Clayton, who was blowing little puffs of wind into the glass in her
hand, and seemed to have no interest in common with the eager, laughing
crowd about. "He and his pardner are both here; they own placer-mines on
Yreka Flats, and came here because the gentleman's liver is affected.
They're a funny couple--never speak to no ladies, and ain't sociable
like, only among themselves. His pardner--there he is now, going up
after him," pointing to a low-built, square-shouldered man, with black,
bushy eyebrows--"waits on him like a woman, and no two brothers couldn't
be more affectionate. His pardner told me his own self that when they
first came together, eighteen years ago, he got into a row at
Placerville--used to be Hangtown, then--and they were firing into him
thick and fast after he was down, when Mr. Brodie stepped in, picked him
up and carried him to their cabin, and nussed him till he was well
again. You see he limps a little yet; but then Mr. Brodie was the only
doctor he had, and he says it's a wonder to him he has any legs left at
all, he was so riddled with shot."
Sufficient water having been drank, the ladies wended their way back,
scattering as they approached the hotel building--generally spoken of as
"the house"--which contained parlor, dining and assembly rooms. Some
sought their cottages, others climbed the hill-sides, while still others
visited the little stream rushing along through the green depths that
the stage-road overhung. Some had escorts, others went alone, or formed
groups of three or four; and all gave themselves up to the enjoyment of
that perfect freedom which makes the stay at these California
watering-places a recreation and a holiday.
As the heat of the sun became more oppressive, the stragglers returned;
and the closed window-blinds of the cottages spoke of an unusually warm
day for the season. This, however, did not forbid the ushering in of the
next day with an extra heavy fog, which dripped from the eaves like
rain, and made more penetrating the wind that came in surly gusts and
rudely swept back the end of the shawl thrown Spanish-fashion over Mrs.
Clayton's shoulder. Her right hand grasped a bottle filled with water
from the Springs; and the left, hidden until now under the shawl, was
bound up in a white cloth. The wind had carried her hat away, too; and
after looking helplessly around, she deposited the bottle on the bench
nearest her, and gave chase to the runaway. But the hat was suddenly
held up before her, and the bottle taken from the bench. It was the
gentleman from Siskiyou, who stammered something she did not understand,
and to which she replied sweetly and plaintively, "Thank you, ever so
much. I am so helpless with that hand. I sprained it some weeks ago,
falling from a carriage, and did not know how bad it was till the
doctors sent me here. I must have hurt it again yesterday; and now I've
got to go about like a cripple." The voice was like a child's; and a
half sob seemed to rise in her throat as she spoke the last words, and a
tell-tale moisture shone in her eyes.
He had awkwardly set the bottle back on the bench; and when she prepared
to move on, he bent over to seize the bottle and carry it for her. In
his nervousness he did not heed that she, too, was stooping forward; and
only when their heads came in contact did he realize how near he had
stood to her. A deep scarlet overspread his sallow face, while Mrs.
Clayton said, "Oh, will you carry the bottle for me? Thanks. I wanted to
bathe my hand, and was afraid to go more than once through the fog and
wind."
They reached the cottage, where he deposited the bottle on the
door-steps, and withdrew with a somewhat awkward, but perfectly
chivalrous bow.
After breakfast, when the ground was still too wet to walk out, Jenny,
sitting in the low rocking-chair by the open door, was startled by
footsteps crunching under the window; and a moment later Mr. Brodie
placed a bottle at her feet.
"I thought it might be better for your wrist to have the water hot to
bathe it in; that's just from the spring, and I walked fast." In spite
of the unvarnished speech, there was something about the man that made
it plain to her why people involuntarily spoke of him as "the
gentleman," when his partner was always spoken of merely as his partner.
It was only common politeness that she should allow him to sit on the
door-step, while she immersed the soft, white hand; and the bottle of
hot spring water was repeated, till she declared the ground dry enough
to walk down to the spring with him. Any number of necks were stretched
from parlor-doors and windows, when the shy, bashful gentleman from
Siskiyou was seen escorting Mrs. Clayton; but falling in with a train of
ladies at the Springs, they all walked back together. Mr. Brodie,
unnoticed apparently by Jenny, and uncomfortable among so many of the
"contrary sex," quietly slipped away under the shadow of a clump of
young trees, where he was joined directly by his partner, who had
watched him uneasily all the morning.
It was a warm, cloudless day, a few weeks later, and Mrs. Clayton had
not joined the picnic party--because, Ben. Brodie said to himself, with
a flutter of his unsophisticated heart, _he_ had felt too unwell in the
morning to go. Going down to the Springs alone, Jenny met his partner,
and asked pleasantly whether Mr. Brodie had yet recovered from his
attack of last night.
"Thank you, Miss, he's better; but it's my opinion as how he'd get well
much quicker if he left these Springs and went down to 'Frisco for a
spell."
"But, Mr. Perkins, his liver is affected; and these waters are said to
be very beneficial."
"Yes, Miss, it _was_ his liver; but I think as how it's in the chist
now; and"--doggedly aside--"mebbee the heart, too; and he'll never be
himself again while he's up here."
"Oh, you must not see things so black. See, there comes Mr. Brodie now."
"Yes--" something like an oath was smothered between the bearded lips,
and the shaggy eyebrows were lowered portentously--"so I see. Ben,
didn't I tell yer to stay in the house, and I'd fetch yer the water?"
Whenever Si Perkins addressed Jenny as "Miss"--which was almost
invariably his custom--it made her think of a short conversation between
Mr. Brodie and herself, soon after their first acquaintance. He had
asked her, with an assumed indifference, but a nervous tremor in his
voice, "And you are a widow, Mrs. Clayton?" upon which she had turned
sharply and said, snappishly, "Would I be away up here all alone if I
had a husband?" It flashed through her mind again, as she saw the
partner's darkened brow and working lips when Mr. Brodie answered, "It's
all right, Si; I wanted to come;" and he laughed a short, confused laugh
that stood for any number of unexpressed sentiments--particularly when
Jenny was by.
"Shall we walk up toward the garden?" he asked of Jenny.
"I think there is shade all the way up," she replied, throwing an uneasy
look on Si Perkins's scowling face. "You may light your cigar, if you
feel well enough to smoke." Mr. Brodie turned to his partner to ask for
a match, and the next moment left him standing alone in the sun, as
though he had no more existence for him.
They halted many times on their way to the garden. It was in an opposite
direction from the Springs; but here as there the road had been partly
cut out on the mountain-side--partly filled in--so that it formed a
terrace overhanging the dense forest-growth in the ravine below, while
on the banks and mountain-tops above grew pines and madrones, the
manzanite shrub and treacherous gloss of the poison-oak making the whole
look like a carefully planted park. The "garden" was a little mountain
valley, taking its name from an enclosed patch, where nothing was grown,
but where the neglected fields were kept fresh and green by the little
rivulet flowing from the cold spring at the foot of an immense sycamore.
Farther on were groups of young oaks, and under these were benches; but
Jenny preferred sitting in the shade of the pines on the clean, sweet
grass. The birds, never molested here, hovered fearlessly about them,
singing and chirping, the blue and yellow butterflies keeping time to
the music.
For quite a while Mr. Brodie had been watching Jenny's lithe figure
darting hither and thither, trying to take the butterflies prisoners
under her hat; her eyes sparkled, and she shouted merrily whenever she
had secured a prize, which, after a moment's triumph, she always set
free again.
"Come and sit down," called Mr. Brodie to her, "or you will hurt your
hand again, and all my three weeks' doctoring will be thrown away."
"It hurts me now," said Jenny, ruefully, "for I struck it against that
tree."
She held up the offending hand, and he inspected it narrowly, looking up
suddenly into her eyes, as though to read in them an answer to something
he had just thought. But it was hard to read anything there, though
Jenny had the sweetest eyes in the world--laughing and sad by turns, and
of warm liquid light. What their color was, it was hard to determine.
They had been called black, hazel, gray; never blue. Her smile was as
unfathomable as her eyes; and you could read nothing of her life, her
history, her character, from either brow or lip. Her hand alone--it was
the right one--as it rested on the sward beside her, might have told to
one better versed in such reading than Ben Brodie, how, like Theodore
Storm's "Elizabeth," it had, "through many a sleepless night, been
resting on a sore, sick heart."
He raised the hand tenderly, not understanding its secret, and asked,
stroking it as we do a child's, "What was my partner saying to you as I
came up a while ago?"
"He wants you to go to San Francisco, away from here. Would you go and
leave me here alone, when you know how lonesome I should be without
you?"
She heard his low, nervous laugh, as he moved uneasily, and held the
hand tighter; but when she looked up into his face, expecting an answer,
it came in his usual abrupt, or, as Jenny said, "jerky" style.
"No, of course I wouldn't go. I'll stay as long as you want me to.
I--I--like you--pretty well."
Jenny's paling cheek blazed up crimson, and she looked fairly aghast as
she repeated mechanically, "'Like you pretty well.' Thank you. _Like_
me, indeed!" She had drawn away her hand, like a pettish child, and she
muttered, a wicked smile breaking over her face, "I don't believe the
man _could_ love any one if he tried. But I'll find out;" and she turned
again to where he sat, disconsolate at the loss of her hand.
Her quicker ear caught the crackling of dry twigs before he could speak
again, and a shrill scream burst from her lips. He was on his feet in an
instant, and flung his arms about the trembling form before his eye
could follow the direction of hers.
"The bear!" she stammered; "the grizzly--there, there!" and the story of
the huge grizzly having been seen in the mountains those last weeks
flashed through his mind.
"Be still!" he said, as she glided from his arms to the ground; "he
cannot hurt you till he has killed me." He stooped to pick up a fallen
branch, and as he did so his eyes came on a level with a large black
calf, rolling over and over in the tall grass. He flung the stick from
him with a disgusted "Pshaw!" and Jenny dropped her hands from her eyes
when his laugh fell on her ear. She joined in the laugh, though hers
sounded a little hysterical; and then insisted on returning immediately,
and his promise to keep the tragi-comic _intermezzo_ a profound secret.
Days passed before Jenny would venture out again; and poor Mr. Brodie
wandered about like one lost, dreading to visit the cottage, because of
a sudden indescribable reserve of the fair tenant, yet held as by
invisible hands in the nearest neighborhood of the place. One day,
sitting with blinds closed and a headache, ready for an excuse to all
who should come to tempt her out, Jenny missed the tall form passing
shyly by the door half a dozen times per diem. The next morning she met
Si Perkins--by the merest accident, of course, on her part--coming from
the spring with a bottle of water.
"Is Mr. Brodie sick?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes, Miss; he was took bad night before last; but he's better," he
added, anxious to prevent--he hardly knew what.
"Very well; you may tell Mr. Brodie that I am coming to see him and read
to him this afternoon." She spoke determinedly, almost savagely, as
though she anticipated finding Si Perkins at the door with drawn sword,
ready to dispute the entrance.
She was shocked to find Mr. Brodie so pale and thin as he lay on the bed
that afternoon; and Si Perkins, in a tone that seemed to accuse her of
being the cause, said, "I told you it was his chist, Miss; he's getting
powerful weak up here in the mountains, and yit he won't go down."
She was an angel while he was too sick to leave his room, sitting by him
for hours, reading to him in her soft child's voice, and speaking to
him so gently and tenderly that he felt a better, and oh! so much
happier a man when he first walked out beside her again.
Then there came a day when Ben Brodie stopped at the cottage of his kind
nurse, and with the air of a culprit asked Jenny to come with him, "away
up into the mountains." The light that flashed in her eyes a moment was
quenched by something that looked strangely like a tear, as she turned
to reach for her hat. It was early afternoon, and most people were still
in their cottages, with blinds, and perhaps eyes too, closed. The two
walked slowly, or climbed rather, resting often and looking back to
where they could see the white cottages blinking through the trees. The
wind blew only enough to rustle the pine branches, without stirring the
sobs and wails that lay dormant in those trees. Jays and woodpeckers
went with them, and many a shining flower was broken by the way. At last
Jenny stopped and looked around.
"Don't let us go farther--who knows but what we may encounter another
bear?" she said roguishly; and he prepared a soft seat for her under the
pines, by pulling handfuls of grass and heaping it up in one place.
She smiled to herself as she watched him; his awkwardness had left him,
and for the comfort of one whom he only "liked pretty well," he was
taking a great deal of pains, she thought. When she was seated, and had
made him share the grass seat, the restraint suddenly returned, and he
fell to stroking her hand again, and stammered something about her wrist
being better.
"Yes," she affirmed, "and I mean to return to the city in a day or two."
He blushed like a girl. "May I go with you?" he asked; and then jumped
at once into the midst of a "declaration"--which had evidently been
gotten by heart--winding up by asking again, "and now may I go with you
to San Francisco, Jenny? and will you marry me?"
Her eyes had been fixed on the lone bare crag away off across the
valley; and the color in them had changed from light gray to deep black,
and had faded again to a dull heavy gray.
"You may go to San Francisco, of course, though I shall not see you
there. And 'I like you pretty well,' too; but you must not dare to dream
that I could ever marry you."
A little linnet in the tree above them had hopped from branch to branch,
and now sat on the lowest, almost facing them. When Jenny's voice,
stone-cold and harsh, had ceased, he broke into a surprised little
chirp, and then uttered quick, sharp notes of reproof or remonstrance.
Jenny understood either the language of the bird, or what the wild,
startled eyes looking into hers said, for the hand that had lain in his
was tightly clinched beside her, telling a tale she would not let her
face repeat.
When the lamp had been lighted in her cottage that night, she stood
irresolute by the window from where she could see the Brodie-Perkins
habitation. On her way to the dining-room she had come unawares on Si
Perkins instructing a waiter to bring tea to their cottage; and though
she had asked no question, her eyes had rested wistfully on the
partner's stern face. Now she paced the room, her face flushed, her
hands clasped above her aching head, then dropped again idle and
nerveless by her side.
"It is too late," she said, at last; "and it can never, never be. Then
why make myself wretched over it?" and with a sudden revulsion of
feeling she raised the curtain and looked steadily over to the other
cottage. "It is only the law of reprisals, after all, Ben Brodie! To be
sure _you_ did not break my heart--but--that other man--and--you are all
men." Her voice had died to a whisper; and, drawing writing material
toward her at the table, she was in the midst of her letter before the
vengeful light died out of her eyes. Once she laid her head on her arm
and sobbed bitterly; but she finished the letter, closed and directed
it, and turned down the light so that she could not be seen going from
the cottage. The night air was damp and chilly, and before descending
the three wooden steps that led from the little stoop to the ground, her
unsteady hand sought the dress-pocket to drop her letter in; and then
she drew the shawl and hood close about her.
She shuddered the next morning, as she threw a last look back into the
room from which her trunk and baggage had already been taken, and she
muttered something about the dreariness of an empty room and an empty
heart. But when her numerous dear friends came to the stage to bid a
last farewell, Jenny's face looked so radiant that many a one turned
with secret envy from the woman to whom life must seem like one
continuous holiday. Si Perkins, with eyebrows drawn deep down, was
attentively studying a newspaper by the open window of the reading-room;
and when Jenny threw a look back from the stage, she fancied that a
trembling hand was working at the blinds of the two partners' cottage;
and the sallow, ghastly face, and wild, startled eyes of yesterday, rose
up reproachfully before her.
The day dragged slowly on; "from heat to heat" the sun had kissed the
tree-tops with its drowsy warmth, hushing to sleep the countless birds
that make the mountain-side their home. With the cool of evening came
the low breeze that shook the sleepers from repose, and sighed sadly,
sadly through the pines.
"Has the stage come in?" asked Ben Brodie slowly, as he lay with closed
eyes and feverish brow on his bed in the cottage.
"Nearly an hour ago," answered Si Perkins, in his growling voice. He had
tried hard to maintain his usual key, but his eyes rested with deep
concern on his friend's face as he spoke.
"And was there any one in the stage whom you knew?"
"No one."
The sick man opened his eyes, and closed them again wearily. His lips
worked spasmodically for an instant; then he asked resolutely, but in an
almost inaudible tone, "Did not _she_ come back, Si? Are you sure? Did
you see all the passengers?"
"It's no use, Ben; she's gone, and she'll never come back."
"But, Si"--the quivering lips could hardly frame the words--"have you
been to her cottage? I had not asked you to look, you know; but will you
go to her room now, and see if she has not come back?"
Without a word Si took his hat, his lips twitching almost as perceptibly
as Ben Brodie's. When he had reached the door the sick man said, "You
are not mad, Si, are you? Have patience with me; I shall be better--so
much better--soon, and then you will forgive me."
Si turned and held the feverish hand a moment, muttering that he'd go
to--a very hot place if his partner bade him, and then left the room.
Though he knew the utter folly of such a proceeding, he went to the
vacant cottage, and peered through the open blind into the vacant room.
There was something so death-like and still about the place that he
turned with heavy heart and eyes bent down to the three steps that led
from the stoop to the ground. Something white shimmered up out of the
crevice between the stoop and the first step, and he bent down, saying
to himself, "If it's only a scrap of paper, Ben is spoony enough to want
it, and kiss it mebbee, because it was hers."
The dampness of the past night had saturated the paper, and drying again
in the sun, a portion of the letter--for such it proved to be--adhered
to the board as Si attempted to draw it out. The letter unfolded itself,
and fluttered lightly before Si's face, who bestowed a blessing on the
"cobweb" paper, and then doggedly sat down to read what was written on
it. His shaggy eyebrows seemed to grow heavier as he read, and his face
turned a livid brown and then red again. When he had finished, he threw
a hasty look over toward their cottage, and crushing the letter in
fierce but silent wrath, he dropped the wad into his pocket and slowly
retraced his steps.
"She hasn't come?"
If Ben had moved from his bed during Si's absence, the latter did not
notice any derangement of furniture or bed-clothes, and he now dropped
heavily into a chair beside his friend's bed.
"When you get well, old fellow, we must go."
"Where? To San Francisco?"
"San Francisco be ----. No; to Siskiyou."
There was no response. The fever had gone down, and Ben lay pale and
still, like a corpse almost, except that his fingers seemed striving to
touch something which evaded his grasp. The wind had grown stronger, and
on it came borne the notes of the grossbeak, who strays down from the
mountain-tops in the evening, and makes those who hear him think of
home, of absent friends, and of all we hold dearest, and all who have
gone from us farthest in this world.
"How mournfully the wind sings!" said Ben, softly. "It seems like her
voice calling to me. But I will never see her again--. She could not
think of me as I did of her. I would lay down my life for her; but she
could only like me a little. She was too good for me."
"Ben, Ben! I can't bear to hear you talk so. Oh! that wicked, wicked
woman!"
"Hush, Si; she was an angel; and when I was sick she taught me to pray."
The gaunt hand that had been raised as if to ward off the harsh words
his partner would say, fell back on his breast, where he laid it across
the other. "Our Father who art in heaven--" The fingers stiffened, and
the heavy lids sank over the weary eyes.
"Ben, old pard, look at me! Speak to me!" He bent over the motionless
form, and laid his hand caressingly on the wiry black hair. "Don't you
leave me alone in the world." The trembling hand glided down to his
friend's breast and laid itself over the heart. But the heart stood
still; and as he drew back his hand, it touched a cold, smooth object
that fell to the floor. He stooped, and lifted a small vial to the
light, and as he did so a great scalding tear fell on the label, just
where the word "Poison" was traced in large letters.
When Si Perkins returned to the Placer Mines, on Yreka Flats, he brought
with him only two articles which he seemed to consider of value. They
were always kept under lock and key. The one was a small vial, with the
word "Poison" on the label, blurred and blotted; the other a letter,
carefully smoothed out, after having been, to all appearances, cruelly
crushed and crumpled.
The letter ran thus:
HOT SPRINGS, June 28.
"DEAR JIM: I am coming home, and may be in San Francisco even
before this reaches you, unless I should be seized with a notion to
remain in San José, or visit the Warm Springs, or the Mission. My
wrist is not strong yet; and to tell you the truth, only 'the
persecutions of a man' are driving me away from here. I can see you
laugh, and hear you saying, 'At your old tricks, Jenny.' But though
I shall recount the whole affair to you when we meet, I shall not
allow you to laugh at the discomfiture of the gentleman from
Siskiyou. He is so terribly in earnest; and--oh! I remember but too
well the blow you struck my heart when you first told me that you
could never belong to me; that I could never be your lawful wife.
But I don't mean to grow sentimental. You may please issue orders
to Ah Sing and Chy Lun to 'set my house in order,' and look for me
any time between this and the 'glorious Fourth.'
JENNY."
_SOMETHING ABOUT MY PETS._
Many a bitter tear they have cost me--the different pets I have had: not
their possession, but their loss, which followed as inevitably as fate,
and as surely as day follows night. As far as my recollection goes back,
my four-footed friends have occupied prominent places in my affections,
and have eventually become the cause of great sorrow. The first doubt I
ever felt of the justice and humanity of the world in general, and my
kinsfolk in particular, was because of the cruel death of my favorite
dog, Arno, who had been given away after my older brother's death, to a
family who had more use and room for a large hunting-dog than my widowed
mother.