+slope,”--indicating the direction.
+
+“Ah!” said Jack, with thoughtful gravity. “Well, kindly give my love to
+your sister, will you?”
+
+“George Washington didn't have no sister,” said the boy, cunningly.
+
+“Can I have been mistaken?” said Hamlin, lifting his hand to his
+forehead with grieved accents. “Then it seems YOU have. Kindly give her
+my love.”
+
+“Which one?” asked the boy, with a swift glance of mischief. “I've got
+four.”
+
+“The one that's like you,” returned Hamlin, with prompt exactitude.
+“Now, where's the 'bresh' you spoke of?”
+
+“Keep along the edge until you come to the log-slide. Foller that, and
+it'll lead you into the woods. But ye won't go far, I tell ye. When you
+have to turn back, instead o' comin' back here, you kin take the trail
+that goes round the woods, and that'll bring ye out into the stage road
+ag'in near the post-office at the Green Springs crossin' and the new
+hotel. That'll be war ye'll turn up, I reckon,” he added, reflectively.
+“Fellers that come yer gunnin' and fishin' gin'rally do,” he concluded,
+with a half-inquisitive air.
+
+“Ah?” said Mr. Hamlin, quietly shedding the inquiry. “Green Springs
+Hotel is where the stage stops, eh?”
+
+“Yes, and at the post-office,” said the boy. “She'll be along here
+soon,” he added.
+
+“If you mean the Santa Cruz stage,” said Hamlin, “she's here already. I
+passed her on the ridge half an hour ago.”
+
+The boy gave a sudden start, and a quick uneasy expression passed over
+his face. “Go 'long with ye!” he said, with a forced smile: “it ain't
+her time yet.”
+
+“But I SAW her,” repeated Hamlin, much amused. “Are you expecting
+company? Hullo! Where are you off to? Come back.”
+
+But his companion had already vanished in the thicket with the
+undeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentary
+rustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. The
+hidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distant
+woodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. Hamlin was again alone.
+
+“Wonder whether he's got parents in the stage, and has been playing
+truant here,” he mused, lazily. “Looked as if he'd been up to some
+devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a
+little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to
+watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light out as I was beginning
+to get some talk out of him.” He paused, looked at his watch, and
+straightened himself in his stirrups. “Four o'clock. I reckon I might as
+well try the woods and what that imp calls the 'bresh;' I may strike a
+shanty or a native by the way.”
+
+With this determination, Mr. Hamlin urged his horse along the faint
+trail by the brink of the watercourse which the boy had just indicated.
+He had no definite end in view beyond the one that had brought him the
+day before to that locality--his quest of the unknown poetess. His clue
+would have seemed to ordinary humanity the faintest. He had merely
+noted the provincial name of a certain plant mentioned in the poem, and
+learned that its habitat was limited to the southern local range; while
+its peculiar nomenclature was clearly of French Creole or Gulf State
+origin. This gave him a large though sparsely-populated area
+for locality, while it suggested a settlement of Louisianians or
+Mississippians near the Summit, of whom, through their native gambling
+proclivities, he was professionally cognizant. But he mainly trusted
+Fortune. Secure in his faith in the feminine character of that goddess,
+he relied a great deal on her well-known weakness for scamps of his
+quality.
+
+It was not long before he came to the “slide”--a lightly-cut or shallow
+ditch. It descended slightly in a course that was far from straight, at
+times diverging to avoid the obstacles of trees or boulders, at times
+shaving them so closely as to leave smooth abrasions along their sides
+made by the grinding passage of long logs down the incline. The track
+itself was slippery from this, and preoccupied all Hamlin's skill as a
+horseman, even to the point of stopping his usual careless whistle.
+At the end of half an hour the track became level again, and he was
+confronted with a singular phenomenon.
+
+He had entered the wood, and the trail seemed to cleave through a
+far-stretching, motionless sea of ferns that flowed on either side to
+the height of his horse's flanks. The straight shafts of the trees rose
+like columns from their hidden bases and were lost again in a roof
+of impenetrable leafage, leaving a clear space of fifty feet between,
+through which the surrounding horizon of sky was perfectly visible.
+All the light that entered this vast sylvan hall came from the sides;
+nothing permeated from above; nothing radiated from below; the height
+of the crest on which the wood was placed gave it this lateral
+illumination, but gave it also the profound isolation of some temple
+raised by long-forgotten hands. In spite of the height of these clear
+shafts, they seemed dwarfed by the expanse of the wood, and in the
+farthest perspective the base of ferns and the capital of foliage
+appeared almost to meet. As the boy had warned him, the slide had turned
+aside, skirting the wood to follow the incline, and presently the little
+trail he now followed vanished utterly, leaving him and his horse adrift
+breast-high in this green and yellow sea of fronds. But Mr. Hamlin,
+imperious of obstacles, and touched by some curiosity, continued to
+advance lazily, taking the bearings of a larger red-wood in the centre
+of the grove for his objective point. The elastic mass gave way before
+him, brushing his knees or combing his horse's flanks with wide-spread
+elfin fingers, and closing up behind him as he passed, as if to
+obliterate any track by which he might return. Yet his usual luck did
+not desert him here. Being on horseback, he found that he could detect
+what had been invisible to the boy and probably to all pedestrians,
+namely, that the growth was not equally dense, that there were certain
+thinner and more open spaces that he could take advantage of by more
+circuitous progression, always, however, keeping the bearings of the
+central tree. This he at last reached, and halted his panting horse.
+Here a new idea which had been haunting him since he entered the wood
+took fuller possession of him. He had seen or known all this before!
+There was a strange familiarity either in these objects or in the
+impression or spell they left upon him. He remembered the verses! Yes,
+this was the “underbrush” which the poetess had described: the gloom
+above and below, the light that seemed blown through it like the wind,
+the suggestion of hidden life beneath this tangled luxuriance, which she
+alone had penetrated,--all this was here. But, more than that, here was
+the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her
+verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of
+her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had
+provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy
+susceptibility he was simply thrown into a corresponding mood of
+emotion and relieved himself with song. One of the verses he had already
+associated in his mind with the rhythm of an old plantation melody, and
+it struck his fancy to take advantage of the solitude to try its effect.
+Humming to himself, at first softly, he at last grew bolder, and let his
+voice drift away through the stark pillars of the sylvan colonnade till
+it seemed to suffuse and fill it with no more effort than the light
+which strayed in on either side. Sitting thus, his hat thrown a little
+back from his clustering curls, the white neck and shoulders of his
+horse uplifting him above the crested mass of fern, his red sash the one
+fleck of color in their olive depths, I am afraid he looked much
+more like the real minstrel of the grove than the unknown poetess who
+transfigured it. But this, as has been already indicated, was Jack
+Hamlin's peculiar gift. Even as he had previously outshone the vaquero
+in his borrowed dress, he now silenced and supplanted a few fluttering
+blue-jays--rightful tenants of the wood--with a more graceful and airy
+presence and a far sweeter voice.
+
+The open horizon towards the west had taken a warmer color from the
+already slanting sun when Mr. Hamlin, having rested his horse, turned
+to that direction. He had noticed that the wood was thinner there,
+and, pushing forward, he was presently rewarded by the sound of far-off
+wheels, and knew he must be near the high-road that the boy had spoken
+of. Having given up his previous intention of crossing the stream, there
+seemed nothing better for him to do than to follow the truant's advice
+and take the road back to Green Springs. Yet he was loath to leave the
+wood, halting on its verge, and turning to look back into its charmed
+recesses. Once or twice--perhaps because he recalled the words of the
+poem--that yellowish sea of ferns had seemed instinct with hidden life,
+and he had even fancied, here and there, a swaying of its plumed crests.
+Howbeit, he still lingered long enough for the open sunlight into which
+he had obtruded to point out the bravery of his handsome figure. Then
+he wheeled his horse, the light glanced from polished double bit and
+bridle-fripperies, caught his red sash and bullion buttons, struck a
+parting flash from his silver spurs, and he was gone!
+
+For a moment the light streamed unbrokenly through the wood. And then
+it could be seen that the yellow mass of undergrowth HAD moved with the
+passage of another figure than his own. For ever since he had entered
+the shade, a woman, shawled in a vague, shapeless fashion, had watched
+him wonderingly, eagerly, excitedly, gliding from tree to tree as he
+advanced, or else dropping breathlessly below the fronds of fern whence
+she gazed at him as between parted fingers. When he wheeled she had run
+openly to the west, albeit with hidden face and still clinging shawl,
+and taken a last look at his retreating figure. And then, with a faint
+but lingering sigh, she drew back into the shadow of the wood again and
+vanished also.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At the end of twenty minutes Mr. Hamlin reined in his mare. He had just
+observed in the distant shadows of a by-lane that intersected his road
+the vanishing flutter of two light print dresses. Without a moment's
+hesitation he lightly swerved out of the high-road and followed the
+retreating figures.
+
+As he neared them, they seemed to be two slim young girls, evidently
+so preoccupied with the rustic amusement of edging each other off the
+grassy border into the dust of the track that they did not perceive
+his approach. Little shrieks, slight scufflings, and interjections of
+“Cynthy! you limb!” “Quit that, Eunice, now!” and “I just call that
+real mean!” apparently drowned the sound of his canter in the soft dust.
+Checking his speed to a gentle trot, and pressing his horse close beside
+the opposite fence, he passed them with gravely uplifted hat and a
+serious, preoccupied air. But in that single, seemingly conventional
+glance, Mr. Hamlin had seen that they were both pretty, and that one had
+the short upper lip of his errant little guide. A hundred yards farther
+on he halted, as if irresolutely, gazed doubtfully ahead of him, and
+then turned back. An expression of innocent--almost childlike--concern
+was clouding the rascal's face. It was well, as the two girls had drawn
+closely together, having been apparently surprised in the midst of a
+glowing eulogium of this glorious passing vision by its sudden return.
+At his nearer approach, the one with the short upper lip hid that
+piquant feature and the rest of her rosy face behind the other's
+shoulder, which was suddenly and significantly opposed to the advance
+of this handsome intruder, with a certain dignity, half real, half
+affected, but wholly charming. The protectress appeared--possibly from
+her defensive attitude--the superior of her companion.
+
+Audacious as Jack was to his own sex, he had early learned that
+such rare but discomposing graces as he possessed required a certain
+apologetic attitude when presented to women, and that it was only a
+plain man who could be always complacently self-confident in their
+presence. There was, consequently, a hesitating lowering of this
+hypocrite's brown eyelashes as he said, in almost pained accents,--
+
+“Excuse me, but I fear I've taken the wrong road. I'm going to Green
+Springs.”
+
+“I reckon you've taken the wrong road, wherever you're going,” returned
+the young lady, having apparently made up her mind to resent each of
+Jack's perfections as a separate impertinence: “this is a PRIVATE road.”
+ She drew herself fairly up here, although gurgled at in the ear and
+pinched in the arm by her companion.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Jack, meekly. “I see I'm trespassing on your
+grounds. I'm very sorry. Thank you for telling me. I should have gone on
+a mile or two farther, I suppose, until I came to your house,” he added,
+innocently.
+
+“A mile or two! You'd have run chock ag'in' our gate in another minit,”
+ said the short-lipped one, eagerly. But a sharp nudge from her companion
+sent her back again into cover, where she waited expectantly for another
+crushing retort from her protector.
+
+But, alas! it did not come. One cannot be always witty, and Jack looked
+distressed. Nevertheless, he took advantage of the pause.
+
+“It was so stupid in me, as I think your brother”--looking at
+Short-lip--“very carefully told me the road.”
+
+The two girls darted quick glances at each other. “Oh, Bawb!” said the
+first speaker, in wearied accents,--“THAT limb! He don't keer.”
+
+“But he DID care,” said Hamlin, quietly, “and gave me a good deal of
+information. Thanks to him, I was able to see that ferny wood that's so
+famous--about two miles up the road. You know--the one that there's a
+poem written about!”
+
+The shot told! Short-lip burst into a display of dazzling little teeth
+and caught the other girl convulsively by the shoulders. The superior
+girl bent her pretty brows, and said, “Eunice, what's gone of ye? Quit
+that!” but, as Hamlin thought, paled slightly.
+
+“Of course,” said Hamlin, quickly, “you know--the poem everybody's
+talking about. Dear me! let me see! how does it go?” The rascal knit his
+brows, said, “Ah, yes,” and then murmured the verse he had lately sung
+quite as musically.
+
+Short-lip was shamelessly exalted and excited. Really she could scarcely
+believe it! She already heard herself relating the whole occurrence.
+Here was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen--an entire
+stranger--talking to them in the most beautiful and natural way,
+right in the lane, and reciting poetry to her sister! It was like a
+novel--only more so. She thought that Cynthia, on the other hand, looked
+distressed, and--she must say it--“silly.”
+
+All of which Jack noted, and was wise. He had got all he wanted--at
+present. He gathered up his reins.
+
+“Thank you so much, and your brother, too, Miss Cynthia,” he said,
+without looking up. Then, adding, with a parting glance and smile, “But
+don't tell Bob how stupid I was,” he swiftly departed.
+
+In half an hour he was at the Green Springs Hotel. As he rode into the
+stable yard, he noticed that the coach had only just arrived, having
+been detained by a land-slip on the Summit road. With the recollection
+of Bob fresh in his mind, he glanced at the loungers at the stage
+office. The boy was not there, but a moment later Jack detected him
+among the waiting crowd at the post-office opposite. With a view of
+following up his inquiries, he crossed the road as the boy entered the
+vestibule of the post-office. He arrived in time to see him unlock one
+of a row of numbered letter-boxes rented by subscribers, which occupied
+a partition by the window, and take out a small package and a letter.
+But in that brief glance Mr. Hamlin detected the printed address of the
+“Excelsior Magazine” on the wrapper. It was enough. Luck was certainly
+with him.
+
+He had time to get rid of the wicked sparkle that had lit his dark eyes,
+and to lounge carelessly towards the boy as the latter broke open the
+package, and then hurriedly concealed it in his jacket-pocket, and
+started for the door. Mr. Hamlin quickly followed him, unperceived, and,
+as he stepped into the street, gently tapped him on the shoulder. The
+boy turned and faced him quickly. But Mr. Hamlin's eyes showed nothing
+but lazy good-humor.
+
+“Hullo, Bob. Where are you going?”
+
+The boy again looked up suspiciously at this revelation of his name.
+
+“Home,” he said, briefly.
+
+“Oh, over yonder,” said Hamlin, calmly. “I don't mind walking with you
+as far as the lane.”
+
+He saw the boy's eyes glance furtively towards an alley that ran beside
+the blacksmith's shop a few rods ahead, and was convinced that he
+intended to evade him there. Slipping his arm carelessly in the youth's,
+he concluded to open fire at once.
+
+“Bob,” he said, with irresistible gravity, “I did not know when I met
+you this morning that I had the honor of addressing a poet--none other
+than the famous author of 'Underbrush.'”
+
+The boy started back, and endeavored to withdraw his arm, but Mr. Hamlin
+tightened his hold, without, however, changing his careless expression.
+
+“You see,” he continued, “the editor is a friend of mine, and, being
+afraid this package might not get into the right hands--as you didn't
+give your name--he deputized me to come here and see that it was all
+square. As you're rather young, for all you're so gifted, I reckon I'd
+better go home with you, and take a receipt from your parents. That's
+about square, I think?”
+
+The consternation of the boy was so evident and so far beyond Mr.
+Hamlin's expectation that he instantly halted him, gazed into his
+shifting eyes, and gave a long whistle.
+
+“Who said it was for ME? Wot you talkin' about? Lemme go!” gasped the
+boy, with the short intermittent breath of mingled fear and passion.
+
+“Bob,” said Mr. Hamlin, in a singularly colorless voice which was very
+rare with him, and an expression quite unlike his own, “what is your
+little game?”
+
+The boy looked down in dogged silence.
+
+“Out with it! Who are you playing this on?”
+
+“It's all among my own folks; it's nothin' to YOU,” said the boy,
+suddenly beginning to struggle violently, as if inspired by this
+extenuating fact.
+
+“Among your own folks, eh? White Violet and the rest, eh? But SHE'S not
+in it?”
+
+No reply.
+
+“Hand me over that package. I'll give it back to you again.”
+
+The boy handed it to Mr. Hamlin. He read the letter, and found the
+inclosure contained a twenty-dollar gold-piece. A half-supercilious
+smile passed over his face at this revelation of the inadequate
+emoluments of literature and the trifling inducements to crime. Indeed,
+I fear the affair began to take a less serious moral complexion in his
+eyes.
+
+“Then White Violet--your sister Cynthia, you know,” continued Mr.
+Hamlin, in easy parenthesis--“wrote for this?” holding the coin
+contemplatively in his fingers, “and you calculated to nab it yourself?”
+
+The quick searching glance with which Bob received the name of his
+sister, Mr. Hamlin attributed only to his natural surprise that
+this stranger should be on such familiar terms with her; but the boy
+responded immediately and bluntly:--
+
+“No! SHE didn't write for it. She didn't want nobody to know who she
+was. Nobody wrote for it but me. Nobody KNEW FOLKS WAS PAID FOR PO'TRY
+BUT ME. I found it out from a feller. I wrote for it. I wasn't goin' to
+let that skunk of an editor have it himself!”
+
+“And you thought YOU would take it,” said Hamlin, his voice resuming
+its old tone. “Well, George--I mean Bob, your conduct was praiseworthy,
+although your intentions were bad. Still, twenty dollars is rather
+too much for your trouble. Suppose we say five and call it square?” He
+handed the astonished boy five dollars. “Now, George Washington,” he
+continued, taking four other twenty-dollar pieces from his pocket, and
+adding them to the inclosure, which he carefully refolded, “I'm going to
+give you another chance to live up to your reputation. You'll take that
+package, and hand it to White Violet, and say you found it, just as
+it is, in the lock-box. I'll keep the letter, for it would knock you
+endways if it was seen, and I'll make it all right with the editor. But,
+as I've got to tell him that I've seen White Violet myself, and know
+she's got it, I expect YOU to manage in some way to have me see her.
+I'll manage the rest of it; and I won't blow on you, either. You'll
+come back to the hotel, and tell me what you've done. And now, George,”
+ concluded Mr. Hamlin, succeeding at last in fixing the boy's evasive eye
+with a peculiar look, “it may be just as well for you to understand
+that I know every nook and corner of this place, that I've already been
+through that underbrush you spoke of once this morning, and that I've
+got a mare that can go wherever YOU can, and a d----d sight quicker!”
+
+“I'll give the package to White Violet,” said the boy, doggedly.
+
+“And you'll come back to the hotel?”
+
+The boy hesitated, and then said, “I'll come back.”
+
+“All right, then. Adios, general.”
+
+Bob disappeared around the corner of a cross-road at a rapid trot, and
+Mr. Hamlin turned into the hotel.
+
+“Smart little chap that!” he said to the barkeeper.
+
+“You bet!” returned the man, who, having recognized Mr. Hamlin, was
+delighted at the prospect of conversing with a gentleman of such
+decidedly dangerous reputation. “But he's been allowed to run a little
+wild since old man Delatour died, and the widder's got enough to do, I
+reckon, lookin' arter her four gals, and takin' keer of old Delatour's
+ranch over yonder. I guess it's pretty hard sleddin' for her sometimes
+to get clo'es and grub for the famerly, without follerin' Bob around.”
+
+“Sharp girls, too, I reckon; one of them writes things for the
+magazines, doesn't she?--Cynthia, eh?” said Mr. Hamlin, carelessly.
+
+Evidently this fact was not a notorious one to the barkeeper. He,
+however, said, “Dunno; mabbee; her father was eddicated, and the widder
+Delatour, too, though she's sorter queer, I've heard tell. Lord!
+Mr. Hamlin, YOU oughter remember old man Delatour! From Opelousas,
+Louisiany, you know! High old sport French style, frilled
+bosom--open-handed, and us'ter buck ag'in' faro awful! Why, he dropped
+a heap o' money to YOU over in San Jose two years ago at poker! You must
+remember him!”
+
+The slightest possible flush passed over Mr. Hamlin's brow under the
+shadow of his hat, but did not get lower than his eyes. He suddenly HAD
+recalled the spendthrift Delatour perfectly, and as quickly regretted
+now that he had not doubled the honorarium he had just sent to his
+portionless daughter. But he only said, coolly, “No,” and then, raising
+his pale face and audacious eyes, continued in his laziest and most
+insulting manner, “no: the fact is, my mind is just now preoccupied in
+wondering if the gas is leaking anywhere, and if anything is ever served
+over this bar except elegant conversation. When the gentleman who mixes
+drinks comes back, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell him to send a
+whisky sour to Mr. Jack Hamlin in the parlor. Meantime, you can turn off
+your soda fountain: I don't want any fizz in mine.”
+
+Having thus quite recovered himself, Mr. Hamlin lounged gracefully
+across the hall into the parlor. As he did so, a darkish young man, with
+a slim boyish figure, a thin face, and a discontented expression,
+rose from an armchair, held out his hand, and, with a saturnine smile,
+said:--
+
+“Jack!”
+
+“Fred!”
+
+The two men remained gazing at each other with a half-amused,
+half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. “I didn't think
+YOU'D be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred,” he said,
+half seriously.
+
+“Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I hunted
+you up,” said the editor, mischievously. “Read that. I got it an hour
+after you left.” And he placed a little triumphantly in Jack's hand the
+letter he had received from White Violet.
+
+Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two hands
+on the editor's shoulders. “Yes, my young friend, and you sat down and
+wrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollars--which, permit me
+to say, was d----d poor pay! But that isn't your fault, I reckon: it's
+the meanness of your proprietors.”
+
+“But it isn't the question, either, just now, Jack, however you have
+been able to answer it. Do you mean to say seriously that you want to
+know anything more of a woman who could write such a letter?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Jack, cheerfully. “She might be a devilish sight
+funnier than if she hadn't written it--which is the fact.”
+
+“You mean to say SHE didn't write it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Who did, then?”
+
+“Her brother Bob.”
+
+After a moment's scrutiny of his friend's bewildered face, Mr. Hamlin
+briefly related his adventures, from the moment of his meeting Bob at
+the mountain-stream to the barkeeper's gossiping comment and sequel.
+“Therefore,” he concluded, “the author of 'Underbrush' is Miss Cynthia
+Delatour, one of four daughters of a widow who lives two miles from
+here at the crossing. I shall see her this evening and make sure;
+but to-morrow morning you will pay me the breakfast you owe me. She's
+good-looking, but I can't say I fancy the poetic style: it's a little
+too high-toned for me. However, I love my love with a C, because she is
+your Contributor; I hate her with a C, because of her Connections; I met
+her by Chance and treated her with Civility; her name is Cynthia, and
+she lives on a Cross-road.”
+
+“But you surely don't expect you will ever see Bob, again!” said the
+editor, impatiently. “You have trusted him with enough to start him for
+the Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you have
+established in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised that
+a man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp the
+second time.”
+
+“My knowledge of the world,” returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, “tells
+me that's the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesn't make a habit,
+nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had never
+tried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishment
+by doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is stronger
+than any other. 'Tisn't everybody that gets that chance,” he added, with
+an odd laugh.
+
+Nevertheless, three hours passed without bringing Bob. The two men had
+gone to the billiard-room, when a waiter brought a note, which he
+handed to Mr. Hamlin with some apologetic hesitation. It bore no
+superscription, but had been brought by a boy who described Mr. Hamlin
+perfectly, and requested that the note should be handed to him with the
+remark that “Bob had come back.”
+
+“And is he there now?” asked Mr. Hamlin, holding the letter unopened in
+his hand.
+
+“No, sir; he run right off.”
+
+The editor laughed, but Mr. Hamlin, having perused the note, put away
+his cue. “Come into my room,” he said.
+
+The editor followed, and Mr. Hamlin laid the note before him on the
+table. “Bob's all right,” he said, “for I'll bet a thousand dollars that
+note is genuine.”
+
+It was delicately written, in a cultivated feminine hand, utterly unlike
+the scrawl that had first excited the editor's curiosity, and ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+He who brought me the bounty of your friend--for I cannot call a
+recompense so far above my deserts by any other name--gives me also to
+understand that you wished for an interview. I cannot believe that this
+is mere idle curiosity, or that you have any motive that is not kindly
+and honorable, but I feel that I must beg and pray you not to seek to
+remove the veil behind which I have chosen to hide myself and my
+poor efforts from identification. I THINK I know you--I KNOW I
+know myself--well enough to believe it would give neither of us any
+happiness. You will say to your generous friend that he has already
+given the Unknown more comfort and hope than could come from any
+personal compliment or publicity, and you will yourself believe that you
+have all unconsciously brightened a sad woman's fancy with a Dream and a
+Vision that before today had been unknown to
+
+WHITE VIOLET.
+
+
+“Have you read it?” asked Mr. Hamlin.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then you don't want to see it any more, or even remember you ever saw
+it,” said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces and
+letting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.
+
+“But, I say, Jack! look here; I don't understand! You say you have
+already seen this woman, and yet”--
+
+“I HAVEN'T seen her,” said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right here
+and leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, and--that I
+owe you that dinner.”
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr.
+Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupant
+of a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tall
+figure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. James
+Bowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had just
+abandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, but
+Mr. Bowers's resources were a life-long experience and technical skill;
+he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and his
+knowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr.
+Hamlin's luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormal
+growths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were
+not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by
+the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers's
+visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even
+figuratively accept the omen.
+
+He baited and rested his horse at the hotel, where his bucolic exterior,
+however, did not elicit that attention which had been accorded to Mr.
+Hamlin's charming insolence or the editor's cultivated manner. But he
+glanced over a township map on the walls of the reading-room, and took
+note of the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches,
+passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in the
+direction of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a young
+sapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling but
+familiar woodman's step.
+
+It is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to follow Mr. Bowers in
+his professional diagnosis of the locality. He recognized Nature in one
+of her moods of wasteful extravagance,--a waste that his experienced
+eye could tell was also sapping the vitality of those outwardly robust
+shafts that rose around him. He knew, without testing them, that half of
+these fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he could
+detect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirred
+by the wind that streamed through their long aisles,--like incense
+mingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then to
+part the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeing
+again, as he had told the editor, the weird SECOND twilight through
+their miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But,
+even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess,
+he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphere
+and melody of her verse. Its spell was upon him, too. Unlike Mr. Hamlin,
+he did not sing. He only halted once or twice, silently combing his
+straight narrow beard with his three fingers, until the action seemed
+to draw down the lines of his face into limitless dejection, and an
+inscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds which
+had hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before the
+grotesque and angular half-length of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind had
+blown in a scarecrow from the distant farms.
+
+Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him,
+leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in the
+direction of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that it
+was singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in the
+presence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he could
+have gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so.
+Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He had
+recourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.
+
+To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, and
+then shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evident
+distress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.
+
+“I'm sorry I frighted ye, ma'am, but I was afraid I might skeer ye more
+if I lay low, and said nothin'.”
+
+Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would have
+relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and
+figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past
+forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which
+was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her
+forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped,
+and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost
+sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth
+in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by every
+other line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial.
+Her figure was hidden by a shapeless garment that partook equally of the
+shawl, cloak, and wrapper.
+
+“I am very foolish,” she began, in a voice and accent that at once
+asserted a cultivated woman, “but I so seldom meet anybody here that a
+voice quite startled me. That, and the heat,” she went on, wiping her
+face, into which the color was returning violently--“for I seldom go out
+as early as this--I suppose affected me.”
+
+Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood which
+I fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient,
+undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular
+arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being
+in the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.
+
+“Like as not, ma'am,” he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in her
+burning face. “The sun IS pow'ful hot at this time o' day; I felt it
+myself comin' yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it
+back, it's likely to come out ag'in. Ye can't check it no more than the
+sap in that choked limb thar”--he pointed ostentatiously where a fallen
+pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which
+still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. “Do you
+live far from here, ma'am?” he added.
+
+“Only as far as the first turning below the hill.”
+
+“I've got my buggy here, and I'm goin' that way, and I can jist set ye
+down thar cool and comfortable. Ef,” he continued, in the same assuring
+tone, without waiting for a reply, “ye'll jist take a good grip of
+my arm thar,” curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherd's
+crook, “I'll go first, and break away the brush for ye.”
+
+She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns in
+this fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally dropping
+a word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face.
+When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,--and
+perpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had been
+a transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,--and then gravely
+took his place beside her.
+
+“Bein' in the timber trade myself, ma'am,” he said, gathering up the
+reins, “I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My name
+is Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there ain't much that grows in the
+way o' standin' timber on the Pacific Slope that I don't know and can't
+locate, though I DO say it. I've got ez big a mill, and ez big a run in
+my district, ez there is anywhere. Ef you're ever up my way, you ask for
+Bowers--Jim Bowers--and that's ME.”
+
+There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation between
+strangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each other's
+foibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman,
+naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure her
+that she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and so
+satisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the woman
+regained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowers's vanity,
+and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of the
+buggy along the road, thanked him graciously.
+
+“I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel,” she
+said, after a pause.
+
+“I didn't get to see 'em, as I only put up my hoss there,” he replied.
+“But I know the stage took some away this mornin': it seemed pretty well
+loaded up when I passed it.”
+
+The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possible
+return of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once be
+distracted at any cost--even conversation.
+
+“Perhaps,” he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, “I'm a-talkin'
+to Mrs. McFadden?”
+
+“No,” said the woman, abstractedly.
+
+“Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on that
+crossroad.”
+
+“My name IS Delatour,” she said, somewhat wearily.
+
+Mr. Bowers was conversationally stranded. He was not at all anxious to
+know her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there was
+nothing more to say. He would, of course, have preferred to ask her
+if she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew the
+poetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appeared
+to be an “eddicated” woman made him sensitive of displaying technical
+ignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was
+“subjective” or “objective”--two words he had heard used at the Debating
+Society at Mendocino on the question, “Is poetry morally beneficial?”
+ For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiative
+in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if
+appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief
+in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but
+unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at
+times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some
+conversation she had held with another.
+
+She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband
+had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.
+The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been
+obliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls and
+a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at
+Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared,
+too shiftless--to do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor;
+she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans,
+where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand country
+life. Of course she had been married too young--as all girls were.
+Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where
+she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could
+advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far
+enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia,
+was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.
+
+As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine
+American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved.
+But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his
+main object, and, looking up cautiously, said:--
+
+“And mebbe write po'try now and then?” To his great discomfiture, the
+only effect of this suggestion was to check his companion's speech for
+some moments and apparently throw her back into her former abstraction.
+Yet, after a long pause, as they were turning into the lane, she said,
+as if continuing the subject:--
+
+“I only hope that, whatever my daughters may do, they won't marry
+young.”
+
+The yawning breaches in the Delatour gates and fences presently came
+in view. They were supposed to be reinforced by half a dozen dogs,
+who, however, did their duty with what would seem to be the prevailing
+inefficiency, retiring after a single perfunctory yelp to shameless
+stretching, scratching, and slumber. Their places were taken on the
+veranda by two negro servants, two girls respectively of eight and
+eleven, and a boy of fourteen, who remained silently staring. As Mr.
+Bowers had accepted the widow's polite invitation to enter, she was
+compelled, albeit in an equally dazed and helpless way, to issue some
+preliminary orders:--
+
+“Now, Chloe--I mean aunt Dinah--do take Eunice--I mean Victorine and
+Una--away, and--you know--tidy them; and you, Sarah--it's Sarah, isn't
+it?--lay some refreshment in the parlor for this gentleman. And,
+Bob, tell your sister Cynthia to come here with Eunice.” As Bob still
+remained staring at Mr. Bowers, she added, in weary explanation, “Mr.
+Bowers brought me over from the Summit woods in his buggy--it was so
+hot. There--shake hands and thank him, and run away--do!”
+
+They crossed a broad but scantily-furnished hall. Everywhere the same
+look of hopeless incompleteness, temporary utility, and premature decay;
+most of the furniture was mismatched and misplaced; many of the rooms
+had changed their original functions or doubled them; a smell of cooking
+came from the library, on whose shelves, mingled with books, were
+dresses and household linen, and through the door of a room into which
+Mrs. Delatour retired to remove her duster Mr. Bowers caught a glimpse
+of a bed, and of a table covered with books and papers, at which a
+tall, fair girl was writing. In a few moments Mrs. Delatour returned,
+accompanied by this girl, and Eunice, her short-lipped sister. Bob, who
+joined the party seated around Mr. Bowers and a table set with cake, a
+decanter, and glasses, completed the group. Emboldened by the presence
+of the tall Cynthia and his glimpse of her previous literary attitude,
+Mr. Bowers resolved to make one more attempt.
+
+“I suppose these yer young ladies sometimes go to the wood, too?” As his
+eye rested on Cynthia, she replied:--
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+“I reckon on account of the purty shadows down in the brush, and the
+soft light, eh? and all that?” he continued, with a playful manner but a
+serious accession of color.
+
+“Why, the woods belong to us. It's mar's property!” broke in Eunice with
+a flash of teeth.
+
+“Well, Lordy, I wanter know!” said Mr. Bowers, in some astonishment.
+“Why, that's right in my line, too! I've been sightin' timber all along
+here, and that's how I dropped in on yer mar.” Then, seeing a look of
+eagerness light up the faces of Bob and Eunice, he was encouraged to
+make the most of his opportunity. “Why, ma'am,” he went on, cheerfully,
+“I reckon you're holdin' that wood at a pretty stiff figger, now.”
+
+“Why?” asked Mrs. Delatour, simply.
+
+Mr. Bowers delivered a wink at Bob and Eunice, who were still watching
+him with anxiety. “Well, not on account of the actool timber, for the
+best of it ain't sound,” he said, “but on account of its bein' famous!
+Everybody that reads that pow'ful pretty poem about it in the 'Excelsior
+Magazine' wants to see it. Why, it would pay the Green Springs
+hotel-keeper to buy it up for his customers. But I s'pose you reckon to
+keep it--along with the poetess--in your famerly?”
+
+Although Mr. Bowers long considered this speech as the happiest and most
+brilliant effort of his life, its immediate effect was not, perhaps,
+all that could be desired. The widow turned upon him a restrained and
+darkening face. Cynthia half rose with an appealing “Oh, mar!” and Bob
+and Eunice, having apparently pinched each other to the last stage of
+endurance, retired precipitately from the room in a prolonged giggle.
+
+“I have not yet thought of disposing of the Summit woods, Mr. Bowers,”
+ said Mrs. Delatour, coldly, “but if I should do so, I will consult you.
+You must excuse the children, who see so little company, they are quite
+unmanageable when strangers are present. Cynthia, WILL you see if the
+servants have looked after Mr. Bowers's horse? You know Bob is not to be
+trusted.”
+
+There was clearly nothing else for Mr. Bowers to do but to take his
+leave, which he did respectfully, if not altogether hopefully. But when
+he had reached the lane, his horse shied from the unwonted spectacle of
+Bob, swinging his hat, and apparently awaiting him, from the fork of a
+wayside sapling.
+
+“Hol' up, mister. Look here!”
+
+Mr. Bowers pulled up. Bob dropped into the road, and, after a backward
+glance over his shoulder, said:--
+
+“Drive 'longside the fence in the shadder.” As Mr. Bowers obeyed,
+Bob approached the wheels of the buggy in a manner half shy, half
+mysterious. “You wanter buy them Summit woods, mister?”
+
+“Well, per'aps, sonny. Why?” smiled Mr. Bowers.
+
+“Coz I'll tell ye suthin'. Don't you be fooled into allowin' that
+Cynthia wrote that po'try. She didn't--no more'n Eunice nor me. Mar
+kinder let ye think it, 'cos she don't want folks to think SHE did it.
+But mar wrote that po'try herself; wrote it out o' them thar woods--all
+by herself. Thar's a heap more po'try thar, you bet, and jist as good.
+And she's the one that kin write it--you hear me? That's my mar, every
+time! You buy that thar wood, and get mar to run it for po'try, and
+you'll make your pile, sure! I ain't lyin'. You'd better look spry:
+thar's another feller snoopin' 'round yere--only he barked up the wrong
+tree, and thought it was Cynthia, jist as you did.”
+
+“Another feller?” repeated the astonished Bowers.
+
+“Yes; a rig'lar sport. He was orful keen on that po'try, too, you bet.
+So you'd better hump yourself afore somebody else cuts in. Mar got a
+hundred dollars for that pome, from that editor feller and his pardner.
+I reckon that's the rig'lar price, eh?” he added, with a sudden
+suspicious caution.
+
+“I reckon so,” replied Mr. Bowers, blankly. “But--look here, Bob! Do you
+mean to say it was your mother--your MOTHER, Bob, who wrote that poem?
+Are you sure?”
+
+“D'ye think I'm lyin'?” said Bob, scornfully. “Don't I know? Don't I
+copy 'em out plain for her, so as folks won't know her handwrite? Go
+'way! you're loony!” Then, possibly doubting if this latter expression
+were strictly diplomatic with the business in hand, he added, in
+half-reproach, half-apology, “Don't ye see I don't want ye to be fooled
+into losin' yer chance o' buying up that Summit wood? It's the cold
+truth I'm tellin' ye.”
+
+Mr. Bowers no longer doubted it. Disappointed as he undoubtedly was at
+first,--and even self-deceived,--he recognized in a flash the grim fact
+that the boy had stated. He recalled the apparition of the sad-faced
+woman in the wood--her distressed manner, that to his inexperienced
+mind now took upon itself the agitated trembling of disturbed mystic
+inspiration. A sense of sadness and remorse succeeded his first shock of
+disappointment.
+
+“Well, are ye going to buy the woods?” said Bob, eying him grimly. “Ye'd
+better say.”
+
+Mr. Bowers started. “I shouldn't wonder, Bob,” he said, with a smile,
+gathering up his reins. “Anyhow, I'm comin' back to see your mother this
+afternoon. And meantime, Bob, you keep the first chance for me.”
+
+He drove away, leaving the youthful diplomatist standing with his bare
+feet in the dust. For a minute or two the young gentleman amused himself
+by a few light saltatory steps in the road. Then a smile of scornful
+superiority, mingled perhaps with a sense of previous slights and
+unappreciation, drew back his little upper lip, and brightened his
+mottled cheek.
+
+“I'd like ter know,” he said, darkly, “what this yer God-forsaken
+famerly would do without ME!”
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+It is to be presumed that the editor and Mr. Hamlin mutually kept to
+their tacit agreement to respect the impersonality of the poetess,
+for during the next three months the subject was seldom alluded to
+by either. Yet in that period White Violet had sent two other
+contributions, and on each occasion Mr. Hamlin had insisted upon
+increasing the honorarium to the amount of his former gift. In vain the
+editor pointed out the danger of this form of munificence; Mr. Hamlin
+retorted by saying that if he refused he would appeal to the proprietor,
+who certainly would not object to taking the credit of this liberality.
+“As to the risks,” concluded Jack, sententiously, “I'll take them; and
+as far as you're concerned, you certainly get the worth of your money.”
+
+Indeed, if popularity was an indiction, this had become suddenly true.
+For the poetess's third contribution, without changing its strong
+local color and individuality, had been an unexpected outburst of human
+passion--a love-song, that touched those to whom the subtler meditative
+graces of the poetess had been unknown. Many people had listened to this
+impassioned but despairing cry from some remote and charmed solitude,
+who had never read poetry before, who translated it into their own
+limited vocabulary and more limited experience, and were inexpressibly
+affected to find that they, too, understood it; it was caught up and
+echoed by the feverish, adventurous, and unsatisfied life that filled
+that day and time. Even the editor was surprised and frightened. Like
+most cultivated men, he distrusted popularity: like all men who believe
+in their own individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet
+now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that
+judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst
+was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion
+the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and
+even approached the tabooed subject.
+
+“Did you see anything that suggested this sort of business in--in--that
+woman--I mean in--your pilgrimage, Jack?”
+
+“No,” responded Jack, gravely. “But it's easy to see she's got hold
+of some hay-footed fellow up there in the mountains with straws in his
+hair, and is playing him for all he's worth. You won't get much more
+poetry out of her, I reckon.”
+
+Is was not long after this conversation that one afternoon, when the
+editor was alone, Mr. James Bowers entered the editorial room with much
+of the hesitation and irresolution of his previous visit. As the editor
+had not only forgotten him, but even, dissociated him with the poetess,
+Mr. Bowers was fain to meet his unresponsive eye and manner with some
+explanation.
+
+“Ye disremember my comin' here, Mr. Editor, to ask you the name o' the
+lady who called herself 'White Violet,' and how you allowed you couldn't
+give it, but would write and ask for it?”
+
+Mr. Editor, leaning back in his chair, now remembered the occurrence,
+but was distressed to add that the situation remained unchanged, and
+that he had received no such permission.
+
+“Never mind THAT, my lad,” said Mr. Bowers, gravely, waving his hand. “I
+understand all that; but, ez I've known the lady ever since, and am now
+visiting her at her house on the Summit, I reckon it don't make much
+matter.”
+
+It was quite characteristic of Mr. Bowers's smileless earnestness that
+he made no ostentation of this dramatic retort, nor of the undisguised
+stupefaction of the editor.
+
+“Do you mean to say that you have met White Violet, the author of these
+poems?” repeated the editor.
+
+“Which her name is Delatour,--the widder Delatour,--ez she has herself
+give me permission to tell you,” continued Mr. Bowers, with a certain
+abstracted and automatic precision that dissipated any suggestion of
+malice in the reversed situation.
+
+“Delatour!--a widow!” repeated the editor.
+
+“With five children,” continued Mr. Bowers. Then, with unalterable
+gravity, he briefly gave an outline of her condition and the
+circumstances of his acquaintance with her.
+
+“But I reckoned YOU might have known suthin' o' this; though she never
+let on you did,” he concluded, eying the editor with troubled curiosity.
+
+The editor did not think it necessary to implicate Mr. Hamlin. He said,
+briefly, “I? Oh, no!”
+
+“Of course, YOU might not have seen her?” said Mr. Bowers, keeping the
+same grave, troubled gaze on the editor.
+
+“Of course not,” said the editor, somewhat impatient under the singular
+scrutiny of Mr. Bowers; “and I'm very anxious to know how she looks.
+Tell me, what is she like?”
+
+“She is a fine, pow'ful, eddicated woman,” said Mr. Bowers, with slow
+deliberation. “Yes, sir,--a pow'ful woman, havin' grand ideas of her
+own, and holdin' to 'em.” He had withdrawn his eyes from the editor, and
+apparently addressed the ceiling in confidence.
+
+“But what does she look like, Mr. Bowers?” said the editor, smiling.
+
+“Well, sir, she looks--LIKE--IT! Yes,”--with deliberate caution,--“I
+should say, just like it.”
+
+After a pause, apparently to allow the editor to materialize this
+ravishing description, he said, gently, “Are you busy just now?”
+
+“Not very. What can I do for you?”
+
+“Well, not much for ME, I reckon,” he returned, with a deeper
+respiration, that was his nearest approach to a sigh, “but suthin'
+perhaps for yourself and--another. Are you married?”
+
+“No,” said the editor, promptly.
+
+“Nor engaged to any--young lady?”--with great politeness.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, mebbe you think it a queer thing for me to say,--mebbe you reckon
+you KNOW it ez well ez anybody,--but it's my opinion that White Violet
+is in love with you.”
+
+“With me?” ejaculated the editor, in a hopeless astonishment that at
+last gave way to an incredulous and irresistible laugh.
+
+A slight touch of pain passed over Mr. Bowers's dejected face, but left
+the deep outlines set with a rude dignity. “It's SO,” he said, slowly,
+“though, as a young man and a gay feller, ye may think it's funny.”
+
+“No, not funny, but a terrible blunder, Mr. Bowers, for I give you my
+word I know nothing of the lady and have never set eyes upon her.”
+
+“No, but she has on YOU. I can't say,” continued Mr. Bowers, with
+sublime naivete, “that I'd ever recognize you from her description, but
+a woman o' that kind don't see with her eyes like you and me, but with
+all her senses to onct, and a heap more that ain't senses as we know
+'em. The same eyes that seed down through the brush and ferns in the
+Summit woods, the same ears that heerd the music of the wind trailin'
+through the pines, don't see you with my eyes or hear you with my ears.
+And when she paints you, it's nat'ril for a woman with that pow'ful mind
+and grand idees to dip her brush into her heart's blood for warmth and
+color. Yer smilin', young man. Well, go on and smile at me, my lad, but
+not at her. For you don't know her. When you know her story as I do,
+when you know she was made a wife afore she ever knew what it was to be
+a young woman, when you know that the man she married never understood
+the kind o' critter he was tied to no more than ef he'd been a steer
+yoked to a Morgan colt, when ye know she had children growin' up around
+her afore she had given over bein' a sort of child herself, when ye
+know she worked and slaved for that man and those children about the
+house--her heart, her soul, and all her pow'ful mind bein' all the time
+in the woods along with the flickering leaves and the shadders,--when
+ye mind she couldn't get the small ways o' the ranch because she had the
+big ways o' Natur' that made it,--then you'll understand her.”
+
+Impressed by the sincerity of his visitor's manner, touched by the
+unexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdity
+of an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the editor gasped
+almost hysterically,--
+
+“But why should all this make her in love with ME?”
+
+“Because ye are both gifted,” returned Mr. Bowers, with sad but
+unconquerable conviction; “because ye're both, so to speak, in a line
+o' idees and business that draws ye together,--to lean on each other and
+trust each other ez pardners. Not that YE are ezakly her ekal,” he went
+on, with a return to his previous exasperating naivete, “though I've
+heerd promisin' things of ye, and ye're still young, but in matters
+o' this kind there is allers one ez hez to be looked up to by
+the other,--and gin'rally the wrong one. She looks up to you, Mr.
+Editor,--it's part of her po'try,--ez she looks down inter the brush
+and sees more than is plain to you and me. Not,” he continued, with a
+courteously deprecating wave of the hand, “ez you hain't bin kind to
+her--mebbe TOO kind. For thar's the purty letter you writ her, thar's
+the perlite, easy, captivatin' way you had with her gals and
+that boy--hold on!”--as the editor made a gesture of despairing
+renunciation,--“I ain't sayin' you ain't right in keepin' it to
+yourself,--and thar's the extry money you sent her every time. Stop! she
+knows it was EXTRY, for she made a p'int o' gettin' me to find out the
+market price o' po'try in papers and magazines, and she reckons you've
+bin payin' her four hundred per cent. above them figgers--hold on! I
+ain't sayin' it ain't free and liberal in you, and I'd have done the
+same thing; yet SHE thinks”--
+
+But the editor had risen hastily to his feet with flushing cheeks.
+
+“One moment, Mr. Bowers,” he said, hurriedly. “This is the most dreadful
+blunder of all. The gift is not mine. It was the spontaneous offering
+of another who really admired our friend's work,--a gentleman who”--He
+stopped suddenly.
+
+The sound of a familiar voice, lightly humming, was borne along the
+passage; the light tread of a familiar foot was approaching. The editor
+turned quickly towards the open door,--so quickly that Mr. Bowers was
+fain to turn also.
+
+For a charming instant the figure of Jack Hamlin, handsome, careless,
+and confident, was framed in the doorway. His dark eyes, with their
+habitual scorn of his average fellow-man, swept superciliously over
+Mr. Bowers, and rested for an instant with caressing familiarity on the
+editor.
+
+“Well, sonny, any news from the old girl at the Summit?”
+
+“No-o,” hastily stammered the editor, with a half-hysterical laugh. “No,
+Jack. Excuse me a moment.”
+
+“All right; busy, I see. Hasta manana.”
+
+The picture vanished, the frame was empty.
+
+“You see,” continued the editor, turning to Mr. Bowers, “there has been
+a mistake. I”--but he stopped suddenly at the ashen face of Mr. Bowers,
+still fixed in the direction of the vanished figure.
+
+“Are you ill?”
+
+Mr. Bowers did not reply, but slowly withdrew his eyes, and turned them
+heavily on the editor. Then, drawing a longer, deeper breath, he picked
+up his soft felt hat, and, moulding it into shape in his hands as if
+preparing to put it on, he moistened his dry, grayish lips, and said,
+gently:--
+
+“Friend o' yours?”
+
+“Yes,” said the editor--“Jack Hamlin. Of course, you know him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Mr. Bowers here put his hat on his head, and, after a pause, turned
+round slowly once or twice, as if he had forgotten it, and was still
+seeking it. Finally he succeeded in finding the editor's hand, and shook
+it, albeit his own trembled slightly. Then he said:--
+
+“I reckon you're right. There's bin a mistake. I see it now. Good-by.
+If you're ever up my way, drop in and see me.” He then walked to the
+doorway, passed out, and seemed to melt into the afternoon shadows of
+the hall.
+
+He never again entered the office of the “Excelsior Magazine,” neither
+was any further contribution ever received from White Violet. To a
+polite entreaty from the editor, addressed first to “White Violet”
+ and then to Mrs. Delatour, there was no response. The thought of Mr.
+Hamlin's cynical prophecy disturbed him, but that gentleman, preoccupied
+in filling some professional engagements in Sacramento, gave him no
+chance to acquire further explanations as to the past or the future. The
+youthful editor was at first in despair and filled with a vague remorse
+of some unfulfilled duty. But, to his surprise, the readers of the
+magazine seemed to survive their talented contributor, and the feverish
+life that had been thrilled by her song, in two months had apparently
+forgotten her. Nor was her voice lifted from any alien quarter; the
+domestic and foreign press that had echoed her lays seemed to respond no
+longer to her utterance.
+
+It is possible that some readers of these pages may remember a previous
+chronicle by the same historian wherein it was recorded that the
+volatile spirit of Mr. Hamlin, slightly assisted by circumstances,
+passed beyond these voices at the Ranch of the Blessed Fisherman, some
+two years later. As the editor stood beside the body of his friend on
+the morning of the funeral, he noticed among the flowers laid upon his
+bier by loving hands a wreath of white violets. Touched and disturbed
+by a memory long since forgotten, he was further embarrassed, as the
+cortege dispersed in the Mission graveyard, by the apparition of the
+tall figure of Mr. James Bowers from behind a monumental column. The
+editor turned to him quickly.
+
+“I am glad to see you here,” he said, awkwardly, and he knew not
+why; then, after a pause, “I trust you can give me some news of Mrs.
+Delatour. I wrote to her nearly two years ago, but had no response.”
+
+“Thar's bin no Mrs. Delatour for two years,” said Mr. Bowers,
+contemplatively stroking his beard; “and mebbe that's why. She's bin for
+two years Mrs. Bowers.”
+
+“I congratulate you,” said the editor; “but I hope there still remains
+a White Violet, and that, for the sake of literature, she has not given
+up”--
+
+“Mrs. Bowers,” interrupted Mr. Bowers, with singular deliberation,
+“found that makin' po'try and tendin' to the cares of a growin'-up
+famerly was irritatin' to the narves. They didn't jibe, so to speak.
+What Mrs. Bowers wanted--and what, po'try or no po'try, I've bin tryin'
+to give her--was Rest! She's bin havin' it comfor'bly up at my ranch
+at Mendocino, with her children and me. Yes, sir”--his eye wandered
+accidentally to the new-made grave--“you'll excuse my sayin' it to a man
+in your profession, but it's what most folks will find is a heap better
+than readin' or writin' or actin' po'try--and that's Rest!”
+
+
+
+
+THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It had grown dark on Burnt Ridge. Seen from below, the whole serrated
+crest that had glittered in the sunset as if its interstices were eaten
+by consuming fires, now, closed up its ranks of blackened shafts and
+became again harsh and sombre chevaux de frise against the sky. A faint
+glow still lingered over the red valley road, as if it were its own
+reflection, rather than any light from beyond the darkened ridge. Night
+was already creeping up out of remote canyons and along the furrowed
+flanks of the mountain, or settling on the nearer woods with the sound
+of home-coming and innumerable wings. At a point where the road began to
+encroach upon the mountain-side in its slow winding ascent the darkness
+had become so real that a young girl cantering along the rising terrace
+found difficulty in guiding her horse, with eyes still dazzled by the
+sunset fires.
+
+In spite of her precautions, the animal suddenly shied at some object
+in the obscured roadway, and nearly unseated her. The accident disclosed
+not only the fact that she was riding in a man's saddle, but also a foot
+and ankle that her ordinary walking-dress was too short to hide. It was
+evident that her equestrian exercise was extempore, and that at that
+hour and on that road she had not expected to meet company. But she was
+apparently a good horsewoman, for the mischance which might have thrown
+a less practical or more timid rider seemed of little moment to her.
+With a strong hand and determined gesture she wheeled her frightened
+horse back into the track, and rode him directly at the object. But here
+she herself slightly recoiled, for it was the body of a man lying in the
+road.
+
+As she leaned forward over her horse's shoulder, she could see by the
+dim light that he was a miner, and that, though motionless, he was
+breathing stertorously. Drunk, no doubt!--an accident of the locality
+alarming only to her horse. But although she cantered impatiently
+forward, she had not proceeded a hundred yards before she stopped
+reflectively, and trotted back again. He had not moved. She could now
+see that his head and shoulders were covered with broken clods of earth
+and gravel, and smaller fragments lay at his side. A dozen feet above
+him on the hillside there was a foot trail which ran parallel with the
+bridle-road, and occasionally overhung it. It seemed possible that he
+might have fallen from the trail and been stunned.
+
+Dismounting, she succeeded in dragging him to a safer position by the
+bank. The act discovered his face, which was young, and unknown to her.
+Wiping it with the silk handkerchief which was loosely slung around his
+neck after the fashion of his class, she gave a quick feminine glance
+around her and then approached her own and rather handsome face near his
+lips. There was no odor of alcohol in the thick and heavy respiration.
+Mounting again, she rode forward at an accelerated pace, and in twenty
+minutes had reached a higher tableland of the mountain, a cleared
+opening in the forest that showed signs of careful cultivation, and
+a large, rambling, yet picturesque-looking dwelling, whose unpainted
+red-wood walls were hidden in roses and creepers. Pushing open a
+swinging gate, she entered the inclosure as a brown-faced man, dressed
+as a vaquero, came towards her as if to assist her to alight. But she
+had already leaped to the ground and thrown him the reins.
+
+“Miguel,” she said, with a mistress's quiet authority in her boyish
+contralto voice, “put Glory in the covered wagon, and drive down the
+road as far as the valley turning. There's a man lying near the right
+bank, drunk, or sick, may be, or perhaps crippled by a fall. Bring him
+up here, unless somebody has found him already, or you happen to know
+who he is and where to take him.”
+
+The vaquero raised his shoulders, half in disappointed expectation
+of some other command. “And your brother, senora, he has not himself
+arrived.”
+
+A light shadow of impatience crossed her face. “No,” she said, bluntly.
+“Come, be quick.”
+
+She turned towards the house as the man moved away. Already a
+gaunt-looking old man had appeared in the porch, and was awaiting her
+with his hand shadowing his angry, suspicious eyes, and his lips moving
+querulously.
+
+“Of course, you've got to stand out there and give orders and 'tend
+to your own business afore you think o' speaking to your own flesh and
+blood,” he said aggrievedly. “That's all YOU care!”
+
+“There was a sick man lying in the road, and I've sent Miguel to look
+after him,” returned the girl, with a certain contemptuous resignation.
+
+“Oh, yes!” struck in another voice, which seemed to belong to the female
+of the first speaker's species, and to be its equal in age and temper,
+“and I reckon you saw a jay bird on a tree, or a squirrel on the fence,
+and either of 'em was more important to you than your own brother.”
+
+“Steve didn't come by the stage, and didn't send any message,” continued
+the young girl, with the same coldly resigned manner. “No one had any
+news of him, and, as I told you before, I didn't expect any.”
+
+“Why don't you say right out you didn't WANT any?” said the old man,
+sneeringly. “Much you inquired! No; I orter hev gone myself, and I would
+if I was master here, instead of me and your mother bein' the dust of
+the yearth beneath your feet.”
+
+The young girl entered the house, followed by the old man, passing an
+old woman seated by the window, who seemed to be nursing her resentment
+and a large Bible which she held clasped against her shawled bosom
+at the same moment. Going to the wall, she hung up her large hat
+and slightly shook the red dust from her skirts as she continued her
+explanation, in the same deep voice, with a certain monotony of logic
+and possibly of purpose and practice also.
+
+“You and mother know as well as I do, father, that Stephen is no more to
+be depended upon than the wind that blows. It's three years since he has
+been promising to come, and even getting money to come, and yet he has
+never showed his face, though he has been a dozen times within five
+miles of this house. He doesn't come because he doesn't want to come. As
+to YOUR going over to the stage-office, I went there myself at the last
+moment to save you the mortification of asking questions of strangers
+that they know have been a dozen times answered already.”
+
+There was such a ring of absolute truthfulness, albeit worn by
+repetition, in the young girl's deep honest voice that for one instant
+her two more emotional relatives quailed before it; but only for a
+moment.
+
+“That's right!” shrilled the old woman. “Go on and abuse your own
+brother. It's only the fear you have that he'll make his fortune yet and
+shame you before the father and mother you despise.”
+
+The young girl remained standing by the window, motionless and
+apparently passive, as if receiving an accepted and usual punishment.
+But here the elder woman gave way to sobs and some incoherent snuffling,
+at which the younger went away. Whether she recognized in her mother's
+tears the ordinary deliquescence of emotion, or whether, as a woman
+herself, she knew that this mere feminine conventionality could not
+possibly be directed at her, and that the actual conflict between them
+had ceased, she passed slowly on to an inner hall, leaving the male
+victim, her unfortunate father, to succumb, as he always did sooner or
+later, to their influence. Crossing the hall, which was decorated with a
+few elk horns, Indian trophies, and mountain pelts, she entered another
+room, and closed the door behind her with a gesture of relief.
+
+The room, which looked upon a porch, presented a singular combination of
+masculine business occupations and feminine taste and adornment. A desk
+covered with papers, a shelf displaying a ledger and account-books,
+another containing works of reference, a table with a vase of flowers
+and a lady's riding-whip upon it, a map of California flanked on either
+side by an embroidered silken workbag and an oval mirror decked with
+grasses, a calendar and interest-table hanging below two school-girl
+crayons of classic heads with the legend, “Josephine Forsyth
+fecit,”--were part of its incongruous accessories. The young girl
+went to her desk, but presently moved and turned towards the window
+thoughtfully. The last gleam had died from the steel-blue sky; a
+few lights like star points began to prick out the lower valley. The
+expression of monotonous restraint and endurance had not yet faded from
+her face.
+
+Yet she had been accustomed to scenes like the one she had just passed
+though since her girlhood. Five years ago, Alexander Forsyth, her uncle,
+had brought her to this spot--then a mere log cabin on the hillside--as
+a refuge from the impoverished and shiftless home of his elder brother
+Thomas and his ill-tempered wife. Here Alexander Forsyth, by reason of
+his more dominant character and business capacity, had prospered until
+he became a rich and influential ranch owner. Notwithstanding her
+father's jealousy of Alexander's fortune, and the open rupture that
+followed between the brothers, Josephine retained her position in the
+heart and home of her uncle without espousing the cause of either; and
+her father was too prudent not to recognize the near and prospective
+advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant
+denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of
+them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the
+virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to
+its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle
+fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for
+the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother
+Stephen, and accepted it calmly. True to an odd standard of justice,
+which she had erected from the crumbling ruins of her own domestic
+life, she was tolerant of everything but human perfection. This quality,
+however fatal to her higher growth, had given her a peculiar capacity
+for business which endeared her to her uncle. Familiar with the
+strong passions and prejudices of men, she had none of those feminine
+meannesses, a wholesome distrust of which had kept her uncle a bachelor.
+It was not strange, therefore, that when he died two years ago it was
+found that he had left her his entire property, real and personal,
+limited only by a single condition. She was to undertake the vocation
+of a “sole trader,” and carry on the business under the name of “J.
+Forsyth.” If she married, the estate and property was to be held
+distinct from her husband's, inalienable under the “Married Woman's
+Property Act,” and subject during her life only to her own control and
+personal responsibilities as a trader.
+
+The intense disgust and discomfiture of her parents, who had expected to
+more actively participate in their brother's fortune, may be imagined.
+But it was not equal to their fury when Josephine, instead of providing
+for them a separate maintenance out of her abundance, simply offered to
+transfer them and her brother to her own house on a domestic but not
+a business equality. There being no alternative but their former
+precarious shiftless life in their “played-out” claim in the valley,
+they wisely consented, reserving the sacred right of daily protest and
+objurgation. In the economy of Burnt Ridge Ranch they alone took it upon
+themselves to represent the shattered domestic altar and its outraged
+Lares and Penates. And so conscientiously did they perform their task
+as even occasionally to impede the business visitor to the ranch, and to
+cause some of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young
+girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her
+parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded
+their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous
+disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined to the latter.
+
+The black line of ridge faded out with her abstraction, and she
+turned from the window and lit the lamp on her desk. The yellow light
+illuminated her face and figure. In their womanly graces there was no
+trace of what some people believed to be a masculine character, except
+a singularly frank look of critical inquiry and patient attention in her
+dark eyes. Her long brown hair was somewhat rigidly twisted into a knot
+on the top of her head, as if more for security than ornament. Brown
+was also the prevailing tint of her eyebrows, thickly-set eyelashes, and
+eyes, and was even suggested in the slight sallowness of her complexion.
+But her lips were well-cut and fresh-colored and her hands and feet
+small and finely formed. She would have passed for a pretty girl, had
+she not suggested something more.
+
+She sat down, and began to examine a pile of papers before her with that
+concentration and attention to detail which was characteristic of her
+eyes, pausing at times with prettily knit brows, and her penholder
+between her lips, in the semblance of a pout that was pleasant enough to
+see. Suddenly the rattle of hoofs and wheels struck her with the sense
+of something forgotten, and she put down her work quickly and stood up
+listening. The sound of rough voices and her father's querulous accents
+was broken upon by a cultivated and more familiar utterance: “All right;
+I'll speak to her at once. Wait there,” and the door opened to the
+well-known physician of Burnt Ridge, Dr. Duchesne.
+
+“Look here,” he said, with an abruptness that was only saved from being
+brusque by a softer intonation and a reassuring smile, “I met Miguel
+helping an accident into your buggy. Your orders, eh?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Josephine, quietly. “A man I saw on the road.”
+
+“Well, it's a bad case, and wants prompt attention. And as your house is
+the nearest I came with him here.”
+
+“Certainly,” she said gravely. “Take him to the second room
+beyond--Steve's room--it's ready,” she explained to two dusky shadows in
+the hall behind the doctor.
+
+“And look here,” said the doctor, partly closing the door behind him
+and regarding her with critical eyes, “you always said you'd like to see
+some of my queer cases. Well, this is one--a serious one, too; in fact,
+it's just touch and go with him. There's a piece of the bone pressing
+on the brain no bigger than that, but as much as if all Burnt Ridge was
+atop of him! I'm going to lift it. I want somebody here to stand by,
+some one who can lend a hand with a sponge, eh?--some one who isn't
+going to faint or scream, or even shake a hair's-breadth, eh?”
+
+The color rose quickly to the girl's cheek, and her eyes kindled. “I'll
+come,” she said thoughtfully. “Who is he?”
+
+The doctor stared slightly at the unessential query. “Don't know,--one
+of the river miners, I reckon. It's an urgent case. I'll go and get
+everything ready. You'd better,” he added, with an ominous glance at
+her gray frock, “put something over your dress.” The suggestion made her
+grave, but did not alter her color.
+
+A moment later she entered the room. It was the one that had always been
+set apart for her brother: the very bed on which the unconscious man
+lay had been arranged that morning with her own hands. Something of
+this passed through her mind as she saw that the doctor had wheeled it
+beneath the strong light in the centre of the room, stripped its
+outer coverings with professional thoughtfulness, and rearranged the
+mattresses. But it did not seem like the same room. There was a pungent
+odor in the air from some freshly-opened phial; an almost feminine
+neatness and luxury in an open morocco case like a jewel box on the
+table, shining with spotless steel. At the head of the bed one of her
+own servants, the powerful mill foreman, was assisting with the
+mingled curiosity and blase experience of one accustomed to smashed and
+lacerated digits. At first she did not look at the central unconscious
+figure on the bed, whose sufferings seemed to her to have been
+vicariously transferred to the concerned, eager, and drawn faces that
+looked down upon its immunity. Then she femininely recoiled before the
+bared white neck and shoulders displayed above the quilt, until, forcing
+herself to look upon the face half-concealed by bandages and the head
+from which the dark tangles of hair had been ruthlessly sheared, she
+began to share the doctor's unconcern in his personality. What mattered
+who or what HE was? It was--a case!
+
+The operation began. With the same earnest intelligence that she had
+previously shown, she quickly and noiselessly obeyed the doctor's
+whispered orders, and even half anticipated them. She was conscious of a
+singular curiosity that, far from being mean or ignoble, seemed to lift
+her not only above the ordinary weaknesses of her own sex, but made her
+superior to the men around her. Almost before she knew it, the operation
+was over, and she regarded with equal curiosity the ostentatious
+solicitude with which the doctor seemed to be wiping his fateful
+instrument that bore an odd resemblance to a silver-handled centre-bit.
+The stertorous breathing below the bandages had given way to a fainter
+but more natural respiration. There was a moment of suspense. The
+doctor's hand left the pulse and lifted the closed eyelid of the
+sufferer. A slight movement passed over the figure. The sluggish face
+had cleared; life seemed to struggle back into it before even the dull
+eyes participated in the glow. Dr. Duchesne with a sudden gesture waved
+aside his companions, but not before Josephine had bent her head eagerly
+forward.
+
+“He is coming to,” she said.
+
+At the sound of that deep clear voice--the first to break the hush of
+the room--the dull eyes leaped up, and the head turned in its direction.
+The lips moved and uttered a single rapid sentence. The girl recoiled.
+
+“You're all right now,” said the doctor, cheerfully, intent only upon
+the form before him.
+
+The lips moved again, but this time feebly and vacantly; the eyes were
+staring vaguely around.
+
+“What's matter? What's all about?” said the man, thickly.
+
+“You've had a fall. Think a moment. Where do you live?”
+
+Again the lips moved, but this time only to emit a confused, incoherent
+murmur. Dr. Duchesne looked grave, but recovered himself quickly.
+
+“That will do. Leave him alone now,” he said brusquely to the others.
+
+But Josephine lingered.
+
+“He spoke well enough just now,” she said eagerly. “Did you hear what he
+said?”
+
+“Not exactly,” said the doctor, abstractedly, gazing at the man.
+
+“He said, 'You'll have to kill me first,'” said Josephine, slowly.
+
+“Humph;” said the doctor, passing his hand backwards and forwards before
+the man's eyes to note any change in the staring pupils.
+
+“Yes,” continued Josephine, gravely. “I suppose,” she added, cautiously,
+“he was thinking of the operation--of what you had just done to him?”
+
+“What I had done to him? Oh, yes!”
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Before noon the next day it was known throughout Burnt Ridge Valley that
+Dr. Duchesne had performed a difficult operation upon an unknown man,
+who had been picked up unconscious from a fall, and carried to Burnt
+Ridge Ranch. But although the unfortunate man's life was saved by the
+operation, he had only momentarily recovered consciousness--relapsing
+into a semi-idiotic state, which effectively stopped the discovery
+of any clue to his friends or his identity. As it was evidently an
+ACCIDENT, which, in that rude community--and even in some more civilized
+ones--conveyed a vague impression of some contributary incapacity on the
+part of the victim, or some Providential interference of a retributive
+character, Burnt Ridge gave itself little trouble about it. It is
+unnecessary to say that Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth gave themselves and
+Josephine much more. They had a theory and a grievance. Satisfied from
+the first that the alleged victim was a drunken tramp, who submitted to
+have a hole bored in his head in order to foist himself upon the ranch,
+they were loud in their protests, even hinting at a conspiracy between
+Josephine and the stranger to supplant her brother in the property, as
+he had already in the spare bedroom. “Didn't all that yer happen THE
+VERY NIGHT she pretended to go for Stephen--eh?” said Mrs. Forsyth.
+“Tell me that! And didn't she have it all arranged with the buggy
+to bring him here, as that sneaking doctor let out--eh? Looks mighty
+curious, don't it?” she muttered darkly to the old man. But although
+that gentleman, even from his own selfish view, would scarcely have
+submitted to a surgical operation and later idiocy as the price of
+insuring comfortable dependency, he had no doubt others were base enough
+to do it; and lent a willing ear to his wife's suspicions.
+
+Josephine's personal knowledge of the stranger went little further.
+Doctor Duchesne had confessed to her his professional disappointment at
+the incomplete results of the operation. He had saved the man's life,
+but as yet not his reason. There was still hope, however, for the
+diagnosis revealed nothing that might prejudice a favorable progress. It
+was a most interesting case. He would watch it carefully, and as soon
+as the patient could be removed would take him to the county hospital,
+where, under his own eyes, the poor fellow would have the benefit of
+the latest science and the highest specialists. Physically, he was doing
+remarkably well; indeed, he must have been a fine young chap, free from
+blood taint or vicious complication, whose flesh had healed like an
+infant's. It should be recorded that it was at this juncture that Mrs.
+Forsyth first learnt that a SILVER PLATE let into the artful stranger's
+skull was an adjunct of the healing process! Convinced that this
+infamous extravagance was part and parcel of the conspiracy, and was
+only the beginning of other assimilations of the Forsyths' metallic
+substance; that the plate was probably polished and burnished with
+a fulsome inscription to the doctor's skill, and would pass into the
+possession and adornment of a perfect stranger, her rage knew no bounds.
+He or his friends ought to be made to pay for it or work it out! In vain
+it was declared that a few dollars were all that was found in the man's
+pocket, and that no memoranda gave any indication of his name, friends,
+or history beyond the suggestion that he came from a distance. This was
+clearly a part of the conspiracy! Even Josephine's practical good
+sense was obliged to take note of this singular absence of all record
+regarding him, and the apparent obliteration of everything that might be
+responsible for his ultimate fate.
+
+Homeless, friendless, helpless, and even nameless, the unfortunate man
+of twenty-five was thus left to the tender mercies of the mistress of
+Burnt Ridge Ranch, as if he had been a new-born foundling laid at her
+door. But this mere claim of weakness was not all; it was supplemented
+by a singular personal appeal to Josephine's nature. From the time that
+he turned his head towards her voice on that fateful night, his eyes had
+always followed her around the room with a wondering, yearning, canine
+half-intelligence. Without being able to convince herself that he
+understood her better than his regular attendant furnished by the
+doctor, she could not fail to see that he obeyed her implicitly, and
+that whenever any difficulty arose between him and his nurse she was
+always appealed to. Her pride in this proof of her practical sovereignty
+WAS flattered; and when Doctor Duchesne finally admitted that although
+the patient was now physically able to be removed to the hospital, yet
+he would lose in the change that very strong factor which Josephine had
+become in his mental recovery, the young girl as frankly suggested that
+he should stay as long as there was any hope of restoring his reason.
+Doctor Duchesne was delighted. With all his enthusiasm for science, he
+had a professional distrust of some of its disciples, and perhaps was
+not sorry to keep this most interesting case in his own hands. To
+him her suggestion was only a womanly kindness, tempered with womanly
+curiosity. But the astonishment and stupefaction of her parents at this
+evident corroboration of suspicions they had as yet only half believed
+was tinged with superstitious dread. Had she fallen in love with this
+helpless stranger? or, more awful to contemplate, was he really no
+stranger, but a surreptitious lover thus strategically brought under her
+roof? For once they refrained from open criticism. The very magnitude of
+their suspicions left them dumb.
+
+It was thus that the virgin Chatelaine of Burnt Ridge Ranch was left to
+gaze untrammeled upon her pale and handsome guest, whose silken,
+bearded lips and sad, childlike eyes might have suggested a more Exalted
+Sufferer in their absence of any suggestion of a grosser material
+manhood. But even this imaginative appeal did not enter into her
+feelings. She felt for her good-looking, helpless patient a profound
+and honest pity. I do not know whether she had ever heard that “pity was
+akin to love.” She would probably have resented that utterly untenable
+and atrocious commonplace. There was no suggestion, real or illusive,
+of any previous masterful quality in the man which might have made his
+present dependent condition picturesque by contrast. He had come to her
+handicapped by an unromantic accident and a practical want of energy and
+intellect. He would have to touch her interest anew if, indeed, he
+would ever succeed in dispelling the old impression. His beauty, in a
+community of picturesquely handsome men, had little weight with her,
+except to accent the contrast with their fuller manhood.
+
+Her life had given her no illusions in regard to the other sex. She had
+found them, however, more congenial and safer companions than women, and
+more accessible to her own sense of justice and honor. In return, they
+had respected and admired rather than loved her, in spite of her womanly
+graces. If she had at times contemplated eventual marriage, it was only
+as a possible practical partnership in her business; but as she lived in
+a country where men thought it dishonorable and a proof of incompetency
+to rise by their wives' superior fortune, she had been free from that
+kind of mercenary persecution, even from men who might have worshiped
+her in hopeless and silent honor.
+
+For this reason, there was nothing in the situation that suggested
+a single compromising speculation in the minds of the neighbors, or
+disturbed her own tranquillity. There seemed to be nothing in the future
+except a possible relief to her curiosity. Some day the unfortunate
+man's reason would be restored, and he would tell his simple history.
+Perhaps he might explain what was in his mind when he turned to her
+the first evening with that singular sentence which had often recurred
+strangely to her, she knew not why. It did not strike her until later
+that it was because it had been the solitary indication of an energy and
+capacity that seemed unlike him. Nevertheless, after that explanation,
+she would have been quite willing to have shaken hands with him and
+parted.
+
+And yet--for there was an unexpressed remainder in her thought--she
+was never entirely free or uninfluenced in his presence. The flickering
+vacancy of his sad eyes sometimes became fixed with a resolute
+immobility under the gentle questioning with which she had sought to
+draw out his faculties, that both piqued and exasperated her. He could
+say “Yes” and “No,” as she thought intelligently, but he could not utter
+a coherent sentence nor write a word, except like a child in imitation
+of his copy. She taught him to repeat after her the names of the
+inanimate objects in the room, then the names of the doctor, his
+attendant, the servant, and, finally, her own under her Christian
+prenomen, with frontier familiarity; but when she pointed to himself he
+waited for HER to name him! In vain she tried him with all the masculine
+names she knew; his was not one of them, or he would not or could not
+speak it. For at times she rejected the professional dictum of the
+doctor that the faculty of memory was wholly paralyzed or held in
+abeyance, even to the half-automatic recollection of his letters, yet
+she inconsistently began to teach him the alphabet with the same method,
+and--in her sublime unconsciousness of his manhood--with the
+same discipline as if he were a very child. When he had recovered
+sufficiently to leave his room, she would lead him to the porch before
+her window, and make him contented and happy by allowing him to watch
+her at work at her desk, occasionally answering his wondering eyes with
+a word, or stirring his faculties with a question. I grieve to say
+that her parents had taken advantage of this publicity and his supposed
+helpless condition to show their disgust of his assumption, to the
+extreme of making faces at him--an act which he resented with such a
+furious glare that they retreated hurriedly to their own veranda. A
+fresh though somewhat inconsistent grievance was added to their previous
+indictment of him: “If we ain't found dead in our bed with our throats
+cut by that woman's crazy husband” (they had settled by this time that
+there had been a clandestine marriage), “we'll be lucky,” groaned Mrs.
+Forsyth.
+
+Meantime, the mountain summer waxed to its fullness of fire and
+fruition. There were days when the crowded forest seemed choked and
+impeded with its own foliage, and pungent and stifling with its own
+rank maturity; when the long hillside ranks of wild oats, thickset and
+impassable, filled the air with the heated dust of germination. In this
+quickening irritation of life it would be strange if the unfortunate
+man's torpid intellect was not helped in its awakening, and he was
+allowed to ramble at will over the ranch; but with the instinct of a
+domestic animal he always returned to the house, and sat in the porch,
+where Josephine usually found him awaiting her when she herself returned
+from a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied him on the
+mountain-side leaning against a projecting ledge in an attitude so rapt
+and immovable that she felt compelled to approach him. He appeared to
+be dumbly absorbed in the prospect, which might have intoxicated a saner
+mind.
+
+Half veiled by the heat that rose quiveringly from the fiery canyon
+below, the domain of Burnt Ridge stretched away before him, until,
+lifted in successive terraces hearsed and plumed with pines, it was at
+last lost in the ghostly snow-peaks. But the practical Josephine seized
+the opportunity to try once more to awaken the slumbering memory of her
+pupil. Following his gaze with signs and questions, she sought to draw
+from him some indication of familiar recollection of certain points of
+the map thus unrolled behind him. But in vain. She even pointed out the
+fateful shadow of the overhanging ledge on the road where she had picked
+him up--there was no response in his abstracted eyes. She bit her lips;
+she was becoming irritated again. Then it occurred to her that, instead
+of appealing to his hopeless memory, she had better trust to some
+unreflective automatic instinct independent of it, and she put the
+question a little forward: “When you leave us, where will you go from
+here?” He stirred slightly, and turned towards her. She repeated her
+query slowly and patiently, with signs and gestures recognized between
+them. A faint glow of intelligence struggled into his eyes: he lifted
+his arm slowly, and pointed.
+
+“Ah! those white peaks--the Sierras?” she asked, eagerly. No reply.
+“Beyond them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“The States?” No reply. “Further still?”
+
+He remained so patiently quiet and still pointing that she leaned
+forward, and, following with her eyes the direction of his hand, saw
+that he was pointing to the sky!
+
+Then a great quiet fell upon them. The whole mountain-side seemed to her
+to be hushed, as if to allow her to grasp and realize for the first time
+the pathos of the ruined life at her side, which IT had known so long,
+but which she had never felt till now. The tears came to her eyes; in
+her swift revulsion of feeling she caught the thin uplifted hand between
+her own. It seemed to her that he was about to raise them to his lips,
+but she withdrew them hastily, and moved away. She had a strange fear
+that if he had kissed them, it might seem as if some dumb animal had
+touched them--or--IT MIGHT NOT. The next day she felt a consciousness
+of this in his presence, and a wish that he was well-cured and away. She
+determined to consult Dr. Duchesne on the subject when he next called.
+
+But the doctor, secure in the welfare of his patient, had not visited
+him lately, and she found herself presently absorbed in the business of
+the ranch, which at this season was particularly trying. There had also
+been a quarrel between Dick Shipley, her mill foreman, and Miguel, her
+ablest and most trusted vaquero, and in her strict sense of impartial
+justice she was obliged to side on the merits of the case with Shipley
+against her oldest retainer. This troubled her, as she knew that with
+the Mexican nature, fidelity and loyalty were not unmixed with quick and
+unreasoning jealousy. For this reason she was somewhat watchful of the
+two men when work was over, and there was a chance of their being
+thrown together. Once or twice she had remained up late to meet Miguel
+returning from the posada at San Ramon, filled with aguardiente and a
+recollection of his wrongs, and to see him safely bestowed before she
+herself retired. It was on one of those occasions, however, that she
+learned that Dick Shipley, hearing that Miguel had disparaged him freely
+at the posada, had broken the discipline of the ranch, and absented
+himself the same night that Miguel “had leave,” with a view of facing
+his antagonist on his own ground. To prevent this, the fearless girl at
+once secretly set out alone to overtake and bring back the delinquent.
+
+For two or three hours the house was thus left to the sole occupancy of
+Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth and the invalid--a fact only dimly suspected by the
+latter, who had become vaguely conscious of Josephine's anxiety, and had
+noticed the absence of light and movement in her room. For this reason,
+therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in the
+porch to await her return, he was startled by hearing HER voice in the
+shadow of the lower porch, accompanied by a hurried tapping against the
+door of the old couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would have
+moved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with white and parted
+lips and vacantly distended eyeballs.
+
+Meantime the voice and muffled tapping had brought the tremulous fingers
+of old Forsyth to the door-latch. He opened the door partly; a slight
+figure that had been lurking in the shadow of the porch pushed rapidly
+through the opening. There was a faint outcry quickly hushed, and the
+door closed again. The rays of a single candle showed the two old people
+hysterically clasping in their arms the figure that had entered--a
+slight but vicious-looking young fellow of five-and-twenty.
+
+“There, d--n it!” he said impatiently, in a voice whose rich depth was
+like Josephine's, but whose querulous action was that of the two old
+people before him, “let me go, and quit that, I didn't come here to be
+strangled! I want some money--money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, for
+I've got to be off again before daylight. So look sharp, will you?”
+
+“But, Stevy dear, when you didn't come that time three months ago, but
+wrote from Los Angeles, you said you'd made a strike at last, and”--
+
+“What are you talking about?” he interrupted violently. “That was just
+my lyin' to keep you from worryin' me. Three months ago--three months
+ago! Why, you must have been crazy to have swallowed it; I hadn't a
+cent.”
+
+“Nor have we,” said the old woman, shrilly. “That hellish sister of
+yours still keeps us like beggars. Our only hope was you, our own boy.
+And now you only come to--to go again.”
+
+“But SHE has money; SHE'S doing well, and SHE shall give it to me,”
+ he went on, angrily. “She can't bully me with her business airs and
+morality. Who else has got a right to share, if it is not her own
+brother?”
+
+Alas for the fatuousness of human malevolence! Had the unhappy couple
+related only the simple facts they knew about the new guest of Burnt
+Ridge Ranch, and the manner of his introduction, they might have spared
+what followed.
+
+But the old woman broke into a vindictive cry: “Who else, Steve--who
+else? Why, the slut has brought a MAN here--a sneaking, deceitful,
+underhanded, crazy lover!”
+
+“Oh, has she?” said the young man, fiercely, yet secretly pleased at
+this promising evidence of his sister's human weakness. “Where is she?
+I'll go to her. She's in her room, I suppose,” and before they could
+restrain him, he had thrown off their impeding embraces and darted
+across the hall.
+
+The two old people stared doubtfully at each other. For even this
+powerful ally, whose strength, however, they were by no means sure
+of, might succumb before the determined Josephine! Prudence demanded a
+middle course. “Ain't they brother and sister?” said the old man, with
+an air of virtuous toleration. “Let 'em fight it out.”
+
+The young man impatiently entered the room he remembered to have been
+his sister's. By the light of the moon that streamed upon the window
+he could see she was not there. He passed hurriedly to the door of her
+bedroom; it was open; the room was empty, the bed unturned. She was not
+in the house--she had gone to the mill. Ah! What was that they had said?
+An infamous thought passed through the scoundrel's mind. Then, in what
+he half believed was an access of virtuous fury, he began by the dim
+light to rummage in the drawers of the desk for such loose coin or
+valuables as, in the perfect security of the ranch, were often left
+unguarded. Suddenly he heard a heavy footstep on the threshold, and
+turned.
+
+An awful vision--a recollection, so unexpected, so ghostlike in that
+weird light that he thought he was losing his senses--stood before him.
+It moved forwards with staring eyeballs and white and open lips from
+which a horrible inarticulate sound issued that was the speech of no
+living man! With a single desperate, almost superhuman effort Stephen
+Forsyth bounded aside, leaped from the window, and ran like a madman
+from the house. Then the apparition trembled, collapsed, and sank in an
+undistinguishable heap to the ground.
+
+When Josephine Forsyth returned an hour later with her mill foreman, she
+was startled to find her helpless patient in a fit on the floor of her
+room. With the assistance of her now converted and penitent employee,
+she had the unfortunate man conveyed to his room--but not until she had
+thoughtfully rearranged the disorder of her desk and closed the open
+drawers without attracting Dick Shipley's attention. In the morning,
+hearing that the patient was still in the semiconscious exhaustion of
+his late attack, but without seeing him, she sent for Dr. Duchesne. The
+doctor arrived while she was absent at the mill, where, after a careful
+examination of his patient, he sought her with some little excitement.
+
+“Well?” she said, with eager gravity.
+
+“Well, it looks as if your wish would be gratified. Your friend has
+had an epileptic fit, but the physical shock has started his mental
+machinery again. He has recovered his faculties; his memory is
+returning: he thinks and speaks coherently; he is as sane as you and I.”
+
+“And”--said Josephine, questioning the doctor's knitted eyebrows.
+
+“I am not yet sure whether it was the result of some shock he doesn't
+remember; or an irritation of the brain, which would indicate that the
+operation had not been successful and that there was still some physical
+pressure or obstruction there--in which case he would be subject to
+these attacks all his life.”
+
+“Do you think his reason came before the fit or after?” asked the girl,
+anxiously.
+
+“I couldn't say. Had anything happened?”
+
+“I was away, and found him on the floor on my return,” she answered,
+half uneasily. After a pause she said, “Then he has told you his name
+and all about himself?”
+
+“Yes, it's nothing at all! He was a stranger just arrived from the
+States, going to the mines--the old story; had no near relations, of
+course; wasn't missed or asked after; remembers walking along the ridge
+and falling over; name, John Baxter, of Maine.” He paused, and relaxing
+into a slight smile, added, “I haven't spoiled your romance, have I?”
+
+“No,” she said, with an answering smile. Then as the doctor walked
+briskly away she slightly knitted her pretty brows, hung her head,
+patted the ground with her little foot beyond the hem of her gown, and
+said to herself, “The man was lying to him.”
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+On her return to the house, Josephine apparently contented herself with
+receiving the bulletin of the stranger's condition from the servant, for
+she did not enter his room. She had obtained no theory of last night's
+incident from her parents, who, beyond a querulous agitation that was
+quickened by the news of his return to reason, refrained from even that
+insidious comment which she half feared would follow. When another
+day passed without her seeing him, she nevertheless was conscious of a
+little embarrassment when his attendant brought her the request that
+she would give him a moment's speech in the porch, whither he had been
+removed.
+
+She found him physically weaker; indeed, so much so that she was fain,
+even in her embarrassment, to assist him back to the bench from which
+he had ceremoniously risen. But she was so struck with the change in
+his face and manner, a change so virile and masterful, in spite of its
+gentle sadness of manner, that she recoiled with a slight timidity as if
+he had been a stranger, although she was also conscious that he seemed
+to be more at his ease than she was. He began in a low exhausted voice,
+but before he had finished his first sentence, she felt herself in the
+presence of a superior.
+
+“My thanks come very late, Miss Forsyth,” he said, with a faint smile,
+“but no one knows better than yourself the reason why, or can better
+understand that they mean that the burden you have so generously taken
+on yourself is about to be lifted. I know all, Miss Forsyth. Since
+yesterday I have learned how much I owe you, even my life I believe,
+though I am afraid I must tell you in the same breath that THAT is of
+little worth to any one. You have kindly helped and interested yourself
+in a poor stranger who turns out to be a nobody, without friends,
+without romance, and without even mystery. You found me lying in the
+road down yonder, after a stupid accident that might have happened to
+any other careless tramp, and which scarcely gave me a claim to a bed
+in the county hospital, much less under this kindly roof. It was not my
+fault, as you know, that all this did not come out sooner; but while it
+doesn't lessen your generosity, it doesn't lessen my debt, and although
+I cannot hope to ever repay you, I can at least keep the score from
+running on. Pardon my speaking so bluntly, but my excuse for speaking at
+all was to say 'Good-by' and 'God bless you.' Dr. Duchesne has promised
+to give me a lift on my way in his buggy when he goes.”
+
+There was a slight touch of consciousness in his voice in spite of its
+sadness, which struck the young girl as a weak and even ungentlemanly
+note in his otherwise self-abnegating and undemonstrative attitude. If
+he was a common tramp, he wouldn't talk in that way, and if he wasn't,
+why did he lie? Her practical good sense here asserted itself.
+
+“But you are far from strong yet; in fact, the doctor says you might
+have a relapse at any moment, and you have--that is, you SEEM to have no
+money,” she said gravely.
+
+“That's true,” he said, quickly. “I remember I was quite played out when
+I entered the settlement, and I think I had parted from even some little
+trifles I carried with me. I am afraid I was a poor find to those who
+picked me up, and you ought to have taken warning. But the doctor has
+offered to lend me enough to take me to San Francisco, if only to give a
+fair trial to the machine he has set once more a-going.”
+
+“Then you have friends in San Francisco?” said the young girl quickly.
+“Those who know you? Why not write to them first, and tell them you are
+here?”
+
+“I don't think your postmaster here would be preoccupied with letters
+for John Baxter, if I did,” he said, quietly. “But here is the doctor
+waiting. Good-by.”
+
+He stood looking at her in a peculiar, yet half-resigned way, and held
+out his hand. For a moment she hesitated. Had he been less independent
+and strong, she would have refused to let him go--have offered him
+some slight employment at the ranch; for oddly enough, in spite of the
+suspicion that he was concealing something, she felt that she would have
+trusted him, and he would have been a help to her. But he was not only
+determined, but SHE was all the time conscious that he was a totally
+different man from the one she had taken care of, and merely ordinary
+prudence demanded that she should know something more of him first. She
+gave him her hand constrainedly; he pressed it warmly.
+
+Dr. Duchesne drove up, helped him into the buggy, smiled a good-natured
+but half-perfunctory assurance that he would look after “her patient,”
+ and drove away.
+
+The whole thing was over, but so unexpectedly, so suddenly, so
+unromantically, so unsatisfactorily, that, although her common sense
+told her that it was perfectly natural, proper, business-like, and
+reasonable, and, above all, final and complete, she did not know whether
+to laugh or be angry. Yet this was her parting from the man who had but
+a few days ago moved her to tears with a single hopeless gesture.
+Well, this would teach her what to expect. Well, what had she expected?
+Nothing!
+
+Yet for the rest of the day she was unreasonably irritable, and, if the
+conjointure be not paradoxical, severely practical, and inhumanly
+just. Falling foul of some presumption of Miguel's, based upon his
+prescriptive rights through long service on the estate, with the
+recollection of her severity towards his antagonist in her mind, she
+rated that trusted retainer with such pitiless equity and unfeminine
+logic that his hot Latin blood chilled in his veins, and he stood livid
+on the road. Then, informing Dick Shipley with equally relentless calm
+that she might feel it necessary to change ALL her foremen unless
+they could agree in harmony, she sought the dignified seclusion of
+her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the
+stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their
+porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression,
+recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, who
+galloped contemptuously past them.
+
+Nevertheless, she sat late that night at her desk. The cold moon looked
+down upon her window, and lit up the empty porch where her silent guest
+had mutely watched her. For a moment she regretted that he had recovered
+his reason, excusing herself on the practical ground that he would never
+have known his dependence, and he would have been better cared for
+by her. She felt restless and uneasy. This slight divergence from the
+practical groove in which her life had been set had disturbed her in
+many other things, and given her the first views of the narrowness of
+it.
+
+Suddenly she heard a step in the porch. The lateness of the hour,
+perhaps some other reason, seemed to startle her, and she half rose.
+The next moment the figure of Miguel appeared at the doorway, and with
+a quick, hurried look around him, and at the open window, he approached
+her. He was evidently under great excitement, his hollow shaven
+cheek looked like a waxen effigy in the mission church; his yellow,
+tobacco-stained eye glittered like phosphorescent amber, his lank
+gray hair was damp and perspiring; but more striking than this was the
+evident restraint he had put upon himself, pressing his broad-brimmed
+sombrero with both of his trembling yellow hands against his breast. The
+young girl cast a hurried glance at the open window and at the gun which
+stood in the corner, and then confronted him with clear and steady eyes,
+but a paler cheek.
+
+Ah, he began in Spanish, which he himself had taught her as a child,
+it was a strange thing, his coming there to-night; but, then, mother of
+God! it was a strange, a terrible thing that she had done to him--old
+Miguel, her uncle's servant: he that had known her as a muchacha; he
+that had lived all his life at the ranch--ay, and whose fathers before
+him had lived there all THEIR lives and driven the cattle over the very
+spot where she now stood, before the thieving Americans came here! But
+he would be calm; yes, the senora should find him calm, even as she
+was when she told him to go. He would not speak. No, he--Miguel--would
+contain himself; yes, he HAD mastered himself, but could he restrain
+others? Ah, yes, OTHERS--that was it. Could he keep Manuel and Pepe and
+Dominguez from talking to the milkman--that leaking sieve, that gabbling
+brute of a Shipley, for whose sake she had cast off her old servant that
+very day?
+
+She looked at him with cold astonishment, but without fear. Was he drunk
+with aguardiente, or had his jealousy turned his brain? He continued
+gasping, but still pressing his hat against his breast.
+
+Ah, he saw it all! Yes, it was to-day, the day he left. Yes, she had
+thought it safe to cast Miguel off now--now that HE was gone!
+
+Without in the least understanding him, the color had leaped to her
+cheek, and the consciousness of it made her furious.
+
+“How dare you?” she said, passionately. “What has that stranger to do
+with my affairs or your insolence?”
+
+He stopped and gazed at her with a certain admiring loyalty. “Ah! so,”
+ he said, with a deep breath, “the senora is the niece of her uncle. She
+does well not to fear HIM--a dog,”--with a slight shrug,--“who is more
+than repaid by the senora's condescension. HE dare not speak!”
+
+“Who dare not speak? Are you mad?” She stopped with a sudden terrible
+instinct of apprehension. “Miguel,” she said in her deepest voice,
+“answer me, I command you! Do you know anything of this man?”
+
+It was Miguel's turn to recoil from his mistress. “Ah, my God! is it
+possible the senora has not suspect?”
+
+“Suspect!” said Josephine, haughtily, albeit her proud heart was beating
+quickly. “I SUSPECT nothing. I command you to tell me what you KNOW.”
+
+Miguel turned with a rapid gesture and closed the door. Then, drawing
+her away from the window, he said in a hurried whisper,--
+
+“I know that that man has not the name of Baxter! I know that he has
+the name of Randolph, a young gambler, who have won a large sum at
+Sacramento, and, fearing to be robbed by those he won of, have walk
+to himself through the road in disguise of a miner. I know that your
+brother Esteban have decoyed him here, and have fallen on him.”
+
+“Stop!” said the young girl, her eyes, which had been fixed with the
+agony of conviction, suddenly flashing with the energy of despair. “And
+you call yourself the servant of my uncle, and dare say this of his
+nephew?”
+
+“Yes, senora,” broke out the old man, passionately. “It is because I am
+the servant of your uncle that I, and I ALONE, dare say it to you! It
+is because I perjured my soul, and have perjured my soul to deny it
+elsewhere, that I now dare to say it! It is because I, your servant,
+knew it from one of my countrymen, who was of the gang,--because I,
+Miguel, knew that your brother was not far away that night, and because
+I, whom you would dismiss, have picked up this pocket-book of Randolph's
+and your brother's ring which he have dropped, and I have found beneath
+the body of the man you sent me to fetch.”
+
+He drew a packet from his bosom, and tossed it on the desk before her.
+
+“And why have you not told me this before?” said Josephine,
+passionately.
+
+Miguel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“What good? Possibly this dog Randolph would die. Possibly he would
+live--as a lunatic. Possibly would happen what has happened! The senora
+is beautiful. The American has eyes. If the Dona Josephine's beauty
+shall finish what the silly Don Esteban's arm have begun--what matter?”
+
+“Stop!” cried Josephine, pressing her hands across her shuddering eyes.
+Then, uncovering her white and set face, she said rapidly, “Saddle my
+horse and your own at once. Then take your choice! Come with me and
+repeat all that you have said in the presence of that man, or leave this
+ranch forever. For if I live I shall go to him tonight, and tell the
+whole story.”
+
+The old man cast a single glance at his mistress, shrugged his
+shoulders, and, without a word, left the room. But in ten minutes they
+were on their way to the county town.
+
+Day was breaking over the distant Burnt Ridge--a faint, ghostly level,
+like a funeral pall, in the dim horizon--as they drew up before the
+gaunt, white-painted pile of the hospital building. Josephine uttered
+a cry. Dr. Duchesne's buggy was before the door. On its very threshold
+they met the doctor, dark and irritated. “Then you heard the news?” he
+said, quickly.
+
+Josephine turned her white face to the doctor's. “What news?” she asked,
+in a voice that seemed strangely deep and resonant.
+
+“The poor fellow had another attack last night, and died of exhaustion
+about an hour ago. I was too late to save him.”
+
+“Did he say anything? Was he conscious?” asked the girl, hoarsely.
+
+“No; incoherent! Now I think of it, he harped on the same string as he
+did the night of the operation. What was it he said? you remember.”
+
+“'You'll have to kill me first,'” repeated Josephine, in a choking
+voice.
+
+“Yes; something about his dying before he'd tell. Well, he came back to
+it before he went off--they often do. You seem a little hoarse with your
+morning ride. You should take care of that voice of yours. By the way,
+it's a good deal like your brother's.”
+
+*****
+
+The Chatelaine of Burnt Ridge never married.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE SANTA CLARA WHEAT
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was an enormous wheat-field in the Santa Clara valley, stretching to
+the horizon line unbroken. The meridian sun shone upon it without glint
+or shadow; but at times, when a stronger gust of the trade winds passed
+over it, there was a quick slanting impression of the whole surface that
+was, however, as unlike a billow as itself was unlike a sea. Even when
+a lighter zephyr played down its long level, the agitation was
+superficial, and seemed only to momentarily lift a veil of greenish
+mist that hung above its immovable depths. Occasional puffs of dust
+alternately rose and fell along an imaginary line across the field,
+as if a current of air were passing through it, but were otherwise
+inexplicable.
+
+Suddenly a faint shout, apparently somewhere in the vicinity of the
+line, brought out a perfectly clear response, followed by the audible
+murmur of voices, which it was impossible to localize. Yet the whole
+field was so devoid of any suggestion of human life or motion that
+it seemed rather as if the vast expanse itself had become suddenly
+articulate and intelligible.
+
+“Wot say?”
+
+“Wheel off.”
+
+“Whare?”
+
+“In the road.”
+
+One of the voices here indicated itself in the direction of the line of
+dust, and said, “Comin',” and a man stepped out from the wheat into a
+broad and dusty avenue.
+
+With his presence three things became apparent.
+
+First, that the puffs of dust indicated the existence of the invisible
+avenue through the unlimited and unfenced field of grain; secondly, that
+the stalks of wheat on either side of it were so tall as to actually
+hide a passing vehicle; and thirdly, that a vehicle had just passed, had
+lost a wheel, and been dragged partly into the grain by its frightened
+horse, which a dusty man was trying to restrain and pacify.
+
+The horse, given up to equine hysterics, and evidently convinced that
+the ordinary buggy behind him had been changed into some dangerous and
+appalling creation, still plunged and kicked violently to rid himself
+of it. The man who had stepped out of the depths of the wheat quickly
+crossed the road, unhitched the traces, drew back the vehicle, and,
+glancing at the traveler's dusty and disordered clothes, said, with curt
+sympathy:--
+
+“Spilt, too; but not hurt, eh?”
+
+“No, neither of us. I went over with the buggy when the wheel cramped,
+but SHE jumped clear.”
+
+He made a gesture indicating the presence of another. The man turned
+quickly. There was a second figure, a young girl standing beside the
+grain from which he had emerged, embracing a few stalks of wheat with
+one arm and a hand in which she still held her parasol, while she
+grasped her gathered skirts with the other, and trying to find a secure
+foothold for her two neat narrow slippers on a crumbling cake of adobe
+above the fathomless dust of the roadway. Her face, although annoyed
+and discontented, was pretty, and her light dress and slim figure were
+suggestive of a certain superior condition.
+
+The man's manner at once softened with Western courtesy. He swung
+his broad-brimmed hat from his head, and bent his body with the
+ceremoniousness of the country ball-room. “I reckon the lady had better
+come up to the shanty out o' the dust and sun till we kin help you get
+these things fixed,” he said to the driver. “I'll send round by the road
+for your hoss, and have one of mine fetch up your wagon.”
+
+“Is it far?” asked the girl, slightly acknowledging his salutation,
+without waiting for her companion to reply.
+
+“Only a step this way,” he answered, motioning to the field of wheat
+beside her.
+
+“What in THERE? I never could go in there,” she said, decidedly.
+
+“It's a heap shorter than by the road, and not so dusty. I'll go with
+you, and pilot you.”
+
+The young girl cast a vexed look at her companion as the probable cause
+of all this trouble, and shook her head. But at the same moment one
+little foot slipped from the adobe into the dust again. She instantly
+clambered back with a little feminine shriek, and ejaculated: “Well,
+of all things!” and then, fixing her blue annoyed eyes on the stranger,
+asked impatiently, “Why couldn't I go there by the road 'n the wagon? I
+could manage to hold on and keep in.”
+
+“Because I reckon you'd find it too pow'ful hot waitin' here till we got
+round to ye.”
+
+There was no doubt it was very hot; the radiation from the baking
+roadway beating up under her parasol, and pricking her cheekbones and
+eyeballs like needles. She gave a fastidious little shudder, furled her
+parasol, gathered her skirts still tighter, faced about, and said, “Go
+on, then.” The man slipped backwards into the ranks of stalks, parting
+them with one hand, and holding out the other as if to lead her. But
+she evaded the invitation by holding her tightly-drawn skirt with both
+hands, and bending her head forward as if she had not noticed it. The
+next moment the road, and even the whole outer world, disappeared behind
+them, and they seemed floating in a choking green translucent mist.
+
+But the effect was only momentary; a few steps further she found that
+she could walk with little difficulty between the ranks of stalks, which
+were regularly spaced, and the resemblance now changed to that of a long
+pillared conservatory of greenish glass, that touched all objects with
+its pervading hue. She also found that the close air above her head
+was continually freshened by the interchange of currents of lower
+temperature from below,--as if the whole vast field had a circulation of
+its own,--and that the adobe beneath her feet was gratefully cool to
+her tread. There was no dust, as he had said; what had at first half
+suffocated her seemed to be some stimulating aroma of creation that
+filled the narrow green aisles, and now imparted a strange vigor and
+excitement to her as she walked along. Meantime her guide was not
+conversationally idle. Now, no doubt, she had never seen anything like
+this before? It was ordinary wheat, only it was grown on adobe soil--the
+richest in the valley. These stalks, she could see herself, were ten and
+twelve feet high. That was the trouble, they all ran too much to stalk,
+though the grain yield was “suthen' pow'ful.” She could tell that to
+her friends, for he reckoned she was the only young lady that had ever
+walked under such a growth. Perhaps she was new to Californy? He thought
+so from the start. Well, this was Californy, and this was not the least
+of the ways it could “lay over” every other country on God's yearth.
+Many folks thought it was the gold and the climate, but she could see
+for herself what it could do with wheat. He wondered if her brother had
+ever told, her of it? No, the stranger wasn't her brother. Nor cousin,
+nor company? No; only the hired driver from a San Jose hotel, who was
+takin' her over to Major Randolph's. Yes, he knew the old major; the
+ranch was a pretty place, nigh unto three miles further on. Now that he
+knew the driver was no relation of hers he didn't mind telling her that
+the buggy was a “rather old consarn,” and the driver didn't know his
+business. Yes, it might be fixed up so as to take her over to the
+major's; there was one of their own men--a young fellow--who could do
+anything that COULD be done with wood and iron,--a reg'lar genius!--and
+HE'D tackle it. It might take an hour, but she'd find it quite cool
+waiting in the shanty. It was a rough place, for they only camped out
+there during the season to look after the crop, and lived at their own
+homes the rest of the time. Was she going to stay long at the major's?
+He noticed she had not brought her trunk with her. Had she known the
+major's wife long? Perhaps she thought of settling in the neighborhood?
+
+All this naive, good-humored questioning--so often cruelly misunderstood
+as mere vulgar curiosity, but as often the courteous instinct of simple
+unaffected people to entertain the stranger by inviting him to talk of
+what concerns himself rather than their own selves--was nevertheless,
+I fear, met only by monosyllables from the young lady or an impatient
+question in return. She scarcely raised her eyes to the broad
+jean-shirted back that preceded her through the grain until the
+man abruptly ceased talking, and his manner, without losing its
+half-paternal courtesy, became graver. She was beginning to be conscious
+of her incivility, and was trying to think of something to say, when
+he exclaimed with a slight air of relief, “Here we are!” and the shanty
+suddenly appeared before them.
+
+It certainly was very rough--a mere shell of unpainted boards that
+scarcely rose above the level of the surrounding grain, and a few yards
+distant was invisible. Its slightly sloping roof, already warped and
+shrunken into long fissures that permitted glimpses of the steel-blue
+sky above, was evidently intended only as a shelter from the cloudless
+sun in those two months of rainless days and dewless nights when it was
+inhabited. Through the open doors and windows she could see a row of
+“bunks,” or rude sleeping berths against the walls, furnished with
+coarse mattresses and blankets. As the young girl halted, the man
+with an instinct of delicacy hurried forward, entered the shanty, and
+dragging a rude bench to the doorway, placed it so that she could sit
+beneath the shade of the roof, yet with her back to these domestic
+revelations. Two or three men, who had been apparently lounging there,
+rose quietly, and unobtrusively withdrew. Her guide brought her a tin
+cup of deliciously cool water, exchanged a few hurried words with his
+companions, and then disappeared with them, leaving her alone.
+
+Her first sense of relief from their company was, I fear, stronger than
+any other feeling. After a hurried glance around the deserted apartment,
+she arose, shook out her dress and mantle, and then going into the
+darkest corner supported herself with one hand against the wall while
+with the other she drew off, one by one, her slippers from her slim,
+striped-stockinged feet, shook and blew out the dust that had penetrated
+within, and put them on again. Then, perceiving a triangular fragment
+of looking-glass nailed against the wall, she settled the strings of her
+bonnet by the aid of its reflection, patted the fringe of brown hair on
+her forehead with her separated five fingers as if playing an imaginary
+tune on her brow, and came back with maidenly abstraction to the
+doorway.
+
+Everything was quiet, and her seclusion seemed unbroken. A smile played
+for an instant in the soft shadows of her eyes and mouth as she recalled
+the abrupt withdrawal of the men. Then her mouth straightened and her
+brows slightly bent. It was certainly very unmannerly in them to go off
+in that way. “Good heavens! couldn't they have stayed around without
+talking? Surely it didn't require four men to go and bring up that
+wagon!” She picked up her parasol from the bench with an impatient
+little jerk. Then she held out her ungloved hand into the hot sunshine
+beyond the door with the gesture she would have used had it been
+raining, and withdrew it as quickly--her hand quite scorched in
+the burning rays. Nevertheless, after another impatient pause she
+desperately put up her parasol and stepped from the shanty.
+
+Presently she was conscious of a faint sound of hammering not far away.
+Perhaps there was another shed, but hidden, like everything else, in
+this monotonous, ridiculous grain. Some stalks, however, were trodden
+down and broken around the shanty; she could move more easily and see
+where she was going. To her delight, a few steps further brought her
+into a current of the trade-wind and a cooler atmosphere. And a short
+distance beyond them, certainly, was the shed from which the hammering
+proceeded. She approached it boldly.
+
+It was simply a roof upheld by rude uprights and crossbeams, and open
+to the breeze that swept through it. At one end was a small blacksmith's
+forge, some machinery, and what appeared to be part of a small
+steam-engine. Midway of the shed was a closet or cupboard fastened with
+a large padlock. Occupying its whole length on the other side was a
+work-bench, and at the further end stood the workman she had heard.
+
+He was apparently only a year or two older than herself, and clad in
+blue jean overalls, blackened and smeared with oil and coal-dust. Even
+his youthful face, which he turned towards her, had a black smudge
+running across it and almost obliterating a small auburn moustache. The
+look of surprise that he gave her, however, quickly passed; he remained
+patiently and in a half-preoccupied way, holding his hammer in his
+hand, as she advanced. This was evidently the young fellow who could “do
+anything that could be done with wood and iron.”
+
+She was very sorry to disturb him, but could he tell her how long it
+would be before the wagon could be brought up and mended? He could not
+say that until he himself saw what was to be done; if it was only a
+matter of the wheel he could fix it up in a few moments; if, as he had
+been told, it was a case of twisted or bent axle, it would take longer,
+but it would be here very soon. Ah, then, would he let her wait here, as
+she was very anxious to know at once, and it was much cooler than in the
+shed? Certainly; he would go over and bring her a bench. But here she
+begged he wouldn't trouble himself, she could sit anywhere comfortably.
+
+The lower end of the work-bench was covered with clean and odorous
+shavings; she lightly brushed them aside and, with a youthful movement,
+swung herself to a seat upon it, supporting herself on one hand as
+she leaned towards him. She could thus see that his eyes were of a
+light-yellowish brown, like clarified honey, with a singular look of
+clear concentration in them, which, however, was the same whether turned
+upon his work, the surrounding grain, or upon her. This, and his sublime
+unconsciousness of the smudge across his face and his blackened hands,
+made her wonder if the man who could do everything with wood and iron
+was above doing anything with water. She had half a mind to tell him of
+it, particularly as she noticed also that his throat below the line
+of sunburn disclosed by his open collar was quite white, and his grimy
+hands well made. She was wondering whether he would be affronted if she
+said in her politest way, “I beg your pardon, but do you know you
+have quite accidentally got something on your face,” and offer her
+handkerchief, which, of course, he would decline, when her eye fell on
+the steam-engine.
+
+“How odd! Do you use that on the farm?”
+
+“No,”--he smiled here, the smudge accenting it and setting off his white
+teeth in a Christy Minstrel fashion that exasperated her--no, although
+it COULD be used, and had been. But it was his first effort, made two
+years ago, when he was younger and more inexperienced. It was a rather
+rough thing, she could see--but he had to make it at odd times with
+what iron he could pick up or pay for, and at different forges where he
+worked.
+
+She begged his pardon--where--
+
+WHERE HE WORKED.
+
+Ah, then he was the machinist or engineer here?
+
+No, he worked here just like the others, only he was allowed to put up a
+forge while the grain was green, and have his bench in consideration of
+the odd jobs he could do in the way of mending tools, etc. There was
+a heap of mending and welding to do--she had no idea how quickly
+agricultural machines got out of order! He had done much of his work on
+the steam-engine on moonlit nights. Yes; she had no idea how perfectly
+clear and light it was here in the valley on such nights; although of
+course the shadows were very dark, and when he dropped a screw or a nut
+it was difficult to find. He had worked there because it saved time
+and because it didn't cost anything, and he had nobody to look on or
+interfere with him. No, it was not lonely; the coyotes and wild cats
+sometimes came very near, but were always more surprised and frightened
+than he was; and once a horseman who had strayed off the distant road
+yonder mistook him for an animal and shot at him twice.
+
+He told all this with such freedom from embarrassment and with such
+apparent unconsciousness of the blue eyes that were following him, and
+the light, graceful figure,--which was so near his own that in some
+of his gestures his grimy hands almost touched its delicate
+garments,--that, accustomed as she was to a certain masculine aberration
+in her presence, she was greatly amused by his naive acceptance of her
+as an equal. Suddenly, looking frankly in her face, he said:
+
+“I'll show you a secret, if you care to see it.”
+
+Nothing would please her more.
+
+He glanced hurriedly around, took a key from his pocket, and unlocked
+the padlock that secured the closet she had noticed. Then, reaching
+within, with infinite care he brought out a small mechanical model.
+
+“There's an invention of my own. A reaper and thresher combined. I'm
+going to have it patented and have a big one made from this model. This
+will work, as you see.”
+
+He then explained to her with great precision how as it moved over the
+field the double operation was performed by the same motive power. That
+it would be a saving of a certain amount of labor and time which she
+could not remember. She did not understand a word of his explanations;
+she saw only a clean and pretty but complicated toy that under the
+manipulation of his grimy fingers rattled a number of frail-like staves
+and worked a number of wheels and drums, yet there was no indication of
+her ignorance in her sparkling eyes and smiling, breathless attitude.
+Perhaps she was interested in his own absorption; the revelation of
+his preoccupation with this model struck her as if he had made her
+a confidante of some boyish passion for one of her own sex, and she
+regarded him with the same sympathizing superiority.
+
+“You will make a fortune out of it,” she said pleasantly.
+
+Well, he might make enough to be able to go on with some other
+inventions he had in his mind. They cost money and time, no matter how
+careful one was.
+
+This was another interesting revelation to the young girl. He not only
+did not seem to care for the profit his devotion brought him, but even
+his one beloved ideal might be displaced by another. So like a man,
+after all!
+
+Her reflections were broken upon by the sound of voices. The young man
+carefully replaced the model in its closet with a parting glance as if
+he was closing a shrine, and said, “There comes the wagon.” The young
+girl turned to face the men who were dragging it from the road, with
+the half-complacent air of having been victorious over their late rude
+abandonment, but they did not seem to notice it or to be surprised
+at her companion, who quickly stepped forward and examined the broken
+vehicle with workmanlike deliberation.
+
+“I hope you will be able to do something with it,” she said sweetly,
+appealing directly to him. “I should thank you SO MUCH.”
+
+He did not reply. Presently he looked up to the man who had brought her
+to the shanty, and said, “The axle's strained, but it's safe for five or
+six miles more of this road. I'll put the wheel on easily.” He paused,
+and without glancing at her, continued, “You might send her on by the
+cart.”
+
+“Pray don't trouble yourselves,” interrupted the young girl, with a pink
+uprising in her cheeks; “I shall be quite satisfied with the buggy as
+it stands. Send her on in the cart, indeed! Really, they were a rude
+set--ALL of them.”
+
+Without taking the slightest notice of her remark, the man replied
+gravely to the young mechanic, “Yes, but we'll be wanting the cart
+before it can get back from taking her.”
+
+“Her” again. “I assure you the buggy will serve perfectly well--if
+this--gentleman--will only be kind enough to put on the wheel again,”
+ she returned hotly.
+
+The young mechanic at once set to work. The young girl walked apart
+silently until the wheel was restored to its axle. But to her surprise a
+different horse was led forward to be harnessed.
+
+“We thought your horse wasn't safe in case of another accident,” said
+the first man, with the same smileless consideration. “This one wouldn't
+cut up if he was harnessed to an earthquake or a worse driver than
+you've got.”
+
+It occurred to her instantly that the more obvious remedy of sending
+another driver had been already discussed and rejected by them. Yet,
+when her own driver appeared a moment afterwards, she ascended to her
+seat with some dignity and a slight increase of color.
+
+“I am very much obliged to you all,” she said, without glancing at the
+young inventor.
+
+“Don't mention it, miss.”
+
+“Good afternoon.”
+
+“Good afternoon.” They all took off their hats with the same formal
+gravity as the horse moved forward, but turned back to their work again
+before she was out of the field.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The ranch of Major Randolph lay on a rich falda of the Coast Range, and
+overlooked the great wheat plains that the young girl had just left.
+The house of wood and adobe, buried to its first story in rose-trees
+and passion vines, was large and commodious. Yet it contained only the
+major, his wife, her son and daughter, and the few occasional visitors
+from San Francisco whom he entertained, and she tolerated.
+
+For the major's household was not entirely harmonious. While a young
+infantry subaltern at a Gulf station, he had been attracted by the
+piquant foreign accent and dramatic gestures of a French Creole widow,
+and--believing them, in the first flush of his youthful passion more
+than an offset to the encumbrance of her two children who, with the
+memory of various marital infidelities were all her late husband had
+left her--had proposed, been accepted, and promptly married to her.
+Before he obtained his captaincy, she had partly lost her accent, and
+those dramatic gestures, which had accented the passion of their brief
+courtship, began to intensify domestic altercation and the bursts
+of idle jealousy to which she was subject. Whether she was revenging
+herself on her second husband for the faults of her first is not known,
+but it was certain that she brought an unhallowed knowledge of the
+weaknesses, cheap cynicism, and vanity of a foreign predecessor, to sit
+in judgment upon the simple-minded and chivalrous American soldier who
+had succeeded him, and who was, in fact, the most loyal of husbands. The
+natural result of her skepticism was an espionage and criticism of the
+wives of the major's brother officers that compelled a frequent change
+of quarters. When to this was finally added a racial divergence and
+antipathy, the public disparagement of the customs and education of her
+female colleagues, and the sudden insistence of a foreign and French
+dominance in her household beyond any ordinary Creole justification,
+Randolph, presumably to avoid later international complications,
+resigned while he was as yet a major. Luckily his latest banishment to
+an extreme Western outpost had placed him in California during the flood
+of a speculation epoch. He purchased a valuable Spanish grant to three
+leagues of land for little over a three months' pay. Following that
+yearning which compels retired ship-captains and rovers of all degrees
+to buy a farm in their old days, the major, professionally and socially
+inured to border strife, sought surcease and Arcadian repose in
+ranching.
+
+It was here that Mrs. Randolph, late relict of the late Scipion
+L'Hommadieu, devoted herself to bringing up her children after the
+extremest of French methods, and in resurrecting a “de” from her own
+family to give a distinct and aristocratic character to their name. The
+“de Fontanges l'Hommadieu” were, however, only known to their neighbors,
+after the Western fashion, by their stepfather's name,--when they were
+known at all--which was seldom. For the boy was unpleasantly conceited
+as a precocious worldling, and the girl as unpleasantly complacent in
+her role of ingenue. The household was completely dominated by Mrs.
+Randolph. A punctilious Catholic, she attended all the functions of the
+adjacent mission, and the shadow of a black soutane at twilight gliding
+through the wild oat-fields behind the ranch had often been mistaken for
+a coyote. The peace-loving major did not object to a piety which, while
+it left his own conscience free, imparted a respectable religious air to
+his household, and kept him from the equally distasteful approaches of
+the Puritanism of his neighbors, and was blissfully unconscious that he
+was strengthening the antagonistic foreign element in his family with an
+alien church.
+
+Meantime, as the repaired buggy was slowly making its way towards his
+house, Major Randolph entered his wife's boudoir with a letter which the
+San Francisco post had just brought him. A look of embarrassment on his
+good-humored face strengthened the hard lines of hers; she felt some
+momentary weakness of her natural enemy, and prepared to give battle.
+
+“I'm afraid here's something of a muddle, Josephine,” he began with a
+deprecating smile. “Mallory, who was coming down here with his daughter,
+you know”--
+
+“This is the first intimation I have had that anything has been settled
+upon,” interrupted the lady, with appalling deliberation.
+
+“However, my dear, you know I told you last week that he thought of
+bringing her here while he went South on business. You know, being a
+widower, he has no one to leave her with.”
+
+“And I suppose it is the American fashion to intrust one's daughters to
+any old boon companions?”
+
+“Mallory is an old friend,” interrupted the major, impatiently. “He
+knows I'm married, and although he has never seen YOU, he is quite
+willing to leave his daughter here.”
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+“Come, you know what I mean. The man naturally believes that my wife
+will be a proper chaperone for his daughter. But that is not the present
+question. He intended to call here; I expected to take you over to San
+Jose to see her and all that, you know; but the fact of it is--that
+is--it seems from this letter that--he's been called away sooner than he
+expected, and that--well--hang it! the girl is actually on her way here
+now.”
+
+“Alone?”
+
+“I suppose so. You know one thinks nothing of that here.”
+
+“Or any other propriety, for that matter.”
+
+“For heaven's sake, Josephine, don't be ridiculous! Of course it's
+stupid her coming in this way, and Mallory ought to have brought
+her--but she's coming, and we must receive her. By Jove! Here she is
+now!” he added, starting up after a hurried glance through the window.
+“But what kind of a d----d turn-out is that, anyhow?”
+
+It certainly was an odd-looking conveyance that had entered the gates,
+and was now slowly coming up the drive towards the house. A large
+draught horse harnessed to a dust-covered buggy, whose strained
+fore-axle, bent by the last mile of heavy road, had slanted the tops
+of the fore-wheels towards each other at an alarming angle. The light,
+graceful dress and elegant parasol of the young girl, who occupied half
+of its single seat, looked ludicrously pronounced by the side of the
+slouching figure and grimy duster of the driver, who occupied the other
+half.
+
+Mrs. Randolph gave a gritty laugh. “I thought you said she was alone. Is
+that an escort she has picked up, American fashion, on the road?”
+
+“That's her hired driver, no doubt. Hang it! she can't drive here by
+herself,” retorted the major, impatiently, hurrying to the door and down
+the staircase. But he was instantly followed by his wife. She had no
+idea of permitting a possible understanding to be exchanged in their
+first greeting. The late M. l'Hommadieu had been able to impart a whole
+plan of intrigue in a single word and glance.
+
+Happily, Rose Mallory, already in the hall, in a few words detailed the
+accident that had befallen her, to the honest sympathy of the major and
+the coldly-polite concern of Mrs. Randolph, who, in deliberately chosen
+sentences, managed to convey to the young girl the conviction that
+accidents of any kind to young ladies were to be regarded as only
+a shade removed from indiscretions. Rose was impressed, and even
+flattered, by the fastidiousness of this foreign-appearing woman, and
+after the fashion of youthful natures, accorded to her the respect due
+to recognized authority. When to this authority, which was evident, she
+added a depreciation of the major, I fear that some common instinct
+of feminine tyranny responded in Rose's breast, and that on the very
+threshold of the honest soldier's home she tacitly agreed with the wife
+to look down upon him. Mrs. Randolph departed to inform her son and
+daughter of their guest's arrival. As a matter of fact, however, they
+had already observed her approach to the house through the slits of
+their drawn window-blinds, and those even narrower prejudices and
+limited comprehensions which their education had fostered. The girl,
+Adele, had only grasped the fact that Rose had come to their house in
+fine clothes, alone with a man, in a broken-down vehicle, and was moved
+to easy mirth and righteous wonder. The young man, Emile, had agreed
+with her, with the mental reservation that the guest was pretty, and
+must eventually fall in love with him. They both, however, welcomed her
+with a trained politeness and a superficial attention that, while the
+indifference of her own countrymen in the wheat-field was still fresh in
+her recollection, struck her with grateful contrast; the major's quiet
+and unobtrusive kindliness naturally made less impression, or was
+accepted as a matter of course.
+
+“Well,” said the major, cheerfully but tentatively, to his wife when
+they were alone again, “she seems a nice girl, after all; and a good
+deal of pluck and character, by Jove! to push on in that broken buggy
+rather than linger or come in a farm cart, eh?”
+
+“She was alone in that wheat-field,” said Mrs. Randolph, with grim
+deliberation, “for half an hour; she confesses it herself--TALKING WITH
+A YOUNG MAN!”
+
+“Yes, but the others had gone for the buggy. And, in the name of Heaven,
+what would you have her do--hide herself in the grain?” said the major,
+desperately. “Besides,” he added, with a recklessness he afterwards
+regretted, “that mechanical chap they've got there is really intelligent
+and worth talking to.”
+
+“I have no doubt SHE thought so,” said Mrs. Randolph, with a mirthless
+smile. “In fact, I have observed that the American freedom generally
+means doing what you WANT to do. Indeed, I wonder she didn't bring him
+with her! Only I beg, major, that you will not again, in the presence
+of my daughter,--and I may even say, of my son,--talk lightly of the
+solitary meetings of young ladies with mechanics, even though their
+faces were smutty, and their clothes covered with oil.”
+
+The major here muttered something about there being less danger in a
+young lady listening to the intelligence of a coarsely-dressed laborer
+than to the compliments of a rose-scented fop, but Mrs. Randolph walked
+out of the room before he finished the evident platitude.
+
+That night Rose Mallory retired to her room in a state of
+sell-satisfaction that she even felt was to a certain extent a virtue.
+She was delighted with her reception and with her hostess and family.
+It was strange her father had not spoken more of MRS. Randolph, who was
+clearly the superior of his old friend. What fine manners they all had,
+so different from other people she had known! There was quite an Old
+World civilization about them; really, it was like going abroad! She
+would make the most of her opportunity and profit by her visit. She
+would begin by improving her French; they spoke it perfectly, and with
+such a pure accent. She would correct certain errors she was conscious
+of in her own manners, and copy Mrs. Randolph as much as possible.
+Certainly, there was a great deal to be said of Mrs. Randolph's way
+of looking at things. Now she thought of it calmly, there WAS too much
+informality and freedom in American ways! There was not enough respect
+due to position and circumstances. Take those men in the wheat-field,
+for example. Yet here she found it difficult to formulate an indictment
+against them for “freedom.” She would like to go there some day with the
+Randolphs and let them see what company manners were! She was thoroughly
+convinced now that her father had done wrong in sending her alone; it
+certainly was most disrespectful to them and careless of him (she had
+quite forgotten that she had herself proposed to her father to go alone
+rather than wait at the hotel), and she must have looked very ridiculous
+in her fine clothes and the broken-down buggy. When her trunk came by
+express to-morrow she would look out something more sober. She must
+remember that she was in a Catholic and religious household now. Ah,
+yes! how very fine it was to see that priest at dinner in his soutane,
+sitting down like one of the family, and making them all seem like a
+picture of some historical and aristocratic romance! And then they were
+actually “de Fontanges l'Hommadieu.” How different he was from that
+shabby Methodist minister who used to come to see her father in a black
+cravat with a hideous bow! Really there was something to say for a
+religion that contained so much picturesque refinement; and for her
+part--but that will do. I beg to say that I am not writing of any
+particular snob or feminine monstrosity, but of a very charming
+creature, who was quite able to say her prayers afterwards like a good
+girl, and lay her pretty cheek upon her pillow without a blush.
+
+She opened her window and looked out. The moon, a great silver dome,
+was uplifting itself from a bluish-gray level, which she knew was the
+distant plain of wheat. Somewhere in its midst appeared a dull star,
+at times brightening as if blown upon or drawn upwards in a comet-like
+trail. By some odd instinct she felt that it was the solitary forge
+of the young inventor, and pictured him standing before it with his
+abstracted hazel eyes and a face more begrimed in the moonlight than
+ever. When DID he wash himself? Perhaps not until Sunday. How lonely it
+must be out there! She slightly shivered and turned from the window.
+As she did so, it seemed to her that something knocked against her door
+from without. Opening it quickly, she was almost certain that the sound
+of a rustling skirt retreated along the passage. It was very late;
+perhaps she had disturbed the house by shutting her window. No doubt
+it was the motherly interest of Mrs. Randolph that impelled her to
+come softly and look after her; and for once her simple surmises were
+correct. For not only the inspecting eyes of her hostess, but the
+amatory glances of the youthful Emile, had been fastened upon her window
+until the light disappeared, and even the Holy Mission Church of San
+Jose had assured itself of the dear child's safety with a large and
+supple ear at her keyhole.
+
+The next morning Major Randolph took her with Adele in a light cariole
+over the ranch. Although his domain was nearly as large as the adjoining
+wheat plain, it was not, like that, monopolized by one enormous
+characteristic yield, but embraced a more diversified product. There
+were acres and acres of potatoes in rows of endless and varying
+succession; there were miles of wild oats and barley, which overtopped
+them as they drove in narrow lanes of dry and dusty monotony; there were
+orchards of pears, apricots, peaches, and nectarines, and vineyards of
+grapes, so comparatively dwarfed in height that they scarcely reached
+to the level of their eyes, yet laden and breaking beneath the weight of
+their ludicrously disproportionate fruit. What seemed to be a vast green
+plateau covered with tiny patches, that headed the northern edge of
+the prospect, was an enormous bed of strawberry plants. But everywhere,
+crossing the track, bounding the fields, orchards, and vineyards,
+intersecting the paths of the whole domain, were narrow irrigating ducts
+and channels of running water.
+
+“Those,” said the major, poetically, “are the veins and arteries of
+the ranch. Come with me now, and I'll show you its pulsating heart.”
+ Descending from the wagon into pedestrian prose again, he led Rose a
+hundred yards further to a shed that covered a wonderful artesian well.
+In the centre of a basin a column of water rose regularly with the even
+flow and volume of a brook. “It is one of the largest in the State,”
+ said the major, “and is the life of all that grows here during six
+months of the year.”
+
+Pleased as the young girl was with those evidences of the prosperity and
+position of her host, she was struck, however, with the fact that the
+farm-laborers, wine-growers, nurserymen, and all field hands scattered
+on the vast estate were apparently of the same independent, unpastoral,
+and unprofessional character as the men of the wheat-field. There were
+no cottages or farm buildings that she could see, nor any apparent
+connection between the household and the estate; far from suggesting
+tenantry or retainers, the men who were working in the fields glanced
+at them as they passed with the indifference of strangers, or replied to
+the major's greetings or questionings with perfect equality of manner,
+or even businesslike reserve and caution. Her host explained that the
+ranch was worked by a company “on shares;” that those laborers were, in
+fact, the bulk of the company; and that he, the major, only furnished
+the land, the seed, and the implements. “That man who was driving the
+long roller, and with whom you were indignant because he wouldn't get
+out of our way, is the president of the company.”
+
+“That needn't make him so uncivil,” said Rose, poutingly, “for if it
+comes to that you're the LANDLORD,” she added triumphantly.
+
+“No,” said the major, good-humoredly. “I am simply the man driving the
+lighter and more easily-managed team for pleasure, and he's the man
+driving the heavier and more difficult machine for work. It's for me to
+get out of his way; and looked at in the light of my being THE LANDLORD
+it is still worse, for as we're working 'on shares' I'm interrupting HIS
+work, and reducing HIS profits merely because I choose to sacrifice my
+own.”
+
+I need not say that those atrociously leveling sentiments were received
+by the young ladies with that feminine scorn which is only qualified
+by misconception. Rose, who, under the influence of her hostess, had a
+vague impression that they sounded something like the French Revolution,
+and that Adele must feel like the Princess Elizabeth, rushed to her
+relief like a good girl. “But, major, now, YOU'RE a gentleman, and if
+YOU had been driving that roller, you know you would have turned out for
+us.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” said the major, mischievously; “but if I
+had, I should have known that the other fellow who accepted it wasn't a
+gentleman.”
+
+But Rose, having sufficiently shown her partisanship in the discussion,
+after the feminine fashion, did not care particularly for the logical
+result. After a moment's silence she resumed: “And the wheat ranch
+below--is that carried on in the same way?”
+
+“Yes. But their landlord is a bank, who advances not only the land, but
+the money to work it, and doesn't ride around in a buggy with a couple
+of charmingly distracting young ladies.”
+
+“And do they all share alike?” continued Rose, ignoring the pleasantry,
+“big and little--that young inventor with the rest?”
+
+She stopped. She felt the ingenue's usually complacent eyes suddenly
+fixed upon her with an unhallowed precocity, and as quickly withdrawn.
+Without knowing why, she felt embarrassed, and changed the subject.
+
+The next day they drove to the Convent of Santa Clara and the Mission
+College of San Jose. Their welcome at both places seemed to Rose to be a
+mingling of caste greeting and spiritual zeal, and the austere seclusion
+and reserve of those cloisters repeated that suggestion of an Old World
+civilization that had already fascinated the young Western girl. They
+made other excursions in the vicinity, but did not extend it to a visit
+to their few neighbors. With their reserved and exclusive ideas this
+fact did not strike Rose as peculiar, but on a later shopping
+expedition to the town of San Jose, a certain reticence and aggressive
+sensitiveness on the part of the shopkeepers and tradespeople towards
+the Randolphs produced an unpleasant impression on her mind. She could
+not help noticing, too, that after the first stare of astonishment which
+greeted her appearance with her hostess, she herself was included in
+the antagonism. With her youthful prepossession for her friends, this
+distinction she regarded as flattering and aristocratic, and I fear she
+accented it still more by discussing with Mrs. Randolph the merits
+of the shopkeepers' wares in schoolgirl French before them. She was
+unfortunate enough, however, to do this in the shop of a polyglot
+German.
+
+“Oxcoos me, mees,” he said gravely,--“but dot lady speeks Engeleesh so
+goot mit yourselluf, and ven you dells to her dot silk is hallf gotton
+in English, she onderstand you mooch better, and it don't make nodings
+to me.” The laugh which would have followed from her own countrywomen
+did not, however, break upon the trained faces of the “de Fontanges
+l'Hommadieus,” yet while Rose would have joined in it, albeit a
+little ruefully, she felt for the first time mortified at their civil
+insincerity.
+
+At the end of two weeks, Major Randolph received a letter from Mr.
+Mallory. When he had read it, he turned to his wife: “He thanks you,” he
+said, “for your kindness to his daughter, and explains that his sudden
+departure was owing to the necessity of his taking advantage of a great
+opportunity for speculation that had offered.” As Mrs. Randolph turned
+away with a slight shrug of the shoulders, the major continued: “But you
+haven't heard all! That opportunity was the securing of a half interest
+in a cinnabar lode in Sonora, which has already gone up a hundred
+thousand dollars in his hands! By Jove! a man can afford to drop a
+little social ceremony on those terms--eh, Josephine?” he concluded with
+a triumphant chuckle.
+
+“He's as likely to lose his hundred thousand to-morrow, while his
+manners will remain,” said Mrs. Randolph. “I've no faith in these sudden
+California fortunes!”
+
+“You're wrong as regards Mallory, for he's as careful as he is lucky. He
+don't throw money away for appearance sake, or he'd have a rich home for
+that daughter. He could afford it.”
+
+Mrs. Randolph was silent. “She is his only daughter, I believe,” she
+continued presently.
+
+“Yes--he has no other kith or kin,” returned the major.
+
+“She seems to be very much impressed by Emile,” said Mrs. Randolph.
+
+Major Randolph faced his wife quickly.
+
+“In the name of all that's ridiculous, my dear, you are not already
+thinking of”--he gasped.
+
+“I should be very loth to give MY sanction to anything of the kind,
+knowing the difference of her birth, education, and religion,--although
+the latter I believe she would readily change,” said Mrs. Randolph,
+severely. “But when you speak of MY already thinking of 'such things,'
+do you suppose that your friend, Mr. Mallory, didn't consider all that
+when he sent that girl here?”
+
+“Never,” said the major, vehemently, “and if it entered his head now, by
+Jove, he'd take her away to-morrow--always supposing I didn't anticipate
+him by sending her off myself.”
+
+Mrs. Randolph uttered her mirthless laugh. “And you suppose the girl
+would go? Really, major, you don't seem to understand this boasted
+liberty of your own countrywoman. What does she care for her father's
+control? Why, she'd make him do just what SHE wanted. But,” she added
+with an expression of dignity, “perhaps we had better not discuss this
+until we know something of Emile's feelings in the matter. That is the
+only question that concerns us.” With this she swept out of the room,
+leaving the major at first speechless with honest indignation, and
+then after the fashion of all guileless natures, a little uneasy and
+suspicious of his own guilelessness. For a day or two after, he found
+himself, not without a sensation of meanness, watching Rose when in
+Emile's presence, but he could distinguish nothing more than the frank
+satisfaction she showed equally to the others. Yet he found himself
+regretting even that, so subtle was the contagion of his wife's
+suspicions.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It had been a warm morning; an unusual mist, which the sun had not
+dissipated, had crept on from the great grain-fields beyond, and hung
+around the house charged with a dry, dusty closeness that seemed to be
+quite independent of the sun's rays, and more like a heated exhalation
+or emanation of the soil itself. In its acrid irritation Rose thought
+she could detect the breath of the wheat as on the day she had
+plunged into its pale, green shadows. By the afternoon this mist had
+disappeared, apparently in the same mysterious manner, but not scattered
+by the usual trade-wind, which--another unusual circumstance--that day
+was not forthcoming. There was a breathlessness in the air like the
+hush of listening expectancy, which filled the young girl with a vague
+restlessness, and seemed to even affect a scattered company of crows
+in the field beyond the house, which rose suddenly with startled but
+aimless wings, and then dropped vacantly among the grain again.
+
+Major Randolph was inspecting a distant part of the ranch, Mrs. Randolph
+was presumably engaged in her boudoir, and Rose was sitting between
+Adele and Emile before the piano in the drawing-room, listlessly
+turning over the leaves of some music. There had been an odd mingling of
+eagerness and abstraction in the usual attentions of the young man that
+morning, and a certain nervous affectation in his manner of twisting the
+ends of a small black moustache, which resembled his mother's eyebrows,
+that had affected Rose with a half-amused, half-uneasy consciousness,
+but which she had, however, referred to the restlessness produced by the
+weather. It occurred to her also that the vacuously amiable Adele had
+once or twice regarded her with the same precocious, childlike curiosity
+and infantine cunning she had once before exhibited. All this did not,
+however, abate her admiration for both--perhaps particularly for this
+picturesquely gentlemanly young fellow, with his gentle audacities
+of compliment, his caressing attentions, and his unfailing and equal
+address. And when, discovering that she had mislaid her fan for the
+fifth time that morning, he started up with equal and undiminished fire
+to go again and fetch it, the look of grateful pleasure and pleading
+perplexity in her pretty eyes might have turned a less conceited brain
+than his.
+
+“But you don't know where it is!”
+
+“I shall find it by instinct.”
+
+“You are spoiling me--you two.” The parenthesis was a hesitating
+addition, but she continued, with fresh sincerity, “I shall be quite
+helpless when I leave here--if I am ever able to go by myself.”
+
+“Don't ever go, then.”
+
+“But just now I want my fan; it is so close everywhere to-day.”
+
+“I fly, mademoiselle.”
+
+He started to the door.
+
+She called after him:--
+
+“Let me help your instinct, then; I had it last in the major's study.”
+
+“That was where I was going.”
+
+He disappeared. Rose got up and moved uneasily towards the window. “How
+queer and quiet it looks outside. It's really too bad that he should be
+sent after that fan again. He'll never find it.” She resumed her place
+at the piano, Adele following her with round, expectant eyes. After a
+pause she started up again. “I'll go and fetch it myself,” she said,
+with a half-embarrassed laugh, and ran to the door.
+
+Scarcely understanding her own nervousness, but finding relief in rapid
+movement, Rose flew lightly up the staircase. The major's study, where
+she had been writing letters, during his absence, that morning, was at
+the further end of a long passage, and near her own bedroom, the door of
+which, as she passed, she noticed, half-abstractedly, was open, but she
+continued on and hurriedly entered the study. At the same moment Emile,
+with a smile on his face, turned towards her with the fan in his hand.
+
+“Oh, you've found it,” she said, with nervous eagerness. “I was so
+afraid you'd have all your trouble for nothing.”
+
+She extended her hand, with a half-breathless smile, for the fan, but he
+caught her outstretched little palm in his own, and held it.
+
+“Ah! but you are not going to leave us, are you?”
+
+In a flash of consciousness she understood him, and, as it seemed to
+her, her own nervousness, and all, and everything. And with it came a
+swift appreciation of all it meant to her and her future. To be
+always with him and like him, a part of this refined and restful
+seclusion--akin to all that had so attracted her in this house; not to
+be obliged to educate herself up to it, but to be in it on equal terms
+at once; to know that it was no wild, foolish youthful fancy, but a
+wise, thoughtful, and prudent resolve, that her father would understand
+and her friends respect: these were the thoughts that crowded quickly
+upon her, more like an explanation of her feelings than a revelation, in
+the brief second that he held her hand. It was not, perhaps, love as
+she had dreamed it, and even BELIEVED it, before. She was not ashamed
+or embarrassed; she even felt, with a slight pride, that she was not
+blushing. She raised her eyes frankly. What she WOULD have said she did
+not know, for the door, which he had closed behind her, began to shake
+violently.
+
+It was not the fear of some angry intrusion or interference surely that
+made him drop her hand instantly. It was not--her second thought--the
+idea that some one had fallen in a fit against it that blanched his face
+with abject and unreasoning terror! It must have been something else
+that caused him to utter an inarticulate cry and dash out of the room
+and down the stairs like a madman! What had happened?
+
+In her own self-possession she knew that all this was passing rapidly,
+that it was not the door now that was still shaking, for it had swung
+almost shut again--but it was the windows, the book-shelves, the floor
+beneath her feet, that were all shaking. She heard a hurried scrambling,
+the trampling of feet below, and the quick rustling of a skirt in the
+passage, as if some one had precipitately fled from her room. Yet no one
+had called to her--even HE had said nothing. Whatever had happened they
+clearly had not cared for her to know.
+
+The jarring and rattling ceased as suddenly, but the house seemed silent
+and empty. She moved to the door, which had now swung open a few inches,
+but to her astonishment it was fixed in that position, and she could not
+pass. As yet she had been free from any personal fear, and even now it
+was with a half smile at her imprisonment in the major's study, that she
+rang the bell and turned to the window. A man, whom she recognized
+as one of the ranch laborers, was standing a hundred feet away in the
+garden, looking curiously at the house. He saw her face as she tried to
+raise the sash, uttered an exclamation, and ran forward. But before she
+could understand what he said, the sash began to rattle in her hand, the
+jarring recommenced, the floor shook beneath her feet, a hideous sound
+of grinding seemed to come from the walls, a thin seam of dust-like
+smoke broke from the ceiling, and with the noise of falling plaster a
+dozen books followed each other from the shelves, in what in the frantic
+hurry of that moment seemed a grimly deliberate succession; a picture
+hanging against the wall, to her dazed wonder, swung forward, and
+appeared to stand at right angles from it; she felt herself reeling
+against the furniture; a deadly nausea overtook her; as she glanced
+despairingly towards the window, the outlying fields beyond the garden
+seemed to be undulating like a sea. For the first time she raised her
+voice, not in fear, but in a pathetic little cry of apology for her
+awkwardness in tumbling about and not being able to grapple this new
+experience, and then she found herself near the door, which had once
+more swung free. She grasped it eagerly, and darted out of the study
+into the deserted passage. Here some instinct made her follow the line
+of the wall, rather than the shaking balusters of the corridor and
+staircase, but before she reached the bottom she heard a shout, and
+the farm laborer she had seen coming towards her seized her by the arm,
+dragged her to the open doorway of the drawing-room, and halted beneath
+its arch in the wall. Another thrill, but lighter than before, passed
+through the building, then all was still again.
+
+“It's over; I reckon that's all just now,” said the man, coolly. “It's
+quite safe to cut and run for the garden now, through this window.” He
+half led, half lifted her through the French window to the veranda and
+the ground, and locking her arm in his, ran quickly forward a hundred
+feet from the house, stopping at last beneath a large post oak where
+there was a rustic seat into which she sank. “You're safe now, I
+reckon,” he said grimly.
+
+She looked towards the house; the sun was shining brightly; a cool
+breeze seemed to have sprung up as they ran. She could see a quantity of
+rubbish lying on the roof from which a dozen yards of zinc gutter
+were perilously hanging; the broken shafts of the further cluster of
+chimneys, a pile of bricks scattered upon the ground and among the
+battered down beams of the end of the veranda--but that was all. She
+lifted her now whitened face to the man, and with the apologetic smile
+still lingering on her lips, asked:--
+
+“What does it all mean? What has happened?”
+
+The man stared at her. “D'ye mean to say ye don't know?”
+
+“How could I? They must have all left the house as soon as it began. I
+was talking to--to M. l'Hommadieu, and he suddenly left.”
+
+The man brought his face angrily down within an inch of her own. “D'ye
+mean to say that them d----d French half-breeds stampeded and left yer
+there alone?”
+
+She was still too much stupefied by the reaction to fully comprehend
+his meaning, and repeated feebly with her smile still faintly lingering:
+“But you don't tell me WHAT it was?”
+
+“An earthquake,” said the man, roughly, “and if it had lasted ten
+seconds longer it would have shook the whole shanty down and left you
+under it. Yer kin tell that to them, if they don't know it, but from the
+way they made tracks to the fields, I reckon they did. They're coming
+now.”
+
+Without another word he turned away half surlily, half defiantly,
+passing scarce fifty yards away Mrs. Randolph and her daughter, who were
+hastening towards their guest.
+
+“Oh, here you are!” said Mrs. Randolph, with the nearest approach to
+effusion that Rose had yet seen in her manner. “We were wondering where
+you had run to, and were getting quite concerned. Emile was looking for
+you everywhere.”
+
+The recollection of his blank and abject face, his vague outcry and
+blind fright, came back to Rose with a shock that sent a flash of
+sympathetic shame to her face. The ingenious Adele noticed it, and
+dutifully pinched her mother's arm.
+
+“Emile?” echoed Rose faintly--“looking for ME?”
+
+Mother and daughter exchanged glances.
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Randolph, cheerfully, “he says he started to run with
+you, but you got ahead and slipped out of the garden door--or something
+of the kind,” she added, with the air of making light of Rose's girlish
+fears. “You know one scarcely knows what one does at such times, and
+it must have been frightfully strange to YOU--and he's been quite
+distracted, lest you should have wandered away. Adele, run and tell him
+Miss Mallory has been here under the oak all the time.”
+
+Rose started--and then fell hopelessly back in her seat. Perhaps it WAS
+true! Perhaps he had not rushed off with that awful face and without a
+word. Perhaps she herself had been half-frightened out of her reason.
+In the simple, weak kindness of her nature it seemed less dreadful to
+believe that the fault was partly her own.
+
+“And you went back into the house to look for us when all was over,”
+ said Mrs. Randolph, fixing her black, beady, magnetic eyes on Rose, “and
+that stupid yokel Zake brought you out again. He needn't have clutched
+your arm so closely, my dear,--I must speak to the major about his
+excessive familiarity--but I suppose I shall be told that that is
+American freedom. I call it 'a liberty.'”
+
+It struck Rose that she had not even thanked the man--in the same flash
+that she remembered something dreadful that he had said. She covered her
+face with her hands and tried to recall herself.
+
+Mrs. Randolph gently tapped her shoulder with a mixture of maternal
+philosophy and discipline, and continued: “Of course, it's an upset--and
+you're confused still. That's nothing. They say, dear, it's perfectly
+well known that no two people's recollections of these things ever are
+the same. It's really ridiculous the contradictory stories one hears.
+Isn't it, Emile?”
+
+Rose felt that the young man had joined them and was looking at her. In
+the fear that she should still see some trace of the startled, selfish
+animal in his face, she did not dare to raise her eyes to his, but
+looked at his mother. Mrs. Randolph was standing then, collected but
+impatient.
+
+“It's all over now,” said Emile, in his usual voice, “and except the
+chimneys and some fallen plaster there's really no damage done. But
+I'm afraid they have caught it pretty badly at the mission, and at San
+Francisco in those tall, flashy, rattle-trap buildings they're putting
+up. I've just sent off one of the men for news.”
+
+Her father was in San Francisco by that time; and she had never thought
+of him! In her quick remorse she now forgot all else and rose to her
+feet.
+
+“I must telegraph to my father at once,” she said hurriedly; “he is
+there.”
+
+“You had better wait until the messenger returns and hear his news,”
+ said Emile. “If the shock was only a slight one in San Francisco, your
+father might not understand you, and would be alarmed.”
+
+She could see his face now--there was no record of the past expression
+upon it, but he was watching her eagerly. Mrs. Randolph and Adele had
+moved away to speak to the servants. Emile drew nearer.
+
+“You surely will not desert us now?” he said in a low voice.
+
+“Please don't,” she said vaguely. “I'm so worried,” and, pushing quickly
+past him, she hurriedly rejoined the two women.
+
+They were superintending the erection of a long tent or marquee in the
+garden, hastily extemporized from the awnings of the veranda and other
+cloth. Mrs. Randolph explained that, although all danger was over, there
+was the possibility of the recurrence of lighter shocks during the day
+and night, and that they would all feel much more secure and comfortable
+to camp out for the next twenty-four hours in the open air.
+
+“Only imagine you're picnicking, and you'll enjoy it as most people
+usually enjoy those horrid al fresco entertainments. I don't believe
+there's the slightest real necessity for it, but,” she added in a lower
+voice, “the Irish and Chinese servants are so demoralized now, they
+wouldn't stay indoors with us. It's a common practice here, I believe,
+for a day or two after the shock, and it gives time to put things right
+again and clear up. The old, one-storied, Spanish houses with walls
+three feet thick, and built round a courtyard or patio, were much safer.
+It's only when the Americans try to improve upon the old order of things
+with their pinchbeck shams and stucco that Providence interferes like
+this to punish them.”
+
+It was the fact, however, that Rose was more impressed by what seemed to
+her the absolute indifference of Providence in the matter, and the cool
+resumption by Nature of her ordinary conditions. The sky above their
+heads was as rigidly blue as ever, and as smilingly monotonous; the
+distant prospect, with its clear, well-known silhouettes, had not
+changed; the crows swung on lazy, deliberate wings over the grain as
+before; and the trade-wind was again blowing in its quiet persistency.
+And yet she knew that something had happened that would never again make
+her enjoyment of the prospect the same--that nothing would ever be as
+it was yesterday. I think at first she referred only to the material and
+larger phenomena, and did not confound this revelation of the insecurity
+of the universe with her experience of man. Yet the fact also remained
+that to the conservative, correct, and, as she believed, secure
+condition to which she had been approximating, all her relations were
+rudely shaken and upset. It really seemed to this simple-minded young
+woman that the revolutionary disturbance of settled conditions might
+have as Providential an origin as the “Divine Right” of which she had
+heard so much.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In her desire to be alone and to evade the now significant attentions
+of Emile, she took advantage of the bustle that followed the hurried
+transfer of furniture and articles from the house to escape through the
+garden to the outlying fields. Striking into one of the dusty lanes that
+she remembered, she wandered on for half an hour until her progress and
+meditation were suddenly arrested. She had come upon a long chasm or
+crack in the soil, full twenty feet wide and as many in depth, crossing
+her path at right angles. She did not remember having seen it before;
+the track of wheels went up to its precipitous edge; she could see
+the track on the other side, but the hiatus remained, unbridged and
+uncovered. It was not there yesterday. She glanced right and left; the
+fissure seemed to extend, like a moat or ditch, from the distant road to
+the upland between her and the great wheat valley below, from which she
+was shut off. An odd sense of being in some way a prisoner confronted
+her. She drew back with an impatient start, and perhaps her first real
+sense of indignation. A voice behind her, which she at once recognized,
+scarcely restored her calmness.
+
+“You can't get across there, miss.”
+
+She turned. It was the young inventor from the wheat ranch, on horseback
+and with a clean face. He had just ridden out of the grain on the same
+side of the chasm as herself.
+
+“But you seem to have got over,” she said bluntly.
+
+“Yes, but it was further up the field. I reckoned that the split might
+be deeper but not so broad in the rock outcrop over there than in the
+adobe here. I found it so and jumped it.”
+
+He looked as if he might--alert, intelligent, and self-contained. He
+lingered a moment, and then continued:--
+
+“I'm afraid you must have been badly shaken and a little frightened up
+there before the chimneys came down?”
+
+“No,” she was glad to say briefly, and she believed truthfully, “I wasn't
+frightened. I didn't even know it was an earthquake.”
+
+“Ah!” he reflected, “that was because you were a stranger. It's
+odd--they're all like that. I suppose it's because nobody really expects
+or believes in the unlooked-for thing, and yet that's the thing that
+always happens. And then, of course, that other affair, which really is
+serious, startled you the more.”
+
+She felt herself ridiculously and angrily blushing. “I don't know what
+you mean,” she said icily. “What other affair?”
+
+“Why, the well.”
+
+“The well?” she repeated vacantly.
+
+“Yes; the artesian well has stopped. Didn't the major tell you?”
+
+“No,” said the girl. “He was away; I haven't seen him yet.”
+
+“Well, the flow of water has ceased completely. That's what I'm here
+for. The major sent for me, and I've been to examine it.”
+
+“And is that stoppage so very important?” she said dubiously.
+
+It was his turn to look at her wonderingly.
+
+“If it's LOST entirely, it means ruin for the ranch,” he said sharply.
+He wheeled his horse, nodded gravely, and trotted off.
+
+Major Randolph's figure of the “life-blood of the ranch” flashed across
+her suddenly. She knew nothing of irrigation or the costly appliances
+by which the Californian agriculturist opposed the long summer droughts.
+She only vaguely guessed that the dreadful earthquake had struck at the
+prosperity of those people whom only a few hours ago she had been proud
+to call her friends. The underlying goodness of her nature was touched.
+Should she let a momentary fault--if it were not really, after all,
+only a misunderstanding--rise between her and them at such a moment? She
+turned and hurried quickly towards the house.
+
+Hastening onward, she found time, however, to wonder also why
+these common men--she now included even the young inventor in that
+category--were all so rude and uncivil to HER! She had never before
+been treated in this way; she had always been rather embarrassed by the
+admiring attentions of young men (clerks and collegians) in her Atlantic
+home, and, of professional men (merchants and stockbrokers) in San
+Francisco. It was true that they were not as continually devoted to her
+and to the nice art and etiquette of pleasing as Emile,--they had other
+things to think about, being in business and not being GENTLEMEN,--but
+then they were greatly superior to these clowns, who took no notice of
+her, and rode off without lingering or formal leave-taking when their
+selfish affairs were concluded. It must be the contact of the vulgar
+earth--this wretched, cracking, material, and yet ungovernable and
+lawless earth--that so depraved them. She felt she would like to say
+this to some one--not her father, for he wouldn't listen to her, nor to
+the major, who would laughingly argue with her, but to Mrs. Randolph,
+who would understand her, and perhaps say it some day in her own
+sharp, sneering way to these very clowns. With those gentle sentiments
+irradiating her blue eyes, and putting a pink flush upon her fair
+cheeks, Rose reached the garden with the intention of rushing
+sympathetically into Mrs. Randolph's arms. But it suddenly occurred
+to her that she would be obliged to state how she became aware of this
+misfortune, and with it came an instinctive aversion to speak of her
+meeting with the inventor. She would wait until Mrs. Randolph told her.
+But although that lady was engaged in a low-voiced discussion in French
+with Emile and Adele, which instantly ceased at her approach, there was
+no allusion made to the new calamity. “You need not telegraph to your
+father,” she said as Rose approached, “he has already telegraphed to you
+for news; as you were out, and the messenger was waiting an answer, we
+opened the dispatch, and sent one, telling him that you were all right,
+and that he need not hurry here on your account. So you are satisfied,
+I hope.” A few hours ago this would have been true, and Rose would have
+probably seen in the action of her hostess only a flattering motherly
+supervision; there was, in fact, still a lingering trace of trust in her
+mind yet she was conscious that she would have preferred to answer the
+dispatch herself, and to have let her father come. To a girl brought
+up with a belief in the right of individual independence of thought and
+action, there was something in Mrs. Randolph's practical ignoring of
+that right which startled her in spite of her new conservatism, while,
+as the daughter of a business man, her instincts revolted against Mrs.
+Randolph's unbusiness-like action with the telegram, however vulgar and
+unrefined she may have begun to consider a life of business. The
+result was a certain constraint and embarrassment in her manner, which,
+however, had the laudable effect of limiting Emile's attention to
+significant glances, and was no doubt variously interpreted by the
+others. But she satisfied her conscience by determining to make a
+confidence of her sympathy to the major on the first opportunity.
+
+This she presently found when the others were preoccupied; the major
+greeting her with a somewhat careworn face, but a voice whose habitual
+kindness was unchanged. When he had condoled with her on the terrifying
+phenomenon that had marred her visit to the ranch,--and she could not
+help impatiently noticing that he too seemed to have accepted his wife's
+theory that she had been half deliriously frightened,--he regretted that
+her father had not concluded to come down to the ranch, as his practical
+advice would have been invaluable in this emergency. She was about to
+eagerly explain why, when it occurred to her that Mrs. Randolph had only
+given him a suppressed version of the telegram, and that she would be
+betraying her, or again taking sides in this partisan divided home.
+With some hesitation she at last alluded to the accident to the artesian
+well. The major did not ask her how she had heard of it; it was a bad
+business, he thought, but it might not be a total loss. The water may
+have been only diverted by the shock and might be found again at the
+lower level, or in some lateral fissure. He had sent hurriedly for Tom
+Bent--that clever young engineer at the wheat ranch, who was always
+studying up these things with his inventions--and that was his opinion.
+No, Tom was not a well-digger, but it was generally known that he had
+“located” one or two, and had long ago advised the tapping of that flow
+by a second boring, in case of just such an emergency. He was coming
+again to-morrow. By the way, he had asked how the young lady visitor
+was, and hoped she had not been alarmed by the earthquake!
+
+Rose felt herself again blushing, and, what was more singular, with an
+unexpected and it seemed to her ridiculous pleasure, although outwardly
+she appeared to ignore the civility completely. And she had no
+intention of being so easily placated. If this young man thought by mere
+perfunctory civilities to her HOST to make up for his clownishness to
+HER, he was mistaken. She would let him see it when he called to-morrow.
+She quickly turned the subject by assuring the major of her sympathy and
+her intention of sending for her father. For the rest of the afternoon
+and during their al fresco dinner she solved the difficulty of her
+strained relations with Mrs. Randolph and Emile by conversing chiefly
+with the major, tacitly avoiding, however, any allusion to this Mr.
+Bent. But Mrs. Randolph was less careful.
+
+“You don't really mean to say, major,” she began in her dryest,
+grittiest manner, “that instead of sending to San Francisco for some
+skilled master-mechanic, you are going to listen to the vagaries of a
+conceited, half-educated farm-laborer, and employ him? You might as well
+call in some of those wizards or water-witches at once.” But the major,
+like many other well-managed husbands who are good-humoredly content
+to suffer in the sunshine of prosperity, had no idea of doing so in
+adversity, and the prospect of being obliged to go back to youthful
+struggles had recalled some of the independence of that period. He
+looked up quietly, and said:--
+
+“If his conclusions are as clear and satisfactory to-morrow as they were
+to-day, I shall certainly try to secure his services.”
+
+“Then I can only say I would prefer the water-witch. He at least
+would not represent a class of neighbors who have made themselves
+systematically uncivil and disagreeable to us.”
+
+“I am afraid, Josephine, we have not tried to make ourselves
+particularly agreeable to THEM,” said the major.
+
+“If that can only be done by admitting their equality, I prefer they
+should remain uncivil. Only let it be understood, major, that if you
+choose to take this Tom-the-ploughboy to mend your well, you will at
+least keep him there while he is on the property.”
+
+With what retort the major would have kept up this conjugal discussion,
+already beginning to be awkward to the discreet visitor, is not known,
+as it was suddenly stopped by a bullet from the rosebud lips of the
+ingenuous Adele.
+
+“Why, he's very handsome when his face is clean, and his hands are small
+and not at all hard. And he doesn't talk the least bit queer or common.”
+
+There was a dead silence. “And pray where did YOU see him, and what do
+you know about his hands?” asked Mrs. Randolph, in her most desiccated
+voice. “Or has the major already presented you to him? I shouldn't be
+surprised.”
+
+“No, but”--hesitated the young girl, with a certain mouse-like
+audacity,--“when you sent me to look after Miss Mallory, I came up to
+him just after he had spoken to her, and he stopped to ask me how we all
+were, and if Miss Mallory was really frightened by the earthquake, and
+he shook hands for good afternoon--that's all.”
+
+“And who taught you to converse with common strangers and shake hands
+with them?” continued Mrs. Randolph, with narrowing lips.
+
+“Nobody, mamma; but I thought if Miss Mallory, who is a young lady,
+could speak to him, so could I, who am not out yet.”
+
+“We won't discuss this any further at present,” said Mrs. Randolph,
+stiffly, as the major smiled grimly at Rose. “The earthquake seems to
+have shaken down in this house more than the chimneys.”
+
+It certainly had shaken all power of sleep from the eyes of Rose when
+the household at last dispersed to lie down in their clothes on
+the mattresses which had been arranged under the awnings. She was
+continually starting up from confused dreams of the ground shaking under
+her, or she seemed to be standing on the brink of some dreadful abyss
+like the great chasm on the grain-field, when it began to tremble and
+crumble beneath her feet. It was near morning when, unable to endure
+it any longer, she managed without disturbing the sleeping Adele,
+who occupied the same curtained recess with her, to slip out from
+the awning. Wrapped in a thick shawl, she made her way through the
+encompassing trees and bushes of the garden that had seemed to imprison
+and suffocate her, to the edge of the grain-field, where she could
+breathe the fresh air beneath an open, starlit sky. There was no moon
+and the darkness favored her; she had no fears that weighed against the
+horror of seclusion with her own fancies. Besides, they were camping
+OUT of the house, and if she chose to sit up or walk about, no one could
+think it strange. She wished her father were here that she might have
+some one of her own kin to talk to, yet she knew not what to say to him
+if he had come. She wanted somebody to sympathize with her feelings,--or
+rather, perhaps, some one to combat and even ridicule the uneasiness
+that had lately come over her. She knew what her father would say,--“Do
+you want to go, or do you want to stay here? Do you like these people,
+or do you not?” She remembered the one or two glowing and enthusiastic
+accounts she had written him of her visit here, and felt herself
+blushing again. What would he think of Mrs. Randolph's opening and
+answering the telegram? Wouldn't he find out from the major if she had
+garbled the sense of his dispatch?
+
+Away to the right, in the midst of the distant and invisible
+wheat-field, there was the same intermittent star, which like a living,
+breathing thing seemed to dilate in glowing respiration, as she had seen
+it the first night of her visit. Mr. Bent's forge! It must be nearly
+daylight now; the poor fellow had been up all night, or else was
+stealing this early march on the day. She recalled Adele's sudden
+eulogium of him. The first natural smile that had come to her lips since
+the earthquake broke up her nervous restraint, and sent her back more
+like her old self to her couch.
+
+But she had not proceeded far towards the tent, when she heard the sound
+of low voices approaching her. It was the major and his wife, who, like
+herself, had evidently been unable to sleep, and were up betimes. A new
+instinct of secretiveness, which she felt was partly the effect of her
+artificial surrounding, checked her first natural instinct to call to
+them, and she drew back deeper in the shadow to let them pass. But to
+her great discomfiture the major in a conversational emphasis stopped
+directly in front of her.
+
+“You are wrong, I tell you, a thousand times wrong. The girl is simply
+upset by this earthquake. It's a great pity her father didn't come
+instead of telegraphing. And by Jove, rather than hear any more of
+this, I'll send for him myself,” said the major, in an energetic but
+suppressed voice.
+
+“And the girl won't thank you, and you'll be a fool for your pains,”
+ returned Mrs. Randolph, with dry persistency.
+
+“But according to your own ideas of propriety, Mallory ought to be the
+first one to be consulted--and by me, too.”
+
+“Not in this case. Of course, before any actual engagement is on, you
+can speak of Emile's attentions.”
+
+“But suppose Mallory has other views. Suppose he declines the honor. The
+man is no fool.”
+
+“Thank you. But for that very reason he must. Listen to me, major; if he
+doesn't care to please his daughter for her own sake, he will have to
+do so for the sake of decency. Yes, I tell you, she has thoroughly
+compromised herself--quite enough, if it is ever known, to spoil any
+other engagement her father may make. Why, ask Adele! The day of the
+earthquake she ABSOLUTELY had the audacity to send him out of the room
+upstairs into your study for her fan, and then follow him up there
+alone. The servants knew it. I knew it, for I was in her room at the
+time with Father Antonio. The earthquake made it plain to everybody.
+Decline it! No. Mr. Mallory will think twice about it before he does
+that. What's that? Who's there?”
+
+There was a sudden rustle in the bushes like the passage of some
+frightened animal--and then all was still again.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The sun, an hour high, but only just topping the greenish crests of the
+wheat, was streaming like the morning breeze through the open length of
+Tom Bent's workshed. An exaggerated and prolonged shadow of the young
+inventor himself at work beside his bench was stretching itself far into
+the broken-down ranks of stalks towards the invisible road, and falling
+at the very feet of Rose Mallory as she emerged from them.
+
+She was very pale, very quiet, and very determined. The traveling mantle
+thrown over her shoulders was dusty, the ribbons that tied her hat under
+her round chin had become unloosed. She advanced, walking down the line
+of shadow directly towards him.
+
+“I am afraid I will have to trouble you once more,” she said with a
+faint smile, which did not, however, reach her perplexed eyes. “Could
+you give me any kind of a conveyance that would take me to San Jose at
+once?”
+
+The young man had started at the rustling of her dress in the shavings,
+and turned eagerly. The faintest indication of a loss of interest was
+visible for an instant in his face, but it quickly passed into a smile
+of recognition. Yet she felt that he had neither noticed any change in
+her appearance, nor experienced any wonder at seeing her there at that
+hour.
+
+“I did not take a buggy from the house,” she went on quickly, “for I
+left early, and did not want to disturb them. In fact, they don't know
+that I am gone. I was worried at not hearing news from my father in San
+Francisco since the earthquake, and I thought I would run down to San
+Jose to inquire without putting them to any trouble. Anything will do
+that you have ready, if I can take it at once.”
+
+Still without exhibiting the least surprise, Bent nodded affirmatively,
+put down his tools, begged her to wait a moment, and ran off in the
+direction of the cabin. As he disappeared behind the wheat, she lapsed
+quite suddenly against the work bench, but recovered herself a moment
+later, leaning with her back against it, her hands grasping it on either
+side, and her knit brows and determined little face turned towards the
+road. Then she stood erect again, shook the dust out of her skirts,
+lifted her veil, wiped her cheeks and brow with the corner of a small
+handkerchief, and began walking up and down the length of the shed as
+Bent reappeared.
+
+He was accompanied by the man who had first led her through the wheat.
+He gazed upon her with apparently all the curiosity and concern that the
+other had lacked.
+
+“You want to get to San Jose as quick as you can?” he said
+interrogatively.
+
+“Yes,” she said quickly, “if you can help me.”
+
+“You walked all the way from the major's here?” he continued, without
+taking his eyes from her face.
+
+“Yes,” she answered with an affectation of carelessness she had not
+shown to Bent. “But I started very early, it was cool and pleasant, and
+didn't seem far.”
+
+“I'll put you down in San Jose inside the hour. You shall have my horse
+and trotting sulky, and I'll drive you myself. Will that do?”
+
+She looked at him wonderingly. She had not forgotten his previous
+restraint and gravity, but now his face seemed to have relaxed with some
+humorous satisfaction. She felt herself coloring slightly, but whether
+with shame or relief she could not tell.
+
+“I shall be so much obliged to you,” she replied hesitatingly, “and so
+will my father, I know.”
+
+“I reckon,” said the man with the same look of amused conjecture; then,
+with a quick, assuring nod, he turned away, and dived into the wheat
+again.
+
+“You're all right now, Miss Mallory,” said Bent, complacently. “Dawson
+will fix it. He's got a good horse, and he's a good driver, too.” He
+paused, and then added pleasantly, “I suppose they're all well up at the
+house?”
+
+It was so evident that his remark carried no personal meaning to herself
+that she was obliged to answer carelessly, “Oh, yes.”
+
+“I suppose you see a good deal of Miss Randolph--Miss Adele, I think
+you call her?” he remarked tentatively, and with a certain boyish
+enthusiasm, which she had never conceived possible to his nature.
+
+“Yes,” she replied a little dryly, “she is the only young lady there.”
+ She stopped, remembering Adele's naive description of the man before
+her, and said abruptly, “You know her, then?”
+
+“A little,” replied the young man, modestly. “I see her pretty often
+when I am passing the upper end of the ranch. She's very well brought
+up, and her manners are very refined--don't you think so?--and yet she's
+just as simple and natural as a country girl. There's a great deal
+in education after all, isn't there?” he went on confidentially, “and
+although”--he lowered his voice and looked cautiously around him--“I
+believe that some of us here don't fancy her mother much, there's no
+doubt that Mrs. Randolph knows how to bring up her children. Some people
+think that kind of education is all artificial, and don't believe in it,
+but I do!”
+
+With the consciousness that she was running away from these people and
+the shameful disclosure she had heard last night--with the recollection
+of Adele's scandalous interpretation of her most innocent actions and
+her sudden and complete revulsion against all that she had previously
+admired in that household, to hear this man who had seemed to her a
+living protest against their ideas and principles, now expressing them
+and holding them up for emulation, almost took her breath away.
+
+“I suppose that means you intend to fix Major Randolph's well for him?”
+ she said dryly.
+
+“Yes,” he returned without noticing her manner; “and I think I can find
+that water again. I've been studying it up all night, and do you know
+what I'm going to do? I am going to make the earthquake that lost it
+help me to find it again.” He paused, and looked at her with a smile
+and a return of his former enthusiasm. “Do you remember the crack in the
+adobe field that stopped you yesterday?”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl, with a slight shiver.
+
+“I told you then that the same crack was a split in the rock outcrop
+further up the plain, and was deeper. I am satisfied now, from what I
+have seen, that it is really a rupture of the whole strata all the way
+down. That's the one weak point that the imprisoned water is sure to
+find, and that's where the borer will tap it--in the new well that the
+earthquake itself has sunk.”
+
+It seemed to her now that she understood his explanation perfectly, and
+she wondered the more that he had been so mistaken in his estimate of
+Adele. She turned away a little impatiently and looked anxiously towards
+the point where Dawson had disappeared. Bent followed her eyes.
+
+“He'll be here in a moment, Miss Mallory. He has to drive slowly through
+the grain, but I hear the wheels.” He stopped, and his voice took up its
+previous note of boyish hesitation. “By the way--I'll--I'll be going up
+to the Rancho this afternoon to see the major. Have you any message for
+Mrs. Randolph--or for--for Miss Adele?”
+
+“No”--said Rose, hesitatingly, “and--and”--
+
+“I see,” interrupted Bent, carelessly. “You don't want anything said
+about your coming here. I won't.”
+
+It struck her that he seemed to have no ulterior meaning in the
+suggestion. But before she could make any reply, Dawson reappeared,
+driving a handsome mare harnessed to a light, spider-like vehicle. He
+had also assumed, evidently in great haste, a black frock coat buttoned
+over his waistcoatless and cravatless shirt, and a tall black hat that
+already seemed to be cracking in the sunlight. He drove up, at once
+assisted her to the narrow perch beside him, and with a nod to Bent
+drove off. His breathless expedition relieved the leave-taking of these
+young people of any ceremony.
+
+“I suppose,” said Mr. Dawson, giving a half glance over his shoulder as
+they struck into the dusty highway,--“I suppose you don't care to see
+anybody before you get to San Jose?”
+
+“No-o-o,” said Rose, timidly.
+
+“And I reckon you wouldn't mind my racin' a bit if anybody kem up?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“The mare's sort o' fastidious about takin' anybody's dust.”
+
+“Is she?” said Rose, with a faint smile.
+
+“Awful,” responded her companion; “and the queerest thing of all is, she
+can't bear to have any one behind her, either.”
+
+He leaned forward with his expression of humorous enjoyment of some
+latent joke and did something with the reins--Rose never could clearly
+understand what, though it seemed to her that he simply lifted them with
+ostentatious lightness; but the mare suddenly seemed to LENGTHEN herself
+and lose her height, and the stalks of wheat on either side of the dusty
+track began to melt into each other, and then slipped like a flash into
+one long, continuous, shimmering green hedge. So perfect was the mare's
+action that the girl was scarcely conscious of any increased effort; so
+harmonious the whole movement that the light skeleton wagon seemed only
+a prolonged process of that long, slim body and free, collarless neck,
+both straight as the thin shafts on each side and straighter than the
+delicate ribbon-like traces which, in what seemed a mere affectation of
+conscious power, hung at times almost limp between the whiffle-tree and
+the narrow breast band which was all that confined the animal's powerful
+fore-quarters. So superb was the reach of its long easy stride that Rose
+could scarcely see any undulations in the brown shining back on which
+she could have placed her foot, nor felt the soft beat of the delicate
+hoofs that took the dust so firmly and yet so lightly.
+
+The rapidity of motion which kept them both with heads bent forward and
+seemed to force back any utterance that rose to their lips spared Rose
+the obligation of conversation, and her companion was equally reticent.
+But it was evident to her that he half suspected she was running away
+from the Randolphs, and that she wished to avoid the embarrassment of
+being overtaken even in persuasive pursuit. It was not possible that
+he knew the cause of her flight, and yet she could not account for
+his evident desire to befriend her, nor, above all, for his apparently
+humorous enjoyment of the situation. Had he taken it gravely, she might
+have been tempted to partly confide in him and ask his advice. Was she
+doing right, after all? Ought she not to have stayed long enough to
+speak her mind to Mrs. Randolph and demand to be sent home? No! She had
+not only shrunk from repeating the infamous slander she had overheard,
+but she had a terrible fear that if she had done so, Mrs. Randolph was
+capable of denying it, or even charging her of being still under the
+influence of the earthquake shock and of walking in her sleep. No! She
+could not trust her--she could trust no one there. Had not even the
+major listened to those infamous lies? Had she not seen that he was
+helpless in the hands of this cabal in his own household?--a cabal that
+she herself had thoughtlessly joined against him.
+
+They had reached the first slight ascent. Her companion drew out his
+watch, looked at it with satisfaction, and changed the position of his
+hands on the reins. Without being able to detect the difference, she
+felt they were slackening speed. She turned inquiringly towards him; he
+nodded his head, with a half smile and a gesture to her to look ahead.
+The spires of San Jose were already faintly uplifting from the distant
+fringe of oaks.
+
+So soon! In fifteen minutes she would be there--and THEN! She remembered
+suddenly she had not yet determined what to do. Should she go on at once
+to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose?
+In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the
+inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father
+understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the
+insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful
+still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with
+the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ideas of
+redress. Perhaps even now she was precipitating a duel between them. Her
+cheeks grew wan again, her breath came quickly, tears gathered in her
+eyes. Oh, she was a dreadful girl, she knew it; she was an utterly
+miserable one, and she knew that too!
+
+The reins were tightened. The pace lessened and at last fell to a walk.
+Conscious of her telltale eyes and troubled face, she dared not turn to
+her companion to ask him why, but glanced across the fields.
+
+“When you first came I didn't get to know your name, Miss Mallory, but I
+reckon I know your father.”
+
+Her father! What made him say that? She wanted to speak, but she
+felt she could not. In another moment, if he went on, she must do
+SOMETHING--she would cry!
+
+“I reckon you'll be wanting to go to the hotel first, anyway?”
+
+There!--she knew it! He WOULD keep on! And now she had burst into tears.
+
+The mare was still walking slowly; the man was lazily bending forward
+over the shafts as if nothing had occurred. Then suddenly, illogically,
+and without a moment's warning, the pride that had sustained her
+crumbled and became as the dust of the road.
+
+She burst out and told him--this stranger!--this man she had
+disliked!--all and EVERYTHING. How she had felt, how she had been
+deceived, and what she had overheard!
+
+“I thought as much,” said her companion, quietly, “and that's why I sent
+for your father.”
+
+“You sent for my father!--when?--where?” echoed Rose, in astonishment.
+
+“Yesterday. He was to come to-day, and if we don't find him at the hotel
+it will be because he has already started to come here by the upper and
+longer road. But you leave it to ME, and don't you say anything to him
+of this now. If he's at the hotel, I'll say I drove you down there to
+show off the mare. Sabe? If he isn't, I'll leave you there and come back
+here to find him. I've got something to tell him that will set YOU all
+right.” He smiled grimly, lifted the reins, the mare started forward
+again, and the vehicle and its occupants disappeared in a vanishing dust
+cloud.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+It was nearly noon when Mr. Dawson finished rubbing down his sweating
+mare in the little stable shed among the wheat. He had left Rose at the
+hotel, for they found Mr. Mallory had previously started by a circuitous
+route for the wheat ranch. He had resumed not only his working clothes
+but his working expression. He was now superintending the unloading of
+a wain of stores and implements when the light carryall of the Randolphs
+rolled into the field. It contained only Mrs. Randolph and the driver.
+A slight look of intelligence passed between the latter and the nearest
+one of Dawson's companions, succeeded, however, by a dull look of stupid
+vacancy on the faces of all the others, including Dawson. Mrs. Randolph
+noticed it, and was forewarned. She reflected that no human beings ever
+looked NATURALLY as stupid as that and were able to work. She smiled
+sarcastically, and then began with dry distinctness and narrowing lips.
+
+“Miss Mallory, a young lady visiting us, went out for an early walk this
+morning and has not returned. It is possible she may have lost her way
+among your wheat. Have you seen anything of her?”
+
+Dawson raised his eyes from his work and glanced slowly around at his
+companions, as if taking the heavy sense of the assembly. One or two
+shook their heads mechanically, and returned to their suspended labor.
+He said, coolly:--
+
+“Nobody here seems to.”
+
+She felt that they were lying. She was only a woman against five men.
+She was only a petty domestic tyrant; she might have been a larger one.
+But she had all the courage of that possibility.
+
+“Major Randolph and my son are away,” she went on, drawing herself
+erect. “But I know that the major will pay liberally if these men will
+search the field, besides making it all right with your--EMPLOYERS--for
+the loss of time.”
+
+Dawson uttered a single word in a low voice to the man nearest him,
+who apparently communicated it to the others, for the four men stopped
+unloading, and moved away one after the other--even the driver joining
+in the exodus. Mrs. Randolph smiled sarcastically; it was plain that
+these people, with all their boasted independence, were quite amenable
+to pecuniary considerations. Nevertheless, as Dawson remained looking
+quietly at her, she said:--
+
+“Then I suppose they've concluded to go and see?”
+
+“No; I've sent them away so that they couldn't HEAR.”
+
+“Hear what?”
+
+“What I've got to say to you.”
+
+She looked at him suddenly. Then she said, with a disdainful
+glance around her: “I see I am helpless here, and--thanks to your
+trickery--alone. Have a care, sir; I warn you that you will have to
+answer to Major Randolph for any insolence.”
+
+“I reckon you won't tell Major Randolph what I have to say to you,” he
+returned coolly.
+
+Her lips were nearly a grayish hue, but she said scornfully: “And why
+not? Do you know who you are talking to?”
+
+The man came lazily forward to the carryall, carelessly brushed aside
+the slack reins, and resting his elbows on the horse's back, laid his
+chin on his hands, as he looked up in the woman's face.
+
+“Yes; I know who I'm talking to,” he said coolly. “But as the major
+don't, I reckon you won't tell him.”
+
+“Stand away from that horse!” she said, her whole face taking the
+grayish color of her lips, but her black eyes growing smaller and
+brighter. “Hand me those reins, and let me pass! What canaille are you
+to stop me?”
+
+“I thought so,” returned the man, without altering his position; “you
+don't know ME. You never saw ME before. Well, I'm Jim Dawson, the nephew
+of L'Hommadieu, YOUR OLD MASTER!”
+
+She gripped the iron rail of the seat as if to leap from it, but checked
+herself suddenly and leaned back, with a set smile on her mouth that
+seemed stamped there. It was remarkable that with that smile she flung
+away her old affectation of superciliousness for an older and ruder
+audacity, and that not only the expression, but the type of her face
+appeared to have changed.
+
+“I don't say,” continued the man quietly, “that he didn't MARRY you
+before he died. But you know as well as I do that the laws of his State
+didn't recognize the marriage of a master with his octoroon slave! And
+you know as well as I do that even if he had freed you, he couldn't
+change your blood. Why, if I'd been willing to stay at Avoyelles to be a
+nigger-driver like him, the plantation of 'de Fontanges'--whose name
+you have taken--would have been left to me. If YOU had stayed there,
+you might have been my property instead of YOUR owning a square man like
+Randolph. You didn't think of that when you came here, did you?” he said
+composedly.
+
+“Oh, mon Dieu!” she said, dropping rapidly into a different accent,
+with her white teeth and fixed mirthless smile, “so it is a claim for
+PROPERTY, eh? You're wanting money--you? Tres bien, you forget we are
+in California, where one does not own a slave. And you have a fine story
+there, my poor friend. Very pretty, but very hard to prove, m'sieu. And
+these peasants are in it, eh, working it on shares like the farm, eh?”
+
+“Well,” said Dawson, slightly changing his position, and passing his
+hand over the horse's neck with a half-wearied contempt, “one of these
+men is from Plaquemine, and the other from Coupee. They know all the
+l'Hommadieus' history. And they know a streak of the tar brush when they
+see it. They took your measure when they came here last year, and sized
+you up fairly. So had I, for the matter of that, when I FIRST saw you.
+And we compared notes. But the major is a square man, for all he is your
+husband, and we reckoned he had a big enough contract on his hands to
+take care of you and l'Hommadieu's half-breeds, and so”--he tossed the
+reins contemptuously aside--“we kept this to ourselves.”
+
+“And now you want--what--eh?”
+
+“We want an end to this foolery,” he broke out roughly, stepping back
+from the vehicle, and facing her suddenly, with his first angry gesture.
+“We want an end to these airs and grimaces, and all this dandy nigger
+business; we want an end to this 'cake-walking' through the wheat, and
+flouting of the honest labor of your betters. We want you and your 'de
+Fontanges' to climb down. And we want an end to this roping-in of white
+folks to suit your little game; we want an end to your trying to mix
+your nigger blood with any one here, and we intend to stop it. We draw
+the line at the major.”
+
+Lashed as she had been by those words apparently out of all semblance of
+her former social arrogance, a lower and more stubborn resistance seemed
+to have sprung up in her, as she sat sideways, watching him with her set
+smile and contracting eyes.
+
+“Ah,” she said dryly, “so SHE IS HERE. I thought so. Which of you is it,
+eh? It's a good spec--Mallory's a rich man. She's not particular.”
+
+The man had stopped as if listening, his head turned towards the road.
+Then he turned carelessly, and facing her again, waved his hand with a
+gesture of tired dismissal, and said, “Go! You'll find your driver over
+there by the tool-shed. He has heard nothing yet--but I've given you
+fair warning. Go!”
+
+He walked slowly back towards the shed, as the woman, snatching up
+the reins, drove violently off in the direction where the men had
+disappeared. But she turned aside, ignoring her waiting driver in her
+wild and reckless abandonment of all her old conventional attitudes, and
+lashing her horse forward with the same set smile on her face, the same
+odd relaxation of figure, and the same squaring of her elbows.
+
+Avoiding the main road, she pushed into a narrow track that intersected
+another nearer the scene of the accident to Rose's buggy three weeks
+before. She had nearly passed it when she was hailed by a strange voice,
+and looking up, perceived a horseman floundering in the mazes of the
+wheat to one side of the track. Whatever mean thought of her past life
+she was flying from, whatever mean purpose she was flying to, she pulled
+up suddenly, and as suddenly resumed her erect, aggressive stiffness.
+The stranger was a middle-aged man; in dress and appearance a dweller of
+cities. He lifted his hat as he perceived the occupant of the wagon to
+be a lady.
+
+“I beg your pardon, but I fear I've lost my way in trying to make a
+short cut to the Excelsior Company's Ranch.”
+
+“You are in it now,” said Mrs. Randolph, quickly.
+
+“Thank you, but where can I find the farmhouse?”
+
+“There is none,” she returned, with her old superciliousness, “unless
+you choose to give that name to the shanties and sheds where the
+laborers and servants live, near the road.”
+
+The stranger looked puzzled. “I'm looking for a Mr. Dawson,” he said
+reflectively, “but I may have made some mistake. Do you know Major
+Randolph's house hereabouts?”
+
+“I do. I am Mrs. Randolph,” she said stiffly.
+
+The stranger's brow cleared, and he smiled pleasantly. “Then this is a
+fortunate meeting,” he said, raising his hat again as he reined in his
+horse beside the wagon, “for I am Mr. Mallory, and I was looking forward
+to the pleasure of presenting myself to you an hour or two later. The
+fact is, an old acquaintance, Mr. Dawson, telegraphed me yesterday to
+meet him here on urgent business, and I felt obliged to go there first.”
+
+Mrs. Randolph's eyes sparkled with a sudden gratified intelligence, but
+her manner seemed rather to increase than abate its grim precision.
+
+“Our meeting this morning, Mr. Mallory, is both fortunate and
+unfortunate, for I regret to say that your daughter, who has not been
+quite herself since the earthquake, was missing early this morning and
+has not yet been found, though we have searched everywhere. Understand
+me,” she said, as the stranger started, “I have no fear for her PERSONAL
+safety, I am only concerned for any INDISCRETION that she may commit in
+the presence of these strangers whose company she would seem to prefer
+to ours.”
+
+“But I don't understand you, madam,” said Mallory, sternly; “you are
+speaking of my daughter, and”--
+
+“Excuse me, Mr. Mallory,” said Mrs. Randolph, lifting her hand with
+her driest deprecation and her most desiccating smile, “I'm not passing
+judgment or criticism. I am of a foreign race, and consequently do not
+understand the freedom of American young ladies, and their familiarity
+with the opposite sex. I make no charges, I only wish to assure you that
+she will no doubt be found in the company and under the protection of
+her own countrymen. There is,” she added with ironical distinctness, “a
+young mechanic, or field hand, or 'quack well-doctor,' whom she seems to
+admire, and with whom she appears to be on equal terms.”
+
+Mallory regarded her for a moment fixedly, and then his sternness
+relaxed to a mischievously complacent smile. “That must be young Bent,
+of whom I've heard,” he said with unabated cheerfulness. “And I don't
+know but what she may be with him, after all. For now I think of it, a
+chuckle-headed fellow, of whom a moment ago I inquired the way to your
+house, told me I'd better ask the young man and young woman who were
+'philandering through the wheat' yonder. Suppose we look for them. From
+what I've heard of Bent he's too much wrapped up in his inventions for
+flirtation, but it would be a good joke to stumble upon them.”
+
+Mrs. Randolph's eyes sparkled with a mingling of gratified malice and
+undisguised contempt for the fatuous father beside her. But before she
+could accept or decline the challenge, it had become useless. A murmur
+of youthful voices struck her ear, and she suddenly stood upright and
+transfixed in the carriage. For lounging down slowly towards them out
+of the dim green aisles of the arbored wheat, lost in themselves and the
+shimmering veil of their seclusion, came the engineer, Thomas Bent, and
+on his arm, gazing ingenuously into his face, the figure of Adele,--her
+own perfect daughter.
+
+
+“I don't think, my dear,” said Mr. Mallory, as the anxious Rose flew
+into his arms on his return to San Jose, a few hours later, “that it
+will be necessary for you to go back again to Major Randolph's before we
+leave. I have said 'Good-by' for you and thanked them, and your trunks
+are packed and will be sent here. The fact is, my dear, you see this
+affair of the earthquake and the disaster to the artesian well have
+upset all their arrangements, and I am afraid that my little girl would
+be only in their way just now.”
+
+“And you have seen Mr. Dawson--and you know why he sent for you?” asked
+the young girl, with nervous eagerness.
+
+“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Mallory thoughtfully, “THAT was really important.
+You see, my child,” he continued, taking her hand in one of his own and
+patting the back of it gently with the other, “we think, Dawson and I,
+of taking over the major's ranch and incorporating it with the Excelsior
+in one, to be worked on shares like the Excelsior; and as Mrs. Randolph
+is very anxious to return to the Atlantic States with her children, it
+is quite possible. Mrs. Randolph, as you have possibly noticed,” Mr.
+Mallory went on, still patting his daughter's hand, “does not feel
+entirely at home here, and will consequently leave the major free to
+rearrange, by himself, the ranch on the new basis. In fact, as the
+change must be made before the crops come in, she talks of going next
+week. But if you like the place, Rose, I've no doubt the major and
+Dawson will always find room for you and me when we run down there for a
+little fresh air.”
+
+“And did you have all that in your mind, papa, when you came down here,
+and was that what you and Mr. Dawson wanted to talk about?” said the
+astonished Rose.
+
+“Mainly, my dear, mainly. You see I'm a capitalist now, and the
+real value of capital is to know how and when to apply it to certain
+conditions.”
+
+“And this Mr.--Mr. Bent--do you think--he will go on and find the water,
+papa?” said Rose, hesitatingly.
+
+“Ah! Bent--Tom Bent--oh, yes,” said Mallory, with great heartiness.
+“Capital fellow, Bent! and mighty ingenious! Glad you met him! Well,”
+ thoughtfully but still heartily, “he may not find it exactly where he
+expected, but he'll find it or something better. We can't part with him,
+and he has promised Dawson to stay. We'll utilize HIM, you may be sure.”
+
+It would seem that they did, and from certain interviews and
+conversations that took place between Mr. Bent and Miss Mallory on
+a later visit, it would also appear that her father had exercised
+a discreet reticence in regard to a certain experiment of the young
+inventor, of which he had been an accidental witness.
+
+
+
+
+A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+As Mr. Robert Rushbrook, known to an imaginative press as the “Maecenas
+of the Pacific Slope,” drove up to his country seat, equally referred
+to as a “palatial villa,” he cast a quick but practical look at the
+pillared pretensions of that enormous shell of wood and paint and
+plaster. The statement, also a reportorial one, that its site, the
+Canyon of Los Osos, “some three years ago was disturbed only by the
+passing tread of bear and wild-cat,” had lost some of its freshness as a
+picturesque apology, and already successive improvements on the original
+building seemingly cast the older part of the structure back to a hoary
+antiquity. To many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook
+did or had done--an improvement of all previous performances; it was
+like his own life--an exciting though irritating state of transition to
+something better. Yet the visible architectural result, as here shown,
+was scarcely harmonious; indeed, some of his friends--and Maecenas had
+many--professed to classify the various improvements by the successive
+fortunate ventures in their owner's financial career, which had led
+to new additions, under the names, of “The Comstock Lode Period,” “The
+Union Pacific Renaissance,” “The Great Wheat Corner,” and “Water Front
+Gable Style,” a humorous trifling that did not, however, prevent a few
+who were artists from accepting Maecenas's liberal compensation for
+their services in giving shape to those ideas.
+
+Relinquishing to a groom his fast-trotting team, the second relay in his
+two hours' drive from San Francisco, he leaped to the ground to meet the
+architect, already awaiting his orders in the courtyard. With his eyes
+still fixed upon the irregular building before him, he mingled his
+greeting and his directions.
+
+“Look here, Barker, we'll have a wing thrown out here, and a
+hundred-foot ballroom. Something to hold a crowd; something that can be
+used for music--sabe?--a concert, or a show.”
+
+“Have you thought of any style, Mr. Rushbrook?” suggested the architect.
+
+“No,” said Rushbrook; “I've been thinking of the time--thirty days, and
+everything to be in. You'll stop to dinner. I'll have you sit near Jack
+Somers. You can talk style to him. Say I told you.”
+
+“You wish it completed in thirty days?” repeated the architect,
+dubiously.
+
+“Well, I shouldn't mind if it were less. You can begin at once. There's
+a telegraph in the house. Patrick will take any message, and you can
+send up to San Francisco and fix things before dinner.”
+
+Before the man could reply, Rushbrook was already giving a hurried
+interview to the gardener and others on his way to the front porch. In
+another moment he had entered his own hall,--a wonderful temple of white
+and silver plaster, formal, yet friable like the sugared erection of a
+wedding cake,--where his major-domo awaited him.
+
+“Well, who's here?” asked Rushbrook, still advancing towards his
+apartments.
+
+“Dinner is set for thirty, sir,” said the functionary, keeping step
+demurely with his master, “but Mr. Appleby takes ten over to San
+Mateo, and some may sleep there. The char-a-banc is still out and five
+saddle-horses, to a picnic in Green Canyon, and I can't positively say,
+but I should think you might count on seeing about forty-five guests
+before you go to town to-morrow. The opera troupe seem to have not
+exactly understood the invitation, sir.”
+
+“How? I gave it myself.”
+
+“The chorus and supernumeraries thought themselves invited too, sir, and
+have come, I believe, sir. At least Signora Pegrelli and Madame Denise
+said so, and that they would speak to you about it, but that meantime I
+could put them up anywhere.”
+
+“And you made no distinction, of course?”
+
+“No, sir, I put them in the corresponding rooms opposite, sir. I don't
+think the prima donnas like it.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Whatever was in their minds, the two men never changed their steady,
+practical gravity of manner. The major-domo's appeared to be a subdued
+imitation of his master's, worn, as he might have worn his master's
+clothes, had he accepted, or Mr. Rushbrook permitted, such a
+degradation. By this time they had reached the door of Mr. Rushbrook's
+room, and the man paused. “I didn't include some guests of Mr. Leyton's,
+sir, that he brought over here to show around the place, but he told me
+to tell you he would take them away again, or leave them, as you liked.
+They're some Eastern strangers stopping with him.”
+
+“All right,” said Rushbrook, quietly, as he entered his own apartment.
+It was decorated as garishly as the hall, as staring and vivid in color,
+but wholesomely new and clean for all its paint, veneering, and plaster.
+It was filled with heterogeneous splendor--all new and well kept, yet
+with so much of the attitude of the show-room still lingering about
+it that one almost expected to see the various articles of furniture
+ticketed with their prices. A luxurious bed, with satin hangings and
+Indian carved posts, standing ostentatiously in a corner, kept up this
+resemblance, for in a curtained recess stood a worn camp bedstead,
+Rushbrook's real couch, Spartan in its simplicity.
+
+Mr. Rushbrook drew his watch from his pocket, and deliberately divested
+himself of his boots, coat, waistcoat, and cravat. Then rolling himself
+in a fleecy, blanket-like rug with something of the habitual dexterity
+of a frontiersman, he threw himself on his couch, closed his eyes,
+and went instantly to sleep. Lying there, he appeared to be a man
+comfortably middle-aged, with thick iron-gray hair that might have
+curled had he encouraged such inclination; a skin roughened and darkened
+by external hardships and exposure, but free from taint of inner vice
+or excess, and indistinctive features redeemed by a singularly handsome
+mouth. As the lower part of the face was partly hidden by a dense but
+closely-cropped beard, it is probable that the delicate outlines of his
+lips had gained something from their framing.
+
+He slept, through what seemed to be the unnatural stillness of the large
+house,--a quiet that might have come from the lingering influence of
+the still virgin solitude around it, as if Nature had forgotten the
+intrusion, or were stealthily retaking her own; and later, through the
+rattle of returning wheels or the sound of voices, which were, however,
+promptly absorbed in that deep and masterful silence which was the
+unabdicating genius of the canyon. For it was remarkable that even
+the various artists, musicians, orators, and poets whom Maecenas had
+gathered in his cool business fashion under that roof, all seemed to
+become, by contrast with surrounding Nature, as new and artificial as
+the house, and as powerless to assert themselves against its influence.
+
+He was still sleeping when James re-entered the room, but awoke promptly
+at the sound of his voice. In a few moments he had rearranged his
+scarcely disordered toilette, and stepped out refreshed and observant
+into the hall. The guests were still absent from that part of the
+building, and he walked leisurely past the carelessly opened doors
+of the rooms they had left. Everywhere he met the same glaring
+ornamentation and color, the same garishness of treatment, the same
+inharmonious extravagance of furniture, and everywhere the same troubled
+acceptance of it by the inmates, or the same sense of temporary and
+restricted tenancy. Dresses were hung over cheval glasses; clothes piled
+up on chairs to avoid the use of doubtful and over ornamented wardrobes,
+and in some cases more practical guests had apparently encamped in a
+corner of their apartment. A gentleman from Siskyou--sole proprietor of
+a mill patent now being considered by Maecenas--had confined himself to
+a rocking-chair and clothes-horse as being trustworthy and familiar; a
+bolder spirit from Yreka--in treaty for capital to start an independent
+journal devoted to Maecenas's interests--had got a good deal out of, and
+indeed all he had INTO, a Louis XVI. armoire; while a young painter from
+Sacramento had simply retired into his adjoining bath-room, leaving the
+glories of his bedroom untarnished. Suddenly he paused.
+
+He had turned into a smaller passage in order to make a shorter cut
+through one of the deserted suites of apartments that should bring him
+to that part of the building where he designed to make his projected
+improvement, when his feet were arrested on the threshold of a
+sitting-room. Although it contained the same decoration and furniture
+as the other rooms, it looked totally different! It was tasteful,
+luxurious, comfortable, and habitable. The furniture seemed to have
+fallen into harmonious position; even the staring decorations of the
+walls and ceiling were toned down by sprays of laurel and red-stained
+manzanito boughs with their berries, apparently fresh plucked from the
+near canyon. But he was more unexpectedly impressed to see that the room
+was at that moment occupied by a tall, handsome girl, who had paused
+to take breath, with her hand still on the heavy centre-table she was
+moving. Standing there, graceful, glowing, and animated, she looked the
+living genius of the recreated apartment.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Mr. Rushbrook glanced rapidly at his unknown guest. “Excuse me,” he
+said, with respectful business brevity, “but I thought every one was
+out,” and he stepped backward quickly.
+
+“I've only just come,” she said without embarrassment, “and would you
+mind, as you ARE here, giving me a lift with this table?”
+
+“Certainly,” replied Rushbrook, and under the young girl's direction the
+millionaire moved the table to one side.
+
+During the operation he was trying to determine which of his
+unrecognized guests the fair occupant was. Possibly one of the Leyton
+party, that James had spoken of as impending.
+
+“Then you have changed all the furniture, and put up these things?” he
+asked, pointing to the laurel.
+
+“Yes, the room was really something TOO awful. It looks better now,
+don't you think?”
+
+“A hundred per cent.,” said Rushbrook, promptly. “Look here, I'll tell
+you what you've done. You've set the furniture TO WORK! It was simply
+lying still--with no return to anybody on the investment.”
+
+The young girl opened her gray eyes at this, and then smiled. The
+intruder seemed to be characteristic of California. As for Rushbrook, he
+regretted that he did not know her better, he would at once have asked
+her to rearrange all the rooms, and have managed in some way liberally
+to reward her for it. A girl like that had no nonsense about her.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “I wonder Mr. Rushbrook don't look at it in that way.
+It is a shame that all these pretty things--and you know they are really
+good and valuable--shouldn't show what they are. But I suppose everybody
+here accepts the fact that this man simply buys them because they are
+valuable, and nobody interferes, and is content to humor him, laugh at
+him, and feel superior. It don't strike me as quite fair, does it you?”
+
+Rushbrook was pleased. Without the vanity that would be either annoyed
+at this revelation of his reputation, or gratified at her defense of it,
+he was simply glad to discover that she had not recognized him as her
+host, and could continue the conversation unreservedly. “Have you
+seen the ladies' boudoir?” he asked. “You know, the room fitted with
+knick-knacks and pretty things--some of 'em bought from old collections
+in Europe, by fellows who knew what they were but perhaps,” he added,
+looking into her eyes for the first time, “didn't know exactly what
+ladies cared for.”
+
+“I merely glanced in there when I first came, for there was such a queer
+lot of women--I'm told he isn't very particular in that way--that I
+didn't stay.”
+
+“And you didn't think THEY might be just as valuable and good as some of
+the furniture, if they could have been pulled around and put into shape,
+or set in a corner, eh?”
+
+The young girl smiled; she thought her fellow-guest rather amusing, none
+the less so, perhaps, for catching up her own ideas, but nevertheless
+she slightly shrugged her shoulders with that hopeless skepticism which
+women reserve for their own sex. “Some of them looked as if they had
+been pulled around, as you say, and hadn't been improved by it.”
+
+“There's no one there now,” said Rushbrook, with practical directness;
+“come and take a look at it.” She complied without hesitation, walking
+by his side, tall, easy, and self-possessed, apparently accepting
+without self-consciousness his half paternal, half comrade-like
+informality. The boudoir was a large room, repeating on a bigger scale
+the incongruousness and ill fitting splendor of the others. When she
+had of her own accord recognized and pointed out the more admirable
+articles, he said, gravely looking at his watch, “We've just about seven
+minutes yet; if you'd like to pull and haul these things around, I'll
+help you.”
+
+The young girl smiled. “I'm quite content with what I've done in my own
+room, where I have no one's taste to consult but my own. I hardly know
+how Mr. Rushbrook, or his lady friends, might like my operating here.”
+ Then recognizing with feminine tact the snub that might seem implied in
+her refusal, she said quickly, “Tell me something about our host--but
+first look! isn't that pretty?”
+
+She had stopped before the window that looked upon the dim blue abyss of
+the canyon, and was leaning out to gaze upon it. Rushbrook joined her.
+
+“There isn't much to be changed down THERE, is there?” he said, half
+interrogatively.
+
+“No, not unless Mr. Rushbrook took it into his head to roof it in, and
+somebody was ready with a contract to do it. But what do you know of
+him? Remember, I'm quite a stranger here.”
+
+“You came with Charley Leyton?”
+
+“With MRS. Leyton's party,” said the young girl, with a half-smiling
+emphasis. “But it seems that we don't know whether Mr. Rushbrook wants
+us here or not till he comes. And the drollest thing about it is that
+they're all so perfectly frank in saying so.”
+
+“Charley and he are old friends, and you'll do well to trust to their
+judgment.”
+
+This was hardly the kind of response that the handsome and clever
+society girl before him had been in the habit of receiving, but it
+amused her. Her fellow-guest was decidedly original. But he hadn't
+told her about Rushbrook, and it struck her that his opinion would be
+independent, at least. She reminded him of it.
+
+“Look here,” said Rushbrook, “you'll meet a man here to-night--or he'll
+be sure to meet YOU--who'll tell you all about Rushbrook. He's a smart
+chap, knows everybody and talks well. His name is Jack Somers; he is
+a great ladies' man. He can talk to you about these sort of things,
+too,”--indicating the furniture with a half tolerant, half contemptuous
+gesture, that struck her as inconsistent with what seemed to be his
+previous interest,--“just as well as he can talk of people. Been in
+Europe, too.”
+
+The young girl's eye brightened with a quick vivacity at the name, but a
+moment after became reflective and slightly embarrassed. “I know him--I
+met him at Mr. Leyton's. He has already talked of Mr. Rushbrook, but,”
+ she added, avoiding any conclusion, with a pretty pout, “I'd like
+to have the opinion of others. Yours, now, I fancy would be quite
+independent.”
+
+“You stick to what Jack Somers has said, good or bad, and you won't
+be far wrong,” he said assuringly. He stopped; his quick ear had heard
+approaching voices; he returned to her and held out his hand. As it
+seemed to her that in California everybody shook hands with everybody
+else on the slightest occasions, sometimes to save further conversation,
+she gave him her own. He shook it, less forcibly than she had feared,
+and abruptly left her. For a moment she was piqued at this superior and
+somewhat brusque way of ignoring her request, but reflecting that it
+might be the awkwardness of an untrained man, she dismissed it from her
+mind. The voices of her friends in the already resounding passages also
+recalled her to the fact that she had been wandering about the house
+with a stranger, and she rejoined them a little self-consciously.
+
+“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Leyton, gayly, “it seems we are to stay.
+Leyton says Rushbrook won't hear of our going.”
+
+“Does that mean that your husband takes the whole opera troupe over to
+your house in exchange?”
+
+“Don't be satirical, but congratulate yourself on your opportunity of
+seeing an awfully funny gathering. I wouldn't have you miss it for the
+world. It's the most characteristic thing out.”
+
+“Characteristic of what?”
+
+“Of Rushbrook, of course. Nobody else would conceive of getting together
+such a lot of queer people.”
+
+“But don't it strike you that we're a part of the lot?”
+
+“Perhaps,” returned the lively Mrs. Leyton. “No doubt that's the reason
+why Jack Somers is coming over, and is so anxious that YOU should stay.
+I can't imagine why else he should rave about Miss Grace Nevil as he
+does. Come, Grace, no New York or Philadelphia airs, here! Consider your
+uncle's interests with this capitalist, to say nothing of ours. Because
+you're a millionaire and have been accustomed to riches from your birth,
+don't turn up your nose at our unpampered appetites. Besides, Jack
+Somers is Rushbrook's particular friend, and he may think your
+criticisms unkind.”
+
+“But IS Mr. Somers such a great friend of Mr. Rushbrook's?” asked Grace
+Nevil.
+
+“Why, of course. Rushbrook consults him about all these things; gives
+him carte blanche to invite whom he likes and order what he likes, and
+trusts his taste and judgment implicitly.”
+
+“Then this gathering is Mr. Somers's selection?”
+
+“How preposterous you are, Grace. Of course not. Only Somers's IDEA of
+what is pleasing to Rushbrook, gotten up with a taste and discretion
+all his own. You know Somers is a gentleman, educated at West
+Point--traveled all over Europe--you might have met him there; and
+Rushbrook--well, you have only to see him to know what HE is. Don't you
+understand?”
+
+A slight seriousness; the same shadow that once before darkened the
+girl's charming face gave way to a mischievous knitting of her brows as
+she said naively, “No.”
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Grace Nevil had quite recovered her equanimity when the indispensable
+Mr. Somers, handsome, well-bred, and self-restrained, approached her
+later in the crowded drawing-room. Blended with his subdued personal
+admiration was a certain ostentation of respect--as of a tribute to
+a distinguished guest--that struck her. “I am to have the pleasure of
+taking you in, Miss Nevil,” he said. “It's my one compensation for the
+dreadful responsibility just thrust upon me. Our host has been suddenly
+called away, and I am left to take his place.”
+
+Miss Nevil was slightly startled. Nevertheless, she smiled graciously.
+“From what I hear this is no new function of yours; that is, if there
+really IS a Mr. Rushbrook. I am inclined to think him a myth.”
+
+“You make me wish he were,” retorted Somers, gallantly; “but as I
+couldn't reign at all, except in his stead, I shall look to you to lend
+your rightful grace to my borrowed dignity.”
+
+The more general announcement to the company was received with a few
+perfidious regrets from the more polite, but with only amused surprise
+by the majority. Indeed, many considered it “characteristic”--“so like
+Bob Rushbrook,” and a few enthusiastic friends looked upon it as a
+crowning and intentional stroke of humor. It remained, however, for the
+gentleman from Siskyou to give the incident a subtlety that struck Miss
+Nevil's fancy. “It reminds me,” he said in her hearing, “of ole Kernel
+Frisbee, of Robertson County, one of the purlitest men I ever struck.
+When he knew a feller was very dry, he'd jest set the decanter afore
+him, and managed to be called outer the room on bus'ness. Now, Bob
+Rushbrook's about as white a man as that. He's jest the feller, who,
+knowing you and me might feel kinder restrained about indulging our
+appetites afore him, kinder drops out easy, and leaves us alone.”
+ And she was impressed by an instinct that the speaker really felt the
+delicacy he spoke of, and that it left no sense of inferiority behind.
+
+The dinner, served in a large, brilliantly-lit saloon, that in floral
+decoration and gilded columns suggested an ingenious blending of a
+steamboat table d'hote and “harvest home,” was perfect in its cuisine,
+even if somewhat extravagant in its proportions.
+
+“I should be glad to receive the salary that Rushbrook pays his chef,
+and still happier to know how to earn it as fairly,” said Somers to his
+fair companion.
+
+“But is his skill entirely appreciated here?” she asked.
+
+“Perfectly,” responded Somers. “Our friend from Siskyou over there
+appreciates that 'pate' which he cannot name as well as I do. Rushbrook
+himself is the only exception, yet I fancy that even HIS simplicity and
+regularity in feeding is as much a matter of business with him as
+any defect in his earlier education. In his eyes, his chef's greatest
+qualification is his promptness and fertility. Have you noticed that
+ornament before you?” pointing to an elaborate confection. “It bears
+your initials, you see. It was conceived and executed since you
+arrived--rather, I should say, since it was known that you would honor
+us with your company. The greatest difficulty encountered was to find
+out what your initials were.”
+
+“And I suppose,” mischievously added the young girl to her
+acknowledgments, “that the same fertile mind which conceived the design
+eventually provided the initials?”
+
+“That is our secret,” responded Somers, with affected gravity.
+
+The wines were of characteristic expensiveness, and provoked the same
+general comment. Rushbrook seldom drank wine; Somers had selected
+it. But the barbaric opulence of the entertainment culminated in the
+Californian fruits, piled in pyramids on silver dishes, gorgeous and
+unreal in their size and painted beauty, and the two Divas smiled over
+a basket of grapes and peaches as outrageous in dimensions and glaring
+color as any pasteboard banquet at which they had professionally
+assisted. As the courses succeeded each other, under the exaltation of
+wine, conversation became more general as regarded participation, but
+more local and private as regarded the subject, until Miss Nevil could
+no longer follow it. The interests of that one, the hopes of another,
+the claims of a third, in affairs that were otherwise uninteresting,
+were all discussed with singular youthfulness of trust that to her
+alone seemed remarkable. Not that she lacked entertainment from the
+conversation of her clever companion, whose confidences and criticisms
+were very pleasant to her; but she had a gentlewoman's instinct that he
+talked to her too much, and more than was consistent with his duties
+as the general host. She looked around the table for her singular
+acquaintance of an hour before, but she had not seen him since. She
+would have spoken about him to Somers, but she had an instinctive
+idea that the latter would be antipathetic, in spite of the stranger's
+flattering commendation. So she found herself again following Somers's
+cynical but good-humored description of the various guests, and, I
+fear, seeing with his eyes, listening with his ears, and occasionally
+participating in his superior attitude. The “fearful joy” she had found
+in the novelty of the situation and the originality of the actors seemed
+now quite right from this critical point of view. So she learned how the
+guest with the long hair was an unknown painter, to whom Rushbrook had
+given a commission for three hundred yards of painted canvas, to be cut
+up and framed as occasion and space required, in Rushbrook's new
+hotel in San Francisco; how the gray-bearded foreigner near him was an
+accomplished bibliophile who was furnishing Mr. Rushbrook's library from
+spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered unheard-of agonies from
+the millionaire's insisting upon a handsome uniform binding that should
+deprive certain precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten
+coverings; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, mildest of a
+noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was a notorious duelist and
+dead shot; how the only gentleman at the table who retained a flannel
+shirt and high boots was not a late-coming mountaineer, but a well-known
+English baronet on his travels; how the man who told a somewhat florid
+and emphatic anecdote was a popular Eastern clergyman; how the one
+querulous, discontented face in a laughing group was the famous humorist
+who had just convulsed it; and how a pale, handsome young fellow, who
+ate and drank sparingly and disregarded the coquettish advances of the
+prettiest Diva with the cold abstraction of a student, was a notorious
+roue and gambler. But there was a sudden and unlooked-for change of
+criticism and critic.
+
+The festivity had reached that stage when the guests were more or less
+accessible to emotion, and more or less touched by the astounding fact
+that every one was enjoying himself. This phenomenon, which is apt to
+burst into song or dance among other races, is constrained to voice
+itself in an Anglo-Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, or
+moral--known as an after-dinner speech. Thus it was that the gentleman
+from Siskyou, who had been from time to time casting glances at Somers
+and his fair companion at the head of the table, now rose to his feet,
+albeit unsteadily, pushed back his chair, and began:--
+
+“'Pears to me, ladies and gentlemen, and feller pardners, that on
+an occasion like this, suthin' oughter be said of the man who got it
+up--whose money paid for it, and who ain't here to speak for himself,
+except by deputy. Yet you all know that's Bob Rushbrook's style--he
+ain't here, because he's full of some other plan or improvements--and
+it's like him to start suthin' of this kind, give it its aim and
+purpose, and then stand aside to let somebody else run it for him. There
+ain't no man livin' ez hez, so to speak, more fast horses ready saddled
+for riding, and more fast men ready spurred to ride 'em,--whether to win
+his races or run his errands. There ain't no man livin' ez knows better
+how to make other men's games his, or his game seem to be other men's.
+And from Jack Somers smilin' over there, ez knows where to get the best
+wine that Bob pays for, and knows how to run this yer show for Bob,
+at Bob's expense--we're all contented. Ladies and gentlemen, we're all
+contented. We stand, so to speak, on the cards he's dealt us. What may
+be his little game, it ain't for us to say; but whatever it is, WE'RE IN
+IT. Gentlemen and ladies, we'll drink Bob's health!”
+
+There was a somewhat sensational pause, followed by good-natured
+laughter and applause, in which Somers joined; yet not without a certain
+constraint that did not escape the quick sympathy of the shocked and
+unsmiling Miss Nevil. It was with a feeling of relief that she caught
+the chaperoning eye of Mrs. Leyton, who was entreating her in the usual
+mysterious signal to the other ladies to rise and follow her. When she
+reached the drawing-room, a little behind the others, she was somewhat
+surprised to observe that the stranger whom she had missed during the
+evening was approaching her with Mrs. Leyton.
+
+“Mr. Rushbrook returned sooner than he expected, but unfortunately,
+as he always retires early, he has only time to say 'goodnight' to you
+before he goes.”
+
+For an instant Grace Nevil was more angry than disconcerted. Then came
+the conviction that she was stupid not to have suspected the truth
+before. Who else would that brusque stranger develop into but this rude
+host? She bowed formally.
+
+Mr. Rushbrook looked at her with the faintest smile on his handsome
+mouth. “Well, Miss Nevil, I hope Jack Somers satisfied your curiosity?”
+
+With a sudden recollection of the Siskyou gentleman's speech, and a
+swift suspicion that in some way she had been made use of with the
+others by this forceful-looking man before her, she answered pertly:--
+
+“Yes; but there was a speech by a gentleman from Siskyou that struck me
+as being nearer to the purpose.”
+
+“That's so,--I heard it as I came in,” said Mr. Rushbrook, calmly. “I
+don't know but you're right.”
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Six months had passed. The Villa of Maecenas was closed at Los Osos
+Canyon, and the southwest trade-winds were slanting the rains of the wet
+season against its shut windows and barred doors. Within that hollow,
+deserted shell, its aspect--save for a single exception--was unchanged;
+the furniture and decorations preserved their eternal youth undimmed
+by time; the rigidly-arranged rooms, now closed to life and light,
+developed more than ever their resemblance to a furniture warehouse.
+The single exception was the room which Grace Nevil had rearranged for
+herself; and that, oddly enough, was stripped and bare--even to its
+paper and mouldings.
+
+In other respects, the sealed treasures of Rushbrook's villa, far from
+provoking any sentimentality, seemed only to give truth to the current
+rumor that it was merely waiting to be transformed into a gorgeous
+watering-place hotel under Rushbrook's direction; that, with its new
+ball-room changed into an elaborate dining-hall, it would undergo still
+further improvement, the inevitable end and object of all Rushbrook's
+enterprise; and that its former proprietor had already begun another
+villa whose magnificence should eclipse the last. There certainly
+appeared to be no limit to the millionaire's success in all that he
+personally undertook, or in his fortunate complicity with the enterprise
+and invention of others. His name was associated with the oldest
+and safest schemes, as well as the newest and boldest--with an equal
+guarantee of security. A few, it was true, looked doubtingly upon this
+“one man power,” but could not refute the fact that others had largely
+benefited by association with him, and that he shared his profits with
+a royal hand. Some objected on higher grounds to his brutalizing
+the influence of wealth by his material and extravagantly practical
+processes, instead of the gentler suggestions of education and personal
+example, and were impelled to point out the fact that he and his
+patronage were vulgar. It was felt, however, by those who received his
+benefits, that a proper sense of this inferiority was all that ethics
+demanded of them. One could still accept Rushbrook's barbaric gifts by
+humorously recognizing the fact that he didn't know any better, and that
+it pleased him, as long as they resented any higher pretensions.
+
+The rain-beaten windows of Rushbrook's town house, however, were
+cheerfully lit that December evening. Mr. Rushbrook seldom dined
+alone; in fact, it was popularly alleged that very often the unfinished
+business of the day was concluded over his bountiful and perfect board.
+He was dressing as James entered the room.
+
+“Mr. Leyton is in your study, sir; he will stay to dinner.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“I think, sir,” added James, with respectful suggestiveness, “he wants
+to talk. At least, sir, he asked me if you would likely come downstairs
+before your company arrived.”
+
+“Ah! Well, tell the others I'm dining on BUSINESS, and set dinner for
+two in the blue room.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Leyton--a man of Rushbrook's age, but not so fresh and
+vigorous-looking--had thrown himself in a chair beside the study fire,
+after a glance around the handsome and familiar room. For the house had
+belonged to a brother millionaire; it had changed hands with certain
+shares of “Water Front,”--as some of Rushbrook's dealings had the true
+barbaric absence of money detail,--and was elegantly and tastefully
+furnished. The cuckoo had, however, already laid a few characteristic
+eggs in this adopted nest, and a white marble statue of a nude and
+ill-fed Virtue, sent over by Rushbrook's Paris agent, and unpacked
+that morning, stood in one corner, and materially brought down the
+temperature. A Japanese praying-throne of pure ivory, and, above it, a
+few yards of improper, colored exposure by an old master, equalized each
+other.
+
+“And what is all this affair about the dinner?” suddenly asked a
+tartly-pitched female voice with a foreign accent.
+
+Mr. Leyton turned quickly, and was just conscious of a faint shriek, the
+rustle of a skirt, and the swift vanishing of a woman's figure from the
+doorway. Mr. Leyton turned red. Rushbrook lived en garcon, with feminine
+possibilities; Leyton was a married man and a deacon. The incident
+which, to a man of the world, would have brought only a smile, fired the
+inexperienced Leyton with those exaggerated ideas and intense credulity
+regarding vice common to some very good men. He walked on tip-toe to the
+door, and peered into the passage. At that moment Rushbrook entered from
+the opposite door of the room.
+
+“Well,” said Rushbrook, with his usual practical directness, “what do
+you think of her?”
+
+Leyton, still flushed, and with eyebrows slightly knit, said, awkwardly,
+that he had scarcely seen her.
+
+“She cost me already ten thousand dollars, and I suppose I'll have
+to eventually fix up a separate room for her somewhere,” continued
+Rushhrook.
+
+“I should certainly advise it,” said Leyton, quickly, “for really,
+Rushbrook, you know that something is due to the respectable people who
+come here, and any of them are likely to see”--
+
+“Ah!” interrupted Rushbrook, seriously, “you think she hasn't got on
+clothes enough. Why, look here, old man--she's one of the Virtues, and
+that's the rig in which they always travel. She's a 'Temperance' or a
+'Charity' or a 'Resignation,' or something of that kind. You'll find her
+name there in French somewhere at the foot of the marble.”
+
+Leyton saw his mistake, but felt--as others sometimes felt--a doubt
+whether this smileless man was not inwardly laughing at him. He replied,
+with a keen, rapid glance at his host:--
+
+“I was referring to some woman who stood in that doorway just now, and
+addressed me rather familiarly, thinking it was you.”
+
+“Oh, the Signora,” said Rushbrook, with undisturbed directness; “well,
+you saw her at Los Osos last summer. Likely she DID think you were me.”
+
+The cool ignoring of any ulterior thought in Leyton's objection forced
+the guest to be equally practical in his reply.
+
+“Yes, but the fact is that Miss Nevil had talked of coming here with me
+this evening to see you on her own affairs, and it wouldn't have been
+exactly the thing for her to meet that woman.”
+
+“She wouldn't,” said Rushbrook, promptly; “nor would YOU, if you had
+gone into the parlor as Miss Nevil would have done. But look here! If
+that's the reason why you didn't bring her, send for her at once; my
+coachman can take a card from you; the brougham's all ready to fetch
+her, and there you are. She'll see only you and me.” He was already
+moving towards the bell, when Leyton stopped him.
+
+“No matter now. I can tell you her business, I fancy; and in fact, I
+came here to speak of it, quite independently of her.”
+
+“That won't do, Leyton,” interrupted Rushbrook, with crisp decision.
+“One or the other interview is unnecessary; it wastes time, and isn't
+business. Better have her present, even if she don't say a word.”
+
+“Yes, but not in this matter,” responded Leyton; “it's about Somers. You
+know he's been very attentive to her ever since her uncle left her here
+to recruit her health, and I think she fancies him. Well, although she's
+independent and her own mistress, as you know, Mrs. Leyton and I are
+somewhat responsible for her acquaintance with Somers,--and for that
+matter so are you; and as my wife thinks it means a marriage, we ought
+to know something more positive about Somers's prospects. Now, all we
+really know is that he's a great friend of yours; that you trust a good
+deal to him; that he manages your social affairs; that you treat him
+as a son or nephew, and it's generally believed that he's as good as
+provided for by you--eh? Did you speak?”
+
+“No,” said Rushbrook, quietly regarding the statue as if taking its
+measurement for a suitable apartment for it. “Go on.”
+
+“Well,” said Leyton, a little impatiently, “that's the belief everybody
+has, and you've not contradicted it. And on that we've taken the
+responsibility of not interfering with Somers's attentions.”
+
+“Well?” said Rushbrook, interrogatively.
+
+“Well,” replied Leyton, emphatically, “you see I must ask you positively
+if you HAVE done anything, or are you going to do anything for him?”
+
+“Well,” replied Rushbrook, with exasperating coolness, “what do you call
+this marriage?”
+
+“I don't understand you,” said Leyton.
+
+“Look here, Leyton,” said Rushbrook, suddenly and abruptly facing him;
+“Jack Somers has brains, knowledge of society, tact, accomplishments,
+and good looks: that's HIS capital as much as mine is money. I employ
+him: that's his advertisement, recommendation, and credit. Now, on the
+strength of this, as you say, Miss Nevil is willing to invest in him; I
+don't see what more can be done.”
+
+“But if her uncle don't think it enough?”
+
+“She's independent, and has money for both.”
+
+“But if she thinks she's been deceived, and changes her mind?”
+
+“Leyton, you don't know Miss Nevil. Whatever that girl undertakes she's
+weighed fully, and goes through with. If she's trusted him enough to
+marry him, money won't stop her; if she thinks she's been deceived,
+YOU'LL never know it.”
+
+The enthusiasm and conviction were so unlike Rushbrook's usual cynical
+toleration of the sex that Leyton stared at him.
+
+“That's odd,” he returned. “That's what she says of you.”
+
+“Of ME; you mean Somers?”
+
+“No, of YOU. Come, Rushbrook, don't pretend you don't know that
+Miss Nevil is a great partisan of yours, swears by you, says you're
+misunderstood by people, and, what's infernally odd in a woman who don't
+belong to the class you fancy, don't talk of your habits. That's why she
+wants to consult you about Somers, I suppose, and that's why, knowing
+you might influence her, I came here first to warn you.”
+
+“And I've told you that whatever I might say or do wouldn't influence
+her. So we'll drop the subject.”
+
+“Not yet; for you're bound to see Miss Nevil sooner or later. Now, if
+she knows that you've done nothing for this man, your friend and her
+lover, won't she be justified in thinking that you would have a reason
+for it?”
+
+“Yes. I should give it.”
+
+“What reason?”
+
+“That I knew she'd be more contented to have him speculate with HER
+money than mine.”
+
+“Then you think that he isn't a business man?”
+
+“I think that she thinks so, or she wouldn't marry him; it's part of the
+attraction. But come, James has been for five minutes discreetly waiting
+outside the door to tell us dinner is ready, and the coast clear of all
+other company. But look here,” he said, suddenly stopping, with his arm
+in Leyton's, “you're through your talk, I suppose; perhaps you'd rather
+we'd dine with the Signora and the others than alone?”
+
+For an instant Leyton thrilled with the fascination of what he firmly
+believed was a guilty temptation. Rushbrook, perceiving his hesitation,
+added:--
+
+“By the way, Somers is of the party, and one or two others you know.”
+
+Mr. Leyton opened his eyes widely at this; either the temptation had
+passed, or the idea of being seen in doubtful company by a younger man
+was distasteful, for he hurriedly disclaimed any preference. “But,” he
+added with half-significant politeness, “perhaps I'm keeping YOU from
+them?”
+
+“It makes not the slightest difference to me,” calmly returned
+Rushbrook, with such evident truthfulness that Leyton was both convinced
+and chagrined.
+
+Preceded by the grave and ubiquitous James, they crossed the large hall,
+and entered through a smaller passage a charming apartment hung
+with blue damask, which might have been a boudoir, study, or small
+reception-room, yet had the air of never having been anything
+continuously. It would seem that Rushbrook's habit of “camping out” in
+different parts of his mansion obtained here as at Los Osos, and with
+the exception of a small closet which contained his Spartan bed, the
+rooms were used separately or in suites, as occasion or his friends
+required. It is recorded that an Eastern guest, newly arrived with
+letters to Rushbrook, after a tedious journey, expressed himself pleased
+with this same blue room, in which he had sumptuously dined with his
+host, and subsequently fell asleep in his chair. Without disturbing his
+guest, Rushbrook had the table removed, a bed, washstand, and bureau
+brought in, the sleeping man delicately laid upon the former, and left
+to awaken to an Arabian night's realization of his wish.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+James had barely disposed of his master and Mr. Leyton, and left them
+to the ministrations of two of his underlings, before he was confronted
+with one of those difficult problems that it was part of his functions
+to solve. The porter informed him that a young lady had just driven up
+in a carriage ostensibly to see Mr. Rushbrook, and James, descending to
+the outer vestibule, found himself face to face with Miss Grace
+Nevil. Happily, that young lady, with her usual tact, spared him some
+embarrassment.
+
+“Oh! James,” she said sweetly, “do you think that I could see Mr.
+Rushbrook for a few moments IF I WAITED FOR THE OPPORTUNITY? You
+understand, I don't wish to disturb him or his company by being
+regularly announced.”
+
+The young girl's practical intelligence appeared to increase the usual
+respect which James had always shown her. “I understand, miss.” He
+thought for a moment, and said: “Would you mind, then, following me
+where you could wait quietly and alone?” As she quickly assented, he
+preceded her up the staircase, past the study and drawing-room, which
+he did not enter, and stopped before a small door at the end of the
+passage. Then, handing her a key which he took from his pocket, he said:
+“This is the only room in the house that is strictly reserved for Mr.
+Rushbrook, and even he rarely uses it. You can wait here without anybody
+knowing it until I can communicate with him and bring you to his study
+unobserved. And,” he hesitated, “if you wouldn't mind locking the door
+when you are in, miss, you would be more secure, and I will knock when I
+come for you.”
+
+Grace Nevil smiled at the man's prudence, and entered the room. But
+to her great surprise, she had scarcely shut the door when she was
+instantly struck with a singular memory which the apartment recalled.
+It was exactly like the room she had altered in Rushbrook's villa at Los
+Osos! More than that, on close examination it proved to be the very same
+furniture, arranged as she remembered to have arranged it, even to the
+flowers and grasses, now, alas! faded and withered on the walls. There
+could be no mistake. There was the open ebony escritoire with the
+satin blotter open, and its leaves still bearing the marks of her own
+handwriting. So complete to her mind was the idea of her own tenancy in
+this bachelor's mansion, that she looked around with a half indignant
+alarm for the photograph or portrait of herself that might further
+indicate it. But there was no other exposition. The only thing that had
+been added was a gilt legend on the satin case of the blotter,--“Los
+Osos, August 20, 186-,” the day she had occupied the room.
+
+She was pleased, astonished, but more than all, disturbed. The only man
+who might claim a right to this figurative possession of her tastes
+and habits was the one whom she had quietly, reflectively, and
+understandingly half accepted as her lover, and on whose account she had
+come to consult Rushbrook. But Somers was not a sentimentalist; in
+fact, as a young girl, forced by her independent position to somewhat
+critically scrutinize masculine weaknesses, this had always been a point
+in his favor; yet even if he had joined with his friend Rushbrook to
+perpetuate the memory of their first acquaintanceship, his taste merely
+would not have selected a chambre de garcon in Mr. Rushbrook's home for
+its exhibition. Her conception of the opposite characters of the two men
+was singularly distinct and real, and this momentary confusion of them
+was disagreeable to her woman's sense. But at this moment James came to
+release her and conduct her to Rushbrook's study, where he would join
+her at once. Everything had been arranged as she had wished.
+
+Even a more practical man than Rushbrook might have lingered over the
+picture of the tall, graceful figure of Miss Nevil, quietly enthroned in
+a large armchair by the fire, her scarlet, satin-lined cloak thrown over
+its back, and her chin resting on her hand. But the millionaire
+walked directly towards her with his usual frankness of conscious but
+restrained power, and she felt, as she always did, perfectly at her
+ease in his presence. Even as she took his outstretched hand, its
+straightforward grasp seemed to endow her with its own confidence.
+
+“You'll excuse my coming here so abruptly,” she smiled, “but I wanted
+to get before Mr. Leyton, who, I believe, wishes to see you on the same
+business as myself.”
+
+“He is here already, and dining with me,” said Rushbrook.
+
+“Ah! does he know I am here?” asked the girl, quietly.
+
+“No; as he said you had thought of coming with him and didn't, I
+presumed you didn't care to have him know you had come alone.”
+
+“Not exactly that, Mr. Rushbrook,” she said, fixing her beautiful eyes
+on him in bright and trustful confidence, “but I happen to have a fuller
+knowledge of this business than he has, and yet, as it is not altogether
+my own secret, I was not permitted to divulge it to him. Nor would I
+tell it to you, only I cannot bear that you should think that I
+had anything to do with this wretched inquisition into Mr. Somers's
+prospects. Knowing as well as you do how perfectly independent I am, you
+would think it strange, wouldn't you? But you would think it still
+more surprising when you found out that I and my uncle already know how
+liberally and generously you had provided for Mr. Somers in the future.”
+
+“How I had provided for Mr. Somers in the future?” repeated Mr.
+Rushbrook, looking at the fire, “eh?”
+
+“Yes,” said the young girl, indifferently, “how you were to put him in
+to succeed you in the Water Front Trust, and all that. He told it to
+me and my uncle at the outset of our acquaintance, confidentially, of
+course, and I dare say with an honorable delicacy that was like him,
+but--I suppose now you will think me foolish--all the while I'd rather
+he had not.”
+
+“You'd rather he had not,” repeated Mr. Rushbrook, slowly.
+
+“Yes,” continued Grace, leaning forward with her rounded elbows on her
+knees, and her slim, arched feet on the fender. “Now you are going
+to laugh at me, Mr. Rushbrook, but all this seemed to me to spoil any
+spontaneous feeling I might have towards him, and limit my independence
+in a thing that should be a matter of free will alone. It seemed too
+much like a business proposition! There, my kind friend!” she added,
+looking up and trying to read his face with a half girlish pout,
+followed, however, by a maturer sigh, “I'm bothering you with a woman's
+foolishness instead of talking business. And”--another sigh--“I suppose
+it IS business for my uncle, who has, it seems, bought into this Trust
+on these possible contingencies, has, perhaps, been asking questions
+of Mr. Leyton. But I don't want you to think that I approve of them, or
+advise your answering them. But you are not listening.”
+
+“I had forgotten something,” said Rushbrook, with an odd preoccupation.
+“Excuse me a moment--I will return at once.”
+
+He left the room quite as abstractedly, and when he reached the passage,
+he apparently could not remember what he had forgotten, as he walked
+deliberately to the end window, where, with his arms folded behind his
+back, he remained looking out into the street. A passer-by, glancing
+up, might have said he had seen the pale, stern ghost of Mr. Rushbrook,
+framed like a stony portrait in the window. But he presently turned
+away, and re-entered the room, going up to Grace, who was still sitting
+by the fire, in his usual strong and direct fashion.
+
+“Well! Now let me see what you want. I think this would do.”
+
+He took a seat at his open desk, and rapidly wrote a few lines.
+
+“There,” he continued, “when you write to your uncle, inclose that.”
+
+Grace took it, and read:--
+
+
+DEAR MISS NEVIL,--Pray assure your uncle from me that I am quite
+ready to guarantee, in any form that he may require, the undertaking
+represented to him by Mr. John Somers. Yours very truly,
+
+ROBERT RUSHBROOK.
+
+
+A quick flush mounted to the young girl's cheeks. “But this is a
+SECURITY, Mr. Rushbrook,” she said proudly, handing him back the paper,
+“and my uncle does not require that. Nor shall I insult him or you by
+sending it.”
+
+“It is BUSINESS, Miss Nevil,” said Rushbrook, gravely. He stopped, and
+fixed his eyes upon her animated face and sparkling eyes. “You can send
+it to him or not, as you like. But”--a rare smile came to his handsome
+mouth--“as this is a letter to YOU, you must not insult ME by not
+accepting it.”
+
+Replying to his smile rather than the words that accompanied it, Miss
+Nevil smiled, too. Nevertheless, she was uneasy and disturbed. The
+interview, whatever she might have vaguely expected from it, had
+resolved itself simply into a business indorsement of her lover, which
+she had not sought, and which gave her no satisfaction. Yet there was
+the same potent and indefinably protecting presence before her which she
+had sought, but whose omniscience and whose help she seemed to have lost
+the spell and courage to put to the test. He relieved her in his abrupt
+but not unkindly fashion. “Well, when is it to be?”
+
+“It?”
+
+“Your marriage.”
+
+“Oh, not for some time. There's no hurry.”
+
+It might have struck the practical Mr. Rushbrook that, even considered
+as a desirable business affair, the prospective completion of
+this contract provoked neither frank satisfaction nor conventional
+dissimulation on the part of the young lady, for he regarded her calm
+but slightly wearied expression fixedly. But he only said: “Then I shall
+say nothing of this interview to Mr. Leyton?”
+
+“As you please. It really matters little. Indeed, I suppose I was rather
+foolish in coming at all, and wasting your valuable time for nothing.”
+
+She had risen, as if taking his last question in the significance of a
+parting suggestion, and was straightening her tall figure, preparatory
+to putting on her cloak. As she reached it, he stepped forward, and
+lifted it from the chair to assist her. The act was so unprecedented, as
+Mr. Rushbrook never indulged in those minor masculine courtesies, that
+she was momentarily as confused as a younger girl at the gallantry of a
+younger man. In their previous friendship he had seldom drawn near her
+except to shake her hand--a circumstance that had always recurred to her
+when his free and familiar life had been the subject of gossip. But she
+now had a more frightened consciousness that her nerves were strangely
+responding to his powerful propinquity, and she involuntarily contracted
+her pretty shoulders as he gently laid the cloak upon them. Yet even
+when the act was completed, she had a superstitious instinct that the
+significance of this rare courtesy was that it was final, and that
+he had helped her to interpose something that shut him out from her
+forever.
+
+She was turning away with a heightened color, when the sound of light,
+hurried footsteps, and the rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the
+hall. A swift recollection of her companion's infelicitous reputation
+now returned to her, and Grace Nevil, with a slight stiffening of her
+whole frame, became coldly herself again. Mr. Rushbrook betrayed neither
+surprise nor agitation. Begging her to wait a moment until he could
+arrange for her to pass to her carriage unnoticed, he left the room.
+
+Yet it seemed that the cause of the disturbance was unsuspected by Mr.
+Rushbrook. Mr. Leyton, although left to the consolation of cigars and
+liquors in the blue room, had become slightly weary of his companion's
+prolonged absence. Satisfied in his mind that Rushbrook had joined
+the gayer party, and that he was even now paying gallant court to the
+Signora, he became again curious and uneasy. At last the unmistakable
+sound of whispering voices in the passage got the better of his sense of
+courtesy as a guest, and he rose from his seat, and slightly opened the
+door. As he did so the figures of a man and woman, conversing in earnest
+whispers, passed the opening. The man's arm was round the woman's
+waist; the woman was--as he had suspected--the one who had stood in the
+doorway, the Signora--but--the man was NOT Rushbrook. Mr. Leyton drew
+back this time in unaffected horror. It was none other than Jack Somers!
+
+Some warning instinct must at that moment have struck the woman, for
+with a stifled cry she disengaged herself from Somers's arm, and dashed
+rapidly down the hall. Somers, evidently unaware of the cause, stood
+irresolute for a moment, and then more silently but swiftly disappeared
+into a side corridor as if to intercept her. It was the rapid passage of
+the Signora that had attracted the attention of Grace and Rushbrook in
+the study, and it was the moment after it that Mr. Rushbrook left.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Vaguely uneasy, and still perplexed with her previous agitation, as Mr.
+Rushbrook closed the door behind him, Grace, following some feminine
+instinct rather than any definite reason, walked to the door and placed
+her hand upon the lock to prevent any intrusion until he returned.
+Her caution seemed to be justified a moment later, for a heavier but
+stealthier footstep halted outside. The handle of the door was turned,
+but she resisted it with the fullest strength of her small hand until a
+voice, which startled her, called in a hurried whisper:--
+
+“Open quick, 'tis I.”
+
+She stepped back quickly, flung the door open, and beheld Somers on the
+threshold!
+
+The astonishment, agitation, and above all, the awkward confusion of
+this usually self-possessed and ready man, was so unlike him, and withal
+so painful, that Grace hurried to put an end to it, and for an instant
+forgot her own surprise at seeing him. She smiled assuringly, and
+extended her hand.
+
+“Grace--Miss Nevil--I beg your pardon--I didn't imagine”--he began with
+a forced laugh. “I mean, of course--I cannot--but”--He stopped, and then
+assuming a peculiar expression, said: “But what are YOU doing here?”
+
+At any other moment the girl would have resented the tone, which was
+as new to her as his previous agitation, but in her present
+self-consciousness her situation seemed to require some explanation.
+“I came here,” she said, “to see Mr. Rushbrook on business. Your
+business--OUR business,” she added, with a charming smile, using for the
+first time the pronoun that seemed to indicate their unity and interest,
+and yet fully aware of a vague insincerity in doing so.
+
+“Our BUSINESS?” he repeated, ignoring her gentler meaning with a changed
+emphasis and a look of suspicion.
+
+“Yes,” said Grace, a little impatiently. “Mr. Leyton thought he ought
+to write to my uncle something positive as to your prospects with Mr.
+Rushbrook, and”--
+
+“You came here to inquire?” said the young man, sharply.
+
+“I came here to stop any inquiry,” said Grace, indignantly. “I came
+here to say I was satisfied with what you had confided to me of Mr.
+Rushbrook's generosity, and that was enough!”
+
+“With what I had confided to you? You dared say that?”
+
+Grace stopped, and instantly faced him. But any indignation she might
+have felt at his speech and manner was swallowed up in the revulsion and
+horror that overtook her with the sudden revelation she saw in his
+white and frightened face. Leyton's strange inquiry, Rushbrook's cold
+composure and scornful acceptance of her own credulousness, came to her
+in a flash of shameful intelligence. Somers had lied! The insufferable
+meanness of it! A lie, whose very uselessness and ignobility had
+defeated its purpose--a lie that implied the basest suspicion of her
+own independence and truthfulness--such a lie now stood out as plainly
+before her as his guilty face.
+
+“Forgive my speaking so rudely,” he said with a forced smile and attempt
+to recover his self-control, “but you have ruined me unless you deny
+that I told you anything. It was a joke--an extravagance that I had
+forgotten; at least, it was a confidence between you and me that you
+have foolishly violated. Say that you misunderstood me--that it was a
+fancy of your own. Say anything--he trusts you--he'll believe anything
+you say.”
+
+“He HAS believed me,” said Grace, almost fiercely, turning upon him with
+the paper that Rushbrook had given her in her outstretched hand. “Read
+that!”
+
+He read it. Had he blushed, had he stammered, had he even kept up his
+former frantic and pitiable attitude, she might at that supreme moment
+have forgiven him. But to her astonishment his face changed, his
+handsome brow cleared, his careless, happy smile returned, his graceful
+confidence came back--he stood before her the elegant, courtly, and
+accomplished gentleman she had known. He returned her the paper, and
+advancing with extended hand, said triumphantly:--
+
+“Superb! Splendid! No one but a woman could think of that! And only one
+woman achieve it. You have tricked the great Rushbrook. You are indeed
+worthy of being a financier's wife!”
+
+“No,” she said passionately, tearing up the paper and throwing it at his
+feet; “not as YOU understand it--and never YOURS! You have debased and
+polluted everything connected with it, as you would have debased and
+polluted ME. Out of my presence that you are insulting--out of the room
+of the man whose magnanimity you cannot understand!”
+
+The destruction of the guarantee apparently stung him more than the
+words that accompanied it. He did not relapse again into his former
+shamefaced terror, but as a malignant glitter came into his eyes, he
+regained his coolness.
+
+“It may not be so difficult for others to understand, Miss Nevil,” he
+said, with polished insolence, “and as Bob Rushbrook's generosity to
+pretty women is already a matter of suspicion, perhaps you are wise to
+destroy that record of it.”
+
+“Coward!” said Grace, “stand aside and let me pass!” She swept by him
+to the door. But it opened upon Rushbrook's re-entrance. He stood for
+an instant glancing at the pair, and then on the fragments of the paper
+that strewed the floor. Then, still holding the door in his hand, he
+said quietly:--
+
+“One moment before you go, Miss Nevil. If this is the result of any
+misunderstanding as to the presence of another woman here, in company
+with Mr. Somers, it is only fair to him to say that that woman is here
+as a friend of MINE, not of his, and I alone am responsible.”
+
+Grace halted, and turned the cold steel of her proud eyes on the two
+men. As they rested on Rushbrook they quivered slightly. “I can already
+bear witness,” she said coldly, “to the generosity of Mr. Rushbrook in
+a matter which then touched me. But there certainly is no necessity
+for him to show it now in a matter in which I have not the slightest
+concern.”
+
+As she swept out of the room and was received in the respectable shadow
+of the waiting James, Rushbrook turned to Somers.
+
+“And I'M afraid it won't do--for Leyton saw you,” he said curtly. “Now,
+then, shut that door, for you and I, Jack Somers, have a word to say to
+each other.”
+
+What that word was, and how it was said and received, is not a part of
+this record. But it is told that it was the beginning of that mighty
+Iliad, still remembered of men, which shook the financial camps of San
+Francisco, and divided them into bitter contending parties. For when it
+became known the next day that Somers had suddenly abandoned Rushbrook,
+and carried over to a powerful foreign capitalist the secret methods,
+and even, it was believed, the LUCK of his late employer, it was certain
+that there would be war to the knife, and that it was no longer a
+struggle of rival enterprise, but of vindictive men.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+For a year the battle between the Somers faction and the giant but
+solitary Rushbrook raged fiercely, with varying success. I grieve to say
+that the proteges and parasites of Maecenas deserted him in a body; nay,
+they openly alleged that it was the true artistic nature and refinement
+of Somers that had always attracted them, and that a man like Rushbrook,
+who bought pictures by the yard,--equally of the unknown struggling
+artist and the famous masters,--was no true patron of Art. Rushbrook
+made no attempt to recover his lost prestige, and once, when squeezed
+into a tight “corner,” and forced to realize on his treasures, he put
+them up at auction and the people called them “daubs;” their rage
+knew no bounds. It was then that an unfettered press discovered that
+Rushbrook never was a Maecenas at all, grimly deprecated his assumption
+of that title, and even doubted if he were truly a millionaire. It was
+at this time that a few stood by him--notably, the mill inventor from
+Siskyou, grown plethoric with success, but eventually ground between the
+upper and nether millstone of the Somers and Rushbrook party. Miss Nevil
+had returned to the Atlantic States with Mrs. Leyton. While rumors
+had played freely with the relations of Somers and the Signora as the
+possible cause of the rupture between him and Rushbrook, no mention had
+ever been made of the name of Miss Nevil.
+
+It was raining heavily one afternoon, when Mr. Rushbrook drove from his
+office to his San Francisco house. The fierce struggle in which he was
+engaged left him little time for hospitality, and for the last two weeks
+his house had been comparatively deserted. He passed through the
+empty rooms, changed in little except the absence of some valuable
+monstrosities which had gone to replenish his capital. When he reached
+his bedroom, he paused a moment at the open door.
+
+“James!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said James, appearing out of the shadow.
+
+“What are you waiting for?”
+
+“I thought you might be wanting something, sir.”
+
+“You were waiting there this morning; you were in the ante-room of my
+study while I was writing. You were outside the blue room while I sat
+at breakfast. You were at my elbow in the drawing-room late last night.
+Now, James,” continued Mr. Rushbrook, with his usual grave directness,
+“I don't intend to commit suicide; I can't afford it, so keep your time
+and your rest for yourself--you want it--that's a good fellow.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“James!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Rushbrook extended his hand. There was that faint, rare smile on his
+handsome mouth, for which James would at any time have laid down his
+life. But he only silently grasped his master's hand, and the two
+men remained looking into each other's eyes without a word. Then Mr.
+Rushbrook entered his room, lay down, and went to sleep, and James
+vanished in the shadow.
+
+At the end of an hour Mr. Rushbrook awoke refreshed, and even James, who
+came to call him, appeared to have brightened in the interval. “I have
+ordered a fire, sir, in the reserved room, the one fitted up from Los
+Osos, as your study has had no chance of being cleaned these two weeks.
+It will be a change for you, sir. I hope you'll excuse my not waking you
+to consult you about it.”
+
+Rushbrook remained so silent that James, fancying he had not heard him,
+was about to repeat himself when his master said quickly, “Very well,
+come for me there when dinner is ready,” and entered the passage leading
+to the room. James did not follow him, and when Mr. Rushbrook, opening
+the door, started back with an exclamation, no one but the inmate heard
+the word that rose to his lips.
+
+For there, seated before the glow of the blazing fire, was Miss Grace
+Nevil. She had evidently just arrived, for her mantle was barely
+loosened around her neck, and upon the fringe of brown hair between her
+bonnet and her broad, low forehead a few drops of rain still sparkled.
+As she lifted her long lashes quickly towards the door, it seemed as
+if they, too, had caught a little of that moisture. Rushbrook moved
+impatiently forward, and then stopped. Grace rose unhesitatingly to her
+feet, and met him half-way with frankly outstretched hands. “First of
+all,” she said, with a half nervous laugh, “don't scold James; it's all
+my fault; I forbade him to announce me, lest you should drive me away,
+for I heard that during this excitement you came here for rest, and saw
+no one. Even the intrusion into this room is all my own. I confess now
+that I saw it the last night I was here; I was anxious to know if it was
+unchanged, and made James bring me here. I did not understand it then. I
+do now--and--thank you.”
+
+Her face must have shown that she was conscious that he was still
+holding her hand, for he suddenly released it. With a heightened color
+and a half girlish naivete, that was the more charming for its contrast
+with her tall figure and air of thoroughbred repose, she turned back to
+her chair, and lightly motioned him to take the one before her. “I am
+here on BUSINESS; otherwise I should not have dared to look in upon you
+at all.”
+
+She stopped, drew off her gloves with a provoking deliberation, which
+was none the less fascinating that it implied a demure consciousness of
+inducing some impatience in the breast of her companion, stretched them
+out carefully by the fingers, laid them down neatly on the table,
+placed her elbows on her knees, slightly clasped her hands together, and
+bending forward, lifted her honest, handsome eyes to the man before her.
+
+“Mr. Rushbrook, I have got between four and five hundred thousand
+dollars that I have no use for; I can control securities which can be
+converted, if necessary, into a hundred thousand more in ten days. I am
+free and my own mistress. It is generally considered that I know what I
+am about--you admitted as much when I was your pupil. I have come here
+to place this sum in your hands, at your free disposal. You know why and
+for what purpose.”
+
+“But what do you know of my affairs?” asked Rushbrook, quickly.
+
+“Everything, and I know YOU, which is better. Call it an investment if
+you like--for I know you will succeed--and let me share your profits.
+Call it--if you please--restitution, for I am the miserable cause of
+your rupture with that man. Or call it revenge if you like,” she said
+with a faint smile, “and let me fight at your side against our common
+enemy! Please, Mr. Rushbrook, don't deny me this. I have come three
+thousand miles for it; I could have sent it to you--or written--but I
+feared you would not understand it. You are smiling--you will take it?”
+
+“I cannot,” said Rushbrook, gravely.
+
+“Then you force me to go into the Stock Market myself, and fight for
+you, and, unaided by YOUR genius, perhaps lose it without benefiting
+you.”
+
+Rushbrook did not reply.
+
+“At least, then, tell me why you 'cannot.'”
+
+Rushbrook rose, and looking into her face, said quietly with his old
+directness:--
+
+“Because I love you, Miss Nevil.”
+
+A sudden instinct to rise and move away, a greater one to remain and
+hear him speak again, and a still greater one to keep back the blood
+that she felt was returning all too quickly to her cheek after the first
+shock, kept her silent. But she dropped her eyes.
+
+“I loved you ever since I first saw you at Los Osos,” he went on
+quickly; “I said to myself even then, that if there was a woman that
+would fill my life, and make me what she wished me to be, it was you. I
+even fancied that day that you understood me better than any woman, or
+even any man, that I had ever met before. I loved you through all that
+miserable business with that man, even when my failure to make you happy
+with another brought me no nearer to you. I have loved you always. I
+shall love you always. I love you more for this foolish kindness that
+brings YOU beneath my roof once more, and gives me a chance to speak my
+heart to you, if only once and for the last time, than all the fortune
+that you could put at my disposal. But I could not accept what you would
+offer me from any woman who was not my wife--and I could not marry
+any woman that did not love me. I am perhaps past the age when I could
+inspire a young girl's affection; but I have not reached the age when I
+would accept anything less.” He stopped abruptly. Grace did not look
+up. There was a tear glistening upon her long eyelashes, albeit a faint
+smile played upon her lips.
+
+“Do you call this business, Mr. Rushbrook?” she said softly.
+
+“Business?”
+
+“To assume a proposal declined before it has been offered.”
+
+“Grace--my darling--tell me--is it possible?”
+
+It was too late for her to rise now, as his hands held both hers, and
+his handsome mouth was smiling level with her own. So it really seemed
+to a dispassionate spectator that it WAS possible, and before she had
+left the room, it even appeared to be the most probable thing in the
+world.
+
+*****
+
+The union of Grace Nevil and Robert Rushbrook was recorded by local
+history as the crown to his victory over the Ring. But only he and his
+wife knew that it was the cause.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Sappho of Green Springs, by Bret Harte
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