It was raining and blowing at Eldridge's Crossing. From the stately
pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly protesting through
their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical willows in the hollow, that
had whipped themselves into a maudlin fury, there was a general tumult.
When the wind lulled, the rain kept up the distraction, firing long
volleys across the road, letting loose miniature cataracts from the
hill-sides to brawl in the ditches, and beating down the heavy heads
of wild oats on the levels; when the rain ceased for a moment the wind
charged over the already defeated field, ruffled the gullies, scattered
the spray from the roadside pines, and added insult to injury. But both
wind and rain concentrated their energies in a malevolent attempt to
utterly disperse and scatter the “Half-way House,” which seemed to
have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed and
bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the taunting
fury of the blast. A loose, shambling, disjointed, hastily built
structure--representing the worst features of Pioneer renaissance--it
rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering teeth, banged its
ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of the invading storm, that it
might have blown up or blown down with equal facility.
Jefferson Briggs, proprietor and landlord of the “Half-way House,” had
just gone through the formality of closing his house for the night,
hanging dangerously out of the window in the vain attempt to subdue a
rebellious shutter that had evidently entered into conspiracy with the
invaders, and, shutting a door as against a sheriff's posse, was going
to bed--i. e., to read himself asleep, as was his custom. As he entered
his little bedroom in the attic with a highly exciting novel in his
pocket and a kerosene lamp in his hand, the wind, lying in wait for
him, instantly extinguished his lamp and slammed the door behind him.
Jefferson Briggs relighted the lamp, as if confidentially, in a corner,
and, shielding it in the bosom of his red flannel shirt, which gave him
the appearance of an illuminated shrine, hung a heavy bear-skin across
the window, and then carefully deposited his lamp upon a chair at his
bedside. This done, he kicked off his boots, flung them into a corner,
and, rolling himself in a blanket, lay down upon the bed. A habit of
early rising, bringing with it, presumably, the proverbial accompaniment
of health, wisdom, and pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it
certain ideas of the effeminacy of separate toilettes and the virtue of
readiness.
In a few moments he was deep in a chapter.
A vague pecking at his door--as of an unseasonable woodpecker, finally
asserted itself to his consciousness. “Come in,” he said, with his eye
still on the page.
The door opened to a gaunt figure, partly composed of bed-quilt and
partly of plaid shawl. A predominance of the latter and a long wisp of
iron-gray hair determined her sex. She leaned against the post with an
air of fatigue, half moral and half physical.
“How ye kin lie thar, abed, Jeff, and read and smoke on sich a night!
The sperrit o' the Lord abroad over the yearth--and up stage not gone by
yet. Well, well! it's well thar ez SOME EZ CAN'T SLEEP.”
“The up coach, like as not, is stopped by high water on the North Fork,
ten miles away, aunty,” responded Jeff, keeping to the facts. Possibly
not recognizing the hand of the beneficent Creator in the rebellious
window shutter, he avoided theology.
“Well,” responded the figure, with an air of delivering an unheeded and
thankless warning, “it is not for ME to say. P'raps it's all His wisdom
that some will keep to their own mind. It's well ez some hezn't narves,
and kin luxuriate in terbacker in the night watches. But He says, 'I'll
come like a thief in the night!'--like a thief in the night, Jeff.”
Totally unable to reconcile this illustration with the delayed “Pioneer”
coach and Yuba Bill, its driver, Jeff lay silent. In his own way,
perhaps, he was uneasy--not to say shocked--at his aunt's habitual
freedom of scriptural quotation, as that good lady herself was with
an occasional oath from his lips; a fact, by the way, not generally
understood by purveyors of Scripture, licensed and unlicensed.
“I'd take a pull at them bitters, aunty,” said Jeff feebly, with his
wandering eye still recurring to his page. “They'll do ye a power of
good in the way o' calmin' yer narves.”
“Ef I was like some folks I wouldn't want bitters--though made outer the
simplest yarbs of the yearth, with jest enough sperrit to bring out the
vartoos--ez Deacon Stoer's Balm 'er Gilead is--what yer meaning? Ef
I was like some folks I could lie thar and smoke in the lap o'
idleness--with fourteen beds in the house empty, and nary lodger for one
of 'em. Ef I was that indifferent to havin' invested my fortin in the
good will o' this house, and not ez much ez a single transient lookin'
in, I could lie down and take comfort in profane literatoor. But it
ain't in me to do it. And it wasn't your father's way, Jeff, neither!”
As the elder Briggs's way had been to seek surcease from such trouble at
the gambling table, and eventually, in suicide, Jeff could not deny
it. But he did not say that a full realization of his unhappy venture
overcame him as he closed the blinds of the hotel that night; and that
the half desperate idea of abandoning it then and there to the warring
elements that had resented his trespass on Nature seemed to him an
act of simple reason and justice. He did not say this, for easy-going
natures are not apt to explain the processes by which their content or
resignation is reached, and are therefore supposed to have none.
Keeping to the facts, he simply suggested the weather was unfavorable to
travelers, and again found his place on the page before him. Fixing it
with his thumb, he looked up resignedly. The figure wearily detached
itself from the door-post, and Jeff's eyes fell on his book. “You won't
stop, aunty?” he asked mechanically, as if reading aloud from the page;
but she was gone.
A little ashamed, although much relieved, Jeff fell back again to
literature, interrupted only by the charging of the wind and the heavy
volleys of rain. Presently he found himself wondering if a certain
banging were really a shutter, and then, having settled in his mind that
it WAS, he was startled by a shout. Another, and in the road before the
house!
Jeff put down the book, and marked the place by turning down the leaf,
being one of that large class of readers whose mental faculties are
butter-fingered, and easily slip their hold. Then he resumed his boots
and was duly caparisoned. He extinguished the kerosene lamp, and braved
the outer air, and strong currents of the hall and stairway in the
darkness. Lighting two candles in the bar-room, he proceeded to unlock
the hall door. At the same instant a furious blast shook the house,
the door yielded slightly and impelled a thin, meek-looking stranger
violently against Jeff, who still struggled with it.
“An accident has occurred,” began the stranger, “and”--but here the wind
charged again, blew open the door, pinned Jeff behind it back against
the wall, overturned the dripping stranger, dashed up the staircase, and
slammed every door in the house, ending triumphantly with No. 14, and a
crash of glass in the window.
“'Come, rouse up!” said Jeff, still struggling with the door, “rouse up
and lend a hand yer!”
Thus abjured, the stranger crept along the wall towards Jeff and began
again, “We have met with an accident.” But here another and mightier
gust left him speechless, covered him with spray of a wildly
disorganized water-spout that, dangling from the roof, seemed to be
playing on the front door, drove him into black obscurity and again
sandwiched his host between the door and the wall. Then there was a
lull, and in the midst of it Yuba Bill, driver of the “Pioneer” coach,
quietly and coolly, impervious in waterproof, walked into the hall,
entered the bar-room, took a candle, and, going behind the bar, selected
a bottle, critically examined it, and, returning, poured out a quantity
of whiskey in a glass and gulped it in a single draught.
All this while Jeff was closing the door, and the meek-looking man was
coming into the light again.
Yuba Bill squared his elbows behind him and rested them on the bar,
crossed his legs easily and awaited them. In reply to Jeff's inquiring
but respectful look, he said shortly--
“Oh, you're thar, are ye?”
“Yes, Bill.”
“Well, this yer new-fangled road o' yours is ten feet deep in the hollow
with back water from the North Fork! I've taken that yar coach inter
fower feet of it, and then I reckoned I couldn't hev any more. 'I'll
stand on this yer hand,' sez I; I brought the horses up yer and landed
'em in your barn to eat their blessed heads off till the water goes
down. That's wot's the matter, old man, and jist about wot I kalkilated
on from those durned old improvements o' yours.”
Coloring a little at this new count in the general indictment against
the uselessness of the “Half-way House,” Jeff asked if there were “any
passengers?”
Yuba Bill indicated the meek stranger with a jerk of his thumb. “And his
wife and darter in the coach. They're all right and tight, ez if they
was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But I reckon he allows to fetch 'em up
yer,” added Bill, as if he strongly doubted the wisdom of the transfer.
The meek man, much meeker for the presence of Bill, here suggested that
such indeed was his wish, and further prayed that Jeff would accompany
him to the coach to assist in bringing them up. “It's rather wet and
dark,” said the man apologetically; “my daughter is not strong. Have you
such a thing as a waterproof?”
Jeff had not; but would a bear-skin do?
It would.
Jeff ran, tore down his extempore window curtain, and returned with it.
Yuba Bill, who had quietly and disapprovingly surveyed the proceeding,
here disengaged himself from the bar with evident reluctance.
“You'll want another man,” he said to Jeff, “onless ye can carry double.
Ez HE,” indicating the stranger, “ez no sort o' use, he'd better stay
here and 'tend bar,' while you and me fetch the wimmen off. 'Specially
ez I reckon we've got to do some tall wadin' by this time to reach 'em.”
The meek man sat down helplessly in a chair indicated by Bill, who at
once strode after Jeff. In another moment they were both fighting
their way, step by step, against the storm, in that peculiar, drunken,
spasmodic way so amusing to the spectator and so exasperating to
the performer. It was no time for conversation, even interjectional
profanity was dangerously exhaustive.
The coach was scarcely a thousand yards away, but its bright lights were
reflected in a sheet of dark silent water that stretched between it and
the two men. Wading and splashing, they soon reached it, and a gully
where the surplus water was pouring into the valley below. “Fower feet
o' water round her, but can't get any higher. So ye see she's all right
for a month o' sich weather.” Inwardly admiring the perspicacity of his
companion, Jeff was about to open the coach door when Bill interrupted.
“I'll pack the old woman, if you'll look arter the darter and enny
little traps.”
A female face, anxious and elderly, here appeared at the window.
“Thet's my little game,” said Bill, sotto voce.
“Is there any danger? where is my husband?” asked the woman impatiently.
“Ez to the danger, ma'am,--thar ain't any. Yer ez safe HERE ez ye'd be
in a Sacramento steamer; ez to your husband, he allowed I was to come
yer and fetch yer up to the hotel. That's his look-out!” With this
cheering speech, Bill proceeded to make two or three ineffectual scoops
into the dark interior, manifestly with the idea of scooping out the
lady in question. In another instant he had caught her, lifted her
gently but firmly in his arms, and was turning away.
“But my child!--my daughter! she's asleep!”--expostulated the woman; but
Bill was already swiftly splashing through the darkness. Jeff, left to
himself, hastily examined the coach: on the back seat a slight small
figure, enveloped in a shawl, lay motionless. Jeff threw the bear-skin
over it gently, lifted it on one arm, and gathering a few travelling
bags and baskets with the other, prepared to follow his quickly
disappearing leader. A few feet from the coach the water appeared to
deepen, and the bear-skin to draggle. Jeff drew the figure up higher, in
vain.
“Sis,” he said softly.
No reply.
“Sis,” shaking her gently.
There was a slight movement within the wrappings.
“Couldn't ye climb up on my shoulder, honey? that's a good child!”
There were one or two spasmodic jerks of the bear-skin, and, aided by
Jeff, the bundle was presently seated on his shoulder.
“Are you all right now, Sis?”
Something like a laugh came from the bear-skin. Then a childish voice
said, “Thank you, I think I am!”
“Ain't you afraid you'll fall off?”
“A little.”
Jeff hesitated. It was beginning to blow again.
“You couldn't reach down and put your arm round my neck, could ye,
honey?”
“I am afraid not!”--although there WAS a slight attempt to do so.
“No?”
“No!”
“Well, then, take a good holt, a firm strong holt, o' my hair! Don't be
afraid!”
A small hand timidly began to rummage in Jeff's thick curls.
“Take a firm holt; thar, just back o' my neck! That's right.”
The little hand closed over half a dozen curls. The little figure shook,
and giggled.
“Now don't you see, honey, if I'm keerless with you, and don't keep
you plump level up thar, you jist give me a pull and fetch me up all
standing!”
“I see!”
“Of course you do! That's because you're a little lady!”
Jeff strode on. It was pleasant to feel the soft warm fingers in his
hair, pleasant to hear the faint childish voice, pleasant to draw the
feet of the enwrapped figure against his broad breast. Altogether he
was sorry when they reached the dry land and the lee of the “Half-way
House,” where a slight movement of the figure expressed a wish to
dismount.
“Not yet, missy,” said Jeff; “not yet! You'll get blown away, sure! And
then what'll they say? No, honey! I'll take you right in to your papa,
just as ye are!”
A few steps more and Jeff strode into the hall, made his way to
the sitting-room, walked to the sofa, and deposited his burden. The
bear-skin fell back, the shawl fell back, and Jeff--fell back too!
For before him lay a small, slight, but beautiful and perfectly formed
woman.
He had time to see that the meek man, no longer meek, but apparently a
stern uncompromising parent, was standing at the head of the sofa; that
the elderly and nervous female was hovering at the foot, that his aunt,
with every symptom of religious and moral disapproval of his conduct,
sat rigidly in one of the rigid chairs--he had time to see all this
before the quick, hot blood, flying to his face, sent the water into his
eyes, and he could see nothing!
The cause of all this smiled--a dazzling smile though a faint one--that
momentarily lit up the austere gloom of the room and its occupants. “You
must thank this gentleman, papa,” said she, languidly turning to her
father, “for his kindness and his trouble. He has carried me here as
gently and as carefully as if I were a child.” Seeing symptoms of a
return of Jeff's distress in his coloring face, she added softly, as
if to herself, “It's a great thing to be strong--a greater thing to be
strong AND gentle.”
The voice thrilled through Jeff. But into this dangerous human voice
twanged the accents of special spiritual revelation, and called him
to himself again, “Be ye wise as sarpints, but harmless as duvs,” said
Jeff's aunt, generally, “and let 'em be thankful ez doesn't aboos the
stren'th the Lord gives 'em, but be allers ready to answer for it at the
bar o' their Maker.” Possibly some suggestion in her figure of speech
reminded her of Jeff's forgotten duties, so she added in the same breath
and tone, “especially when transient customers is waiting for their
licker, and Yuba Bill hammerin' on the counter with his glass; and yer
ye stand, Jeff, never even takin' up that wet bar-skin--enuff to give
that young woman her death.”
Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the occupants
of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on the sofa, Jeff
seized the bear-skin and backed out the door. Then he flew to his room
with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but the impatient William of
Yuba had characteristically helped himself and gone off to the stable.
Then Jeff stole into the hall and halted before the closed door of the
sitting-room. A bold idea of going in again, as became a landlord of the
“Half-way House,” with an inquiry if they wished anything further, had
seized him, but the remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that
duty to devolve upon his aunt, and that she would probably resent it
with scriptural authority and bring him to shame again, stayed his
timid knuckles at the door. In this hesitation he stumbled upon his aunt
coming down the stairs with an armful of blankets and pillows, attended
by their small Indian servant, staggering under a mattress.
“Is everything all right, aunty?”
“Ye kin be thankful to the Lord, Jeff Briggs, that this didn't happen
last week when I was down on my back with rheumatiz. But ye're never
grateful.”
“The young lady--is SHE comfortable?” said Jeff, accepting his aunt's
previous remark as confirmatory.
“Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the Lord with gallopin'
consumption kin be, I reckon. And she, ez oughter be putting off airthly
vanities, askin' for a lookin'-glass! And you! trapesin' through the
hall with her on yer shoulder, and dancin' and jouncin' her up and down
ez if it was a ball-room!” A guilty recollection that he had skipped
with her through the passage struck him with remorse as his aunt went
on: “It's a mercy that betwixt you and the wet bar-skin she ain't got
her deth!”
“Don't ye think, aunty,” stammered Jeff, “that--that--my bein' the
landlord, yer know, it would be the square thing--just out o' respect,
ye know--for me to drop in thar and ask 'em if thar's anythin' they
wanted?”
His aunt stopped, and resignedly put down the pillows. “Sarah,” she
said meekly to the handmaiden, “ye kin leave go that mattress. Yer's Mr.
Jefferson thinks we ain't good enough to make the beds for them two city
women folks, and he allows he'll do it himself!”
“No, no! aunty!” began the horrified Jeff; but failing to placate his
injured relative, took safety in flight.
Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-skin. It certainly
WAS wet. Perhaps he had been careless--perhaps he had imperiled her
life! His cheeks flushed as he threw it hastily in the corner. Something
fell from it to the floor. Jeff picked it up and held it to the light.
It was a small, a very small, lady's slipper. Holding it within the palm
of his hand as if it had been some delicate flower which the pressure of
a finger might crush, he strode to the door, but stopped. Should he
give it to his aunt? Even if she overlooked this evident proof of
HIS carelessness, what would she think of the young lady's? Ought
he--seductive thought!--go downstairs again, knock at the door, and give
it to its fair owner, with the apology he was longing to make? Then he
remembered that he had but a few moments before been dismissed from the
room very much as if he were the original proprietor of the skin he had
taken. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he WAS only a foolish clumsy
animal! Yet SHE had thanked him--and had said in her sweet childlike
voice, “It is a great thing to be strong; a greater thing to be strong
and gentle.” He was strong; strong men had said so. He did not know if
he was gentle too. Had she meant THAT, when she turned her strangely
soft dark eyes upon him? For some moments he held the slipper
hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened his trunk, and disposing
various articles around it as if it were some fragile, perishable
object, laid it carefully therein.
This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself in his blanket,
lay down upon the bed. He did not open his novel--he did not follow
up the exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so ungrateful
is humanity to us poor romancers, in the first stages of their real
passion. Ah, me! 'tis the jongleurs and troubadours they want then, not
us! When Master Slender, sick for sweet Anne Page, would “rather than
forty shillings” he had his “book of songs and sonnets” there, what
availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had contemporaneously discoursed
wisely and sweetly of love in prose? I doubt not that Master Jeff would
have mumbled some verse to himself had he known any: knowing none, he
lay there and listened to the wind.
Did she hear it; did it keep her awake? He had an uneasy suspicion that
the shutter that was banging so outrageously was the shutter of her
room. Filled with this miserable thought, he arose softly, stole down
the staircase, and listened. The sound was repeated. It was truly
the refractory shutter of No. 7--the best bedroom adjoining the
sitting-room. The next room, No. 8, was vacant. Jeff entered it softly,
as softly opened the window, and leaning far out in the tempest, essayed
to secure the nocturnal disturber. But in vain. Cord or rope he
had none, nor could he procure either without alarming his aunt--an
extremity not to be considered. Jeff was a man of clumsy but forceful
expedients. He hung far out of the window, and with one powerful hand
lifted the shutter off its hinges and dragged it softly into No. 8. Then
as softly he crept upstairs to bed. The wind howled and tore round the
house; the crazy water-pipe below Jeff's window creaked, the chimneys
whistled, but the shutter banged no more. Jeff began to doze. “It's a
great thing to be strong,” the wind seemed to say as it charged upon the
defenseless house, and then another voice seemed to reply, “A greater
thing to be strong and gentle;” and hearing this he fell asleep.