When Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension of Indian Spring,
which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one
of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a
bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft
hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen cream of
Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demureness quite inconsistent with
any moral dereliction. Unfortunately, she forgot to remove at the same
time a certain ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her
duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight exception, the
benignant fate which always protected that young person brought her
in contact with the Burnham girls at one end of the main street as the
returning coach to Excelsior entered the other, and enabled her to take
leave of them before the coach office with a certain ostentation of
parting which struck Mr. Jack Brace, who was lingering at the doorway,
into a state of utter bewilderment.
Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior, calm, quiet,
self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and dainty shoes as fresh as
when she had left her father’s house; but where was the woman of the
brown duster, and where the yellow-dressed apparition of the woods? He
was feebly repeating to himself his mental adjuration of a few hours
before when he caught her eye, and was taken with a blush and a fit
of coughing. Could he have been such an egregious fool, and was it not
plainly written on his embarrassed face for her to read?
“Are we going down together?” asked Miss Nellie with an exceptionally
gracious smile.
There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this advance. The girl
had no idea of Brace’s suspicion of her, nor did any uneasy desire to
placate or deceive a possible rival of Low’s prompt her graciousness.
She simply wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale
excitement of the past two hours, as she had shaken the dust of the
woods from her clothes. It was characteristic of her irresponsible
nature and transient susceptibilities that she actually enjoyed
the relief of change; more than that, I fear, she looked upon this
infidelity to a past dubious pleasure as a moral principle. A mild, open
flirtation with a recognized man like Brace, after her secret passionate
tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an ethical equipoise that
seemed proper to one of her religious education.
Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie’s condescension; he at
once secured the seat by her side, and spent the four hours and a half
of their return journey to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion
with her. If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was
equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he had premeditated a
few hours before. He was therefore obliged to take a middle course of
slightly egotistical narration of his own personal adventures, with
which he beguiled the young girl’s ear. This he only departed from once,
to describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had seen that
day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to divining her possible
acceptance of it for a “buggy robe;” and once to comment upon a ring
which she had inadvertently disclosed in pulling off her glove.
“It’s only an old family keepsake,” she added, with easy mendacity; and
affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace’s curiosity a not unnatural excuse
for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and
virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and
resume her glove.
A week passed--a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those
dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable
dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were
breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the
snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon
was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging
coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its
passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior
Hotel. As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces.
They were the usual type of travelers: a single professional man in
dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of
miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer
or muleteer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in the
bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel,
as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled
with a lazy, dragging step--half impeded by the enormous leather
leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class--down the main
street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the
same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and
saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street
corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could
be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of masculine
Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures about
at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his marked
attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters of
Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church.
Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered
he managed to slip unperceived behind them.
The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers’ generosity was a modern
building, large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn’s popularity, and
had been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the
generous donors, as one of the “biggest religious bluffs” on record. Its
groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested
their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees,
and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for the future organ,
the few choristers, gathered round a small harmonium, were lost in the
deepening shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer remained hidden
in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments’ desultory
conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of
Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their practicing, the
choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back
in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a few moments a
vague and motionless figure in the silent church. Then coming cautiously
to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the
faint light of the dying day shone in the black eyes of Teresa! Despite
her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair
piled and twisted around her head, the strange dress and boyish figure,
one swift glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity.
She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a
hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the title-page,
“Nellie Wynn.” HER name, and HER book. The instinct that had guided her
here was right; the slight gossip of her fellow-passengers was right;
this was the clergyman’s daughter, whose praise filled all mouths. This
was the unknown girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps
had been seeking Low--the girl who absorbed his fancy--the secret of
his absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the girl whom to
see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her liberty and her life
unknown to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came
from the book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had
given her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms
over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have
had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual
Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that
requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell,
empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its
desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of
this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and
converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a
woman’s withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman,
she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that
the majesty of their woodland aisles--so unlike this pillared sham--had
taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this
imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that
a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature
blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to
meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come
here? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation
of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if
he should return--if he had already returned? She rose to her feet,
whitening yet joyful with the thought. She could return at once; what
was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to satisfy herself if he
were at HER house. She had been told where it was; she could find it in
the dark; an open door or window would betray some sign or sound of
the occupants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her
flaunting scarf around her throat, groped her way to the door, and
glided into the outer darkness.