the stream, but under it, so that the water goes shallowly with a
whisper, ah, so fast, and below it is a pool. Here on the rocks the
shepherds make pine logs to lie with stones so that the sheep cross
over. Every year the water carries the logs away and the shepherds build
again, and there is no shepherd goes by that water but lose some sheep.
Therefore, they call it the ford of Crèvecoeur [Break-heart].
Well, I have been about by the meadow of Angostura when it come last
July, and there I see Narcisse Duplin. He is tell me the feed is good
about Sentinel Rock, so I think me to go back by the way of Crèvecoeur.
There is pine wood all about eastward from that place. It is all shadow
there at midday and has a weary sound. Me, I like it not, that pine
wood, so I push the flock and am very glad when I hear toward the ford
the bark of dogs and the broken sound of bells. I think there is other
shepherd that make talk with me. But me, M'siu, _sacre! damn!_ when I
come out by the ford there is Filon Geraud. He has come up one side
Crèvecoeur, with his flock, as I have come up the other. He laugh.
"Hillo, Raoul," say Filon, "will you cross?"
"I will cross," say I.
"After me," say Filon.
"Before," say I.
M'siu does not know about sheep? Ah, non. It is so that the sheep is
most scare of all beasts about water. Never so little a stream will he
cross, but if the dogs compel him. It is the great trouble of shepherds
to get the flock across the waters that go in and about the Sierras. For
that it is the custom to have two, three goats with the flocks to go
first across the water, then they will follow. But here at Crèvecoeur it
is bad crossing any way you go; also that day it is already afternoon.
Therefore I stand at one side that ford and make talk with Filon at the
other about who goes first. Then my goat which leads my flock come push
by me and I stand on that log while we talk. He is one smart goat.
"Eh, Raoul, let the goats decide," cries Filon, and to that I have
agree. Filon push his goat on the log, he is one great black one that is
call Diable--I ask you is that a name for a goat? I have call mine Noé.
So they two walk on that log very still; for they see what they have to
do. Then they push with the head, Diable and Noé, till that log it rock
in the water; Filon is cry to his goat and I to mine. Then because of
that water one goat slip on the log, and the other is push so hard that
he cannot stop; over they go into the pool of swift water, over and over
until they come to the shallows; then they find their feet and come up,
each on his own side. They will not care to push with the heads again at
that time. Filon he walk out on the log to me, and I walk to him.
"My goat have won the ford," says he.
"Your goat cannot keep what he wins."
"But I can," say Filon. Then he look at me with his eyes like--like I
have told you, M'siu.
"Raoul," he say, "you is one little man."
With that I remember me all the wrong I have had from this one.
"Go you after your goat, Filon Geraud," say I.
With that I put my staff behind his foot, so, M'siu, and send him into
the water, splash! He come to his feet presently in the pool with the
water all in his hair and his eyes, and the stream run strong and dark
against his middle.
"Hey, you, Raoul, what for you do that?" he say, but also he laugh. "Ah,
ha, little man, you have the joke this time."
M'siu, that laugh stop on his face like it been freeze, his mouth is
open, his eyes curl up. It is terrible, that dead laugh in the midst of
the black water that run down from his hair.
"Raoul," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"
Then he take one step, and I hear the sand suck. I see Filon shiver like
a reed in the swift water.
"_My God_," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"
M'siu, I do not know how it is with me. When I throw Filon in the pool,
I have not known it is quick-sand; but when I hear that, I think I am
glad. I kneel down by that log in the ford and watch Filon. He speak to
me very quiet:
"You must get a rope and make fast to that pine and throw the end to me.
There is a rope in my pack."
"Yes," say I, "there is a rope."
So I take my flocks across the ford, since Filon is in the water, and
take all those silly ones toward La Crevasse, and after I think about
that business. Three days after, I meet P'tee Pete. I tell him I find
the sheep of Filon in the pine wood below Sentinel Rock. Pete, he say
that therefore Filon is come to some hurt, and that he look for him.
That make me scare lest he should look by the ford of Crèvecoeur. So
after that, five or six days, when Narcisse Duplin is come up with me, I
tell him Filon is gone to Sacramento where his money is; therefore I
keep care of his sheep. That is a better tale--eh, M'siu,--for I have to
say something. Every shepherd in that range is know those sheep of
Filon. All this time I think me to take the sheep to Pierre Jullien in
the meadow of Black Mountain. He is not much, that Pierre. If I tell him
it is one gift from _Le bon Dieu_, that is explain enough for Pierre
Jullien. Then I will be quit of the trouble of Filon Geraud.
So, M'siu, would it have been, but for that dog Helène. That is Filon's
she-dog that he raise from a pup. She is--she is _une femme_, that dog!
All that first night when we come away from the ford, she cry, cry in
her throat all through the dark, and in the light she look at me with
her eyes, so to say:
"I know, Raoul! I know what is under the water of Crèvecoeur." M'siu, is
a man to stand that from a dog? So the next night I beat her, and in the
morning she is gone. I think me the good luck to get rid of her. That
Helène! M'siu, what you think she do? She have gone back to look in the
water for Filon. There she stay, and all sheepmen when they pass that
way see that she is a good sheepdog, and that she is much hungry; so
they wonder that she will not leave off to look and go with them. After
while all people in those parts is been talkin' about that dog of
Filon's that look so keen in the water of Crèvecoeur. Mebbe four, five
weeks after that I have killed Filon, one goes riding by that place and
sees Helène make mourn by the waterside over something that stick in the
sand. It is Filon. Yes. That quick-sand have spit him out again. So you
say; but me, I think it is the devil.
For the rest the sheriff has told you. Here they have brought me, and
there is much talk. Of that I am weary, but for this I tell you all how
it is about Filon; M'siu, I would not hang. Look you, so long as I stay
in this life I am quit of that man, but if I die--there is Filon. So
will he do unto me all that I did at the ford of Crèvecoeur, and more;
for he is a bad one, Filon. Therefore it is as I tell you, M'siu, I,
Raoul. By the help of God. Yes.
A CALIFORNIAN
BY
GERALDINE BONNER
From _Harper's Magazine_ _Copyright_, 1905, by Harper and Brothers
IT WAS nearly ten o'clock when Jack Faraday ascended the steps of Madame
Delmonti's bow-windowed mansion and pressed the electric bell. He was a
little out of breath and nervous, for, being young and a stranger to San
Francisco, and almost a stranger to Madame Delmonti, he did not exactly
know at what hour his hostess's _conversazione_ might begin, and had
upon him the young man's violent dread of being conspicuously early or
conspicuously late.
It did not seem that he was either. As he stood in the doorway and
surveyed the field, he felt, with a little rising breath of relief, that
no one appeared to take especial notice of him. Madame Delmonti's rooms
were lit with a great blaze of gas, which, thrown back from many long
mirrors and the gold mountings of a quantity of furniture and picture
frames, made an effect of dazzling yellow brightness, as brilliantly
glittering as the transformation scene of a pantomime.
In the middle of the glare Madame Delmonti's company had disposed
themselves in a circle, which had some difficulty in accommodating
itself to the long narrow shape of the drawing-room. Now and then an
obstinate sofa or extra large plush-covered arm-chair broke the
harmonious curve of the circle, and its occupant looked furtively ill at
ease, as if she felt the embarrassment of her position in not conforming
to the general harmony of the curving line.
The eyes of the circle were fixed on a figure at the piano, near the end
of the room--a tall dark Jewess in a brown dress and wide hat, who was
singing with that peculiar vibrant richness of tone that is so often
heard in the voices of the Californian Jewesses. She was perfectly
self-possessed, and her velvet eyes, as her impassioned voice rose a
little, rested on Jack Faraday with a cheerful but not very lively
interest. Then they swept past him to where on a sofa, quite out of the
circle, two women sat listening.
One was a young girl, large, well-dressed, and exceedingly handsome; the
other a peaked lady, passée and thin, with her hair bleached to a canary
yellow. The Jewess, still singing, smiled at them, and the girl gave
back a lazy smile in return. Then as the song came to a deep and mellow
close, Madame Delmonti, with a delicate rustling of silk brushing
against silk, swept across the room and greeted her guest.
Madame Delmonti was an American, very rich, a good deal made up, but
still pretty, and extremely well preserved. Signor Delmonti, an Italian
baritone, whom she had married, and supported ever since, was useful
about the house, as he now proved by standing at a little table and
ladling punch into small glasses, which were distributed among the
guests by the two little Delmonti girls in green silk frocks. Madame
Delmonti, with her rouged cheeks and merry grey eyes, as full of sparkle
as they had been twenty years ago, was very cordial to her guest, asking
him, as they stood in the doorway, whom he would best like to meet.
"Maud Levy, who has been singing," she said, "is one of the belles in
Hebrew society. She has a fine voice. You have no objection, Mr.
Faraday, to knowing Jews?"
Faraday hastily disclaimed all race prejudices, and she continued,
discreetly designating the ladies on the sofa:
"There are two delightful girls. Mrs. Peck, the blonde, is the society
writer for the _Morning Trumpet_. She is an elegant woman of a very fine
Southern family, but she has had misfortunes. Her marriage was unhappy.
She and Peck are separated now, and she supports herself and her two
children. There was no hope of getting alimony out of that man."
"And that is Genevieve Ryan beside her," Madame Delmonti went on. "I
think you'd like Genevieve. She's a grand girl. Her father, you know, is
Barney Ryan, one of our millionaires. He made his money in a quick turn
in Con. Virginia, but before that he used to drive the Marysville coach,
and he was once a miner. He's crazy about Genevieve and gives her five
hundred a month to dress on. I'm sure you'll get on very well together.
She's such a refined, pleasant girl"----and Madame Delmonti, chattering
her praises of Barney Ryan's handsome daughter, conducted the stranger
to the shrine.
Miss. Genevieve smiled upon him, much as she had upon the singer, and
brushing aside her skirts of changeable green and heliotrope silk,
showed him a little golden-legged chair beside her. Mrs. Peck and Madame
Delmonti conversed with unusual insight and knowledge on the singing of
Maud Levy, and Faraday was left to conduct the conversation with the
heiress of Barney Ryan.
She was a large, splendid-looking girl, very much corseted, with an
ivory-tinted skin, eyes as clear as a young child's and smooth freshly
red lips. She was a good deal powdered on the bridge of her nose, and
her rich hair was slightly tinted with some reddish dye. She was a
picture of health and material well being. Her perfectly fitting clothes
sat with wrinkleless exactitude over a figure which in its generous
breadth and finely curved outline might have compared with that of the
Venus of Milo. She let her eyes, shadowed slightly by the white lace
edge of her large hat, whereon two pink roses trembled on large stalks,
dwell upon Faraday with a curious and frank interest entirely devoid of
coquetry. Her manner, almost boyish in its simple directness, showed the
same absence of this feminine trait. While she looked like a goddess
dressed by Worth, she seemed merely a good-natured, phlegmatic girl just
emerging from her teens.
Faraday had made the first commonplaces of conversation, when she asked,
eyeing him closely, "Do you like it out here?"
"Oh, immensely," he responded, politely. "It's such a fine climate."
"It is a good climate," admitted Miss. Ryan, with unenthusiastic
acquiescence; "but we are not so proud of that as we are of the good
looks of the Californian women. Don't you think the women are handsome?"
Faraday looked into her clear and earnest eyes.
"Oh splendid," he answered, "especially their eyes."
Miss. Ryan appeared to demur to this commendation. "It's generally said
by strangers that their figures are unusually handsome. Do you think
they are?"
Faraday agreed to this too.
"The girls in the East," said Miss. Ryan, sitting upright with a
creaking sound, and drawing her gloves through one satin-smooth,
bejeweled hand, "are very thin, aren't they? Here, I sometimes
think"--she raised her eyes to his in deep and somewhat anxious
query--"that they are too fat?"
Faraday gallantly scouted the idea. He said the California woman was a
goddess. For the first time in the interview Miss. Ryan gave a little
laugh.
"That's what all you Eastern men say," she said. "They're always telling
me I'm a goddess. Even the Englishmen say that."
"Well," answered Faraday, surprised at his own boldness, "what they say
is true."
Miss. Ryan silently eyed him for a speculating moment; then, averting
her glance, said, pensively: "Perhaps so; but I don't think it's so
stylish to be a goddess as it is to be very slim. And then, you
know----" Here she suddenly broke off, her eyes fixed upon the crowd of
ladies that blocked an opposite doorway in exeunt. "There's mommer. I
guess she must be going home, and I suppose I'd better go too, and not
keep her waiting."
She rose as she spoke, and with a pat of her hand adjusted her
glimmering skirts.
"Oh, Mr. Faraday," she said, as she peered down at them, "I hope you'll
give yourself the pleasure of calling on me. I'm at home almost any
afternoon after five, and Tuesday is my day. Come whenever you please.
I'll be real glad to see you, and I guess popper'd like to talk to you
about things in the East. He's been in Massachusetts too."
She held out her large white hand and gave Faraday a vigorous
hand-shake.
"I'm glad I came here tonight," she said, smiling. "I wasn't quite
decided, but I thought I'd better, as I had some things to tell Mrs.
Peck for next Sunday's _Trumpet_. If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have met
you. You needn't escort me to Madame Delmonti. I'd rather go by myself.
I'm not a bit a ceremonious person. Good-by. Be sure and come and see
me."
She rustled away, exchanged farewells with Madame Delmonti, and, by a
movement of her head in his direction, appeared to be speaking of
Faraday; then joining a fur-muffled female figure near the doorway,
swept like a princess out of the room.
For a week after Faraday's meeting with Miss. Genevieve Ryan, he had no
time to think of giving himself the pleasure of calling upon that fair
and flattering young lady. The position which he had come out from
Boston to fill was not an unusually exacting one, but Faraday, who was
troubled with a New England conscience, and a certain slowness in
adapting himself to new conditions of life, was too engrossed in
mastering the duties of his clerkship to think of loitering about the
chariot wheels of beauty.
By the second week, however, he had shaken down into the new rut, and a
favorable opportunity presenting itself in a sunny Sunday afternoon, he
donned his black coat and high hat and repaired to the mansion of Barney
Ryan, on California Street.
When Faraday approached the house, he felt quite timid, so imposingly
did this great structure loom up from the simpler dwellings which
surrounded it. Barney Ryan had built himself a palace, and ever since
the day he had first moved into it he had been anxious to move out. The
ladies of his family would not allow this, and so Barney endured his
grandeur as best he might. It was a great wooden house, with immense bay
windows thrown out on every side, and veiled within by long curtains of
heavy lace. The sweep of steps that spread so proudly from the portico
was flanked by two sleeping lions in stone, both appearing, by the
savage expressions which distorted their visages, to be suffering from
terrifying dreams. In the garden the spiked foliage of the dark, slender
dracænas and the fringed fans of giant filamentosas grew luxuriantly
with tropical effect.
The large drawing-room, long, and looking longer with its wide mirrors,
was even more golden than Mrs. Delmonti's. There were gold moldings
about the mirrors and gold mountings to the chairs. In deserts of gold
frames appeared small oases of oil-painting. Faraday, hat in hand, stood
some time in wavering indecision, wondering in which of the brocaded and
gilded chairs he would look least like a king in an historical play. He
was about to decide in favor of a pale blue satin settee, when a rustle
behind him made him turn and behold Miss. Genevieve magnificent in a
trailing robe of the faintest rose-pink and pearls, with diamond
ear-rings in her ears, and the powder that she had hastily rubbed on her
face still lying white on her long lashes. She smiled her rare smile as
she greeted him, and sitting down in one of the golden chairs, leaned
her head against the back, and said, looking at him from under lowered
lids:
"Well, I thought you were never coming!"
Faraday, greatly encouraged by this friendly reception, made his
excuses, and set the conversation going. After the weather had been
exhausted, the topic of the Californian in his social aspect came up.
Faraday, with some timidity, ventured a question on the fashionable life
in San Francisco. A shade passed over Miss. Ryan's open countenance.
"You know, Mr. Faraday," she said, explanatorily, "I'm not exactly in
society."
"No?" murmured Faraday, mightily surprised, and wondering what she was
going to say next.
"Not exactly," continued Miss. Ryan, moistening her red under lip in a
pondering moment--"not exactly in fash'nable society. Of course we have
our friends. But gentlemen from the East that I've met have always been
so surprised when I told them that I didn't go out in the most
fash'nable circles. They always thought any one with money could get
right in it here."
"Yes?" said Faraday, whose part of the conversation appeared to be
deteriorating into monosyllables.
"Well, you know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money,
we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to
outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or
anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But,"
she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take
the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought in the
war."
"You must be very proud of that," said Faraday, feeling that he could
now hazard a remark with safety.
This simple comment, however, appeared to surprise the enigmatic Miss.
Ryan.
"Proud of it?" she queried, looking in suspended doubt at Faraday. "Oh,
of course I'm proud that he was brave, and didn't run away or get
wounded; but if he'd been a Southerner we would have been in society
now." She looked pensively at Faraday. "All the fashionable people are
Southerners, you know. We would have been, too, if we'd have been
Southerners. It's being Northerners that really has been such a
drawback."
"But your sympathies," urged Faraday, "aren't they with the North?"
Miss. Ryan ran the pearl fringe of her tea-gown through her large,
handsome hands. "I guess so," she said, indifferently, as if she was
considering the subject for the first time; "but you can't expect me to
have any very violent sympathies about a war that was dead and buried
before I was born."
"I don't believe you're a genuine Northerner, or Southerner either,"
said Faraday, laughing.
"I guess not," said the young lady, with the same placid indifference.
"An English gentleman whom I knew real well last year said the sympathy
of the English was all with the Southerners. He said they were the most
refined people in this country. He said they were thought a great deal
of in England?" She again looked at Faraday with her air of deprecating
query, as if she half expected him to contradict her.
"Who was this extraordinarily enlightened being?" asked Faraday.
"Mr. Harold Courtney, an elegant Englishman. They said his grandfather
was a Lord--Lord Hastings--but you never can be sure about those things.
I saw quite a good deal of him, and I sort of liked him, but he was
rather quiet. I think if he'd been an American we would have thought him
dull. Here they just said it was reserve. We all thought----"
A footstep in the hall outside arrested her recital. The door of the
room was opened, and a handsome bonneted head appeared in the aperture.
"Oh, Gen," said this apparition, hastily--"excuse me; I didn't know you
had your company in there?"
"Come in, mommer," said Miss. Ryan, politely; "I want to make you
acquainted with Mr. Faraday. He's the gentleman I met at Madame
Delmonti's the other evening."
Mrs. Ryan, accompanied by a rich rustling of silk, pushed open the door,
revealing herself to Faraday's admiring eyes as a fine-looking woman,
fresh in tint, still young, of a stately figure and imposing presence.
She was admirably dressed in a walking costume of dark green, and wore a
little black jet bonnet on her slightly waved bright brown hair. She met
the visitor with an extended hand and a frank smile of open pleasure.
"Genevieve spoke to me of you, Mr. Faraday," she said, settling down
into a chair and removing her gloves. "I'm very glad you managed to get
around here."
Faraday expressed his joy at having been able to accomplish the visit.
"We don't have so many agreeable gentlemen callers," said Mrs. Ryan,
"that we can afford to overlook a new one. If you've been in society,
you've perhaps noticed, Mr. Faraday, that gentlemen are somewhat
scarce."
Faraday said he had not been in society, therefore had not observed the
deficiency. Mrs. Ryan, barely allowing him time to complete his
sentence, continued, vivaciously:
"Well, Mr. Faraday, you'll see it later. We entertainers don't know what
we are going to do for the lack of gentlemen. When we give parties we
ask the young gentlemen, and they all come; but they won't dance, they
won't talk, they won't do anything but eat and drink and they never
think of paying their party calls. It's disgraceful, Mr. Faraday," said
Mrs. Ryan, smiling brightly--"disgraceful!"
Faraday said he had heard that in the East the hostess made the same
complaint. Mrs. Ryan, with brilliant fixed eyes, gave him a
breathing-space to reply in, and then started off again, with a
confirmatory nod of her head:
"Precisely, Mr. Faraday--just the case here. At Genevieve's début
party--an elegant affair--Mrs. Peck said she'd never seen a finer
entertainment in this city--canvas floors, four musicians, champagne
flowing like water. My husband, Mr. Faraday believes in giving the best
at his entertainments; there's not a mean bone in Barney Ryan's body.
Why, the men all got into the smoking-room, lit their cigars, and smoked
there, and in the ballroom were the girls sitting around the walls, and
not more than half a dozen partners for them. I tell you, Mr. Ryan was
mad. He just went up there, and told them to get up and dance or get up
and go home----he didn't much care which. There's no fooling with Mr.
Ryan when he's roused. You remember how mad popper was that night, Gen?"
Miss. Ryan nodded an assent, her eyes full of smiling reminiscence. She
had listened to her mother's story with unmoved attention and evident
appreciation. "Next time we have a party," she said, looking smilingly
at Faraday, "Mr. Faraday can come and see for himself."
"I guess it'll be a long time before we have another like that," said
Mrs. Ryan, somewhat grimly, rising as Faraday rose to take his leave.
"Not but what," she added, hastily, fearing her remark had seemed
ungracious, "we'll hope Mr. Faraday will come without waiting for
parties."
"But we've had one since then," said Miss. Ryan, as she placed her hand
in his in the pressure of farewell, "that laid all over that first one."