"_O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know
not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on
some conspicuous hill-top, and but a little way further, against the
setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your
own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to
arrive, and the true success is to labour_."--R. L. Stevenson.
"Eucalyptus lies on the eastern slope of the Rockies. It will be
fourteen years back this autumn that the coach dropped me there,
somewhere about nine in the evening, and Hewson, who was waiting,
took me straight to his red-pine house, high up among the foot-hills.
The front of it hung over the edge of a waterfall, down which Hewson
sent his logs with a pleasing certainty of their reaching Eucalyptus
sooner or later; and right at the back the pines climbed away up to
the snow-line. You remember the story of Daniel O'Rourke; how an
eagle carried him up to the moon, and how he found it as smooth as an
egg-plum, with just a reaping-hook sticking out of its side to grip
hold of? Hewson's veranda reminded me of that reaping-hook; and, as
a matter of fact, the cliff was so deeply undercut that a plummet, if
it could be let through between your heels, would drop clean into the
basin below the fall.
"The house was none of Hewson's building. Hewson was a bachelor, and
could have made shift with a two-roomed cabin for himself and his
men. He had taken the place over from a New Englander, who had made
his pile by running the lumbering business up here and a saw-mill
down in the valley at the same time. The place seemed dog-cheap at
the time; but after a while it began to dawn upon Hewson that the
Yankee had the better of the deal. Eucalyptus had not come up to
early promise. In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill with
a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-mills were idle and
rotting. Its original architect had sunk to a blue-faced and
lachrymose bar-loafer, and the roll of plans which he carried about
with him--with their unrealised boulevards, churches, municipal
buildings, and band-kiosks--had passed into a dismal standing joke.
Hewson was even now deliberating whether to throw up the game or toss
good money after bad by buying up a saw-mill and running it as his
predecessor had done.
"'It's like a curse,' he explained to me at breakfast next morning.
'The place is afflicted like one of those unfortunate South Sea
potentates, who flourish up to the age of fourteen and then cypher
out, and not a soul to know why. First of all, there's the
lumbering. Well, here's the timber all right; only Bellefont,
farther down the valley, has cut us out. Then we had the cinnabar
mines--you may see them along the slope to northward, right over the
west end of the town. They went well for about sixteen months; and
then came the stampede. A joker in the _Bellefont Sentinel_ wrote
that the miners up in Eucalyptus were complaining of the
'insufficiency of exits'; and he wasn't far out. Last there were the
'Temperate Airs and Reinvigorating Pine-odours of America's Peerless
Sanatorium. _Come and behold: Come and be healed!_' The promoters
billed that last cursed jingle up and down the States till as far
south as Mexico it became the pet formula for an invitation to drink.
Well, for three years we averaged something like a couple of hundred
invalids, and doctors in fair proportion; and I never heard that
either did badly. It was an error of judgment, perhaps, to start our
municipal works with a costly Necropolis, or rather the gateway of
one; two marble pillars, if you please--the only stonework in
Eucalyptus to this day--with 'Campo' on one side and 'Santo' on the
other. No healthy-minded person would be scared by this. But the
invalids complained that we'd made the feature too salient; and the
architect has gone ever since by the name of 'Huz-and-Buz,' bestowed
on him by some wag who meant 'Jachin and Boaz,' but hadn't Scripture
enough to know it. Anyhow the temperate airs and pine-odours are a
frost. There's nobody, I fancy, living at Eucalyptus just now for
the benefit of his health, and I believe that at this moment you're
the only doctor within twenty miles of the place.'
"'Well,' said I, 'I'll step down this morning anyway, and take a
look.'
"'You can saddle the brown horse whenever you like. You were too
sleepy to take note of it last night, but you came up here by a track
fit for a lady's pony-carriage. My predecessor engineered it to
connect his two places of business. In its way, it's the most
palatial thing in the Rockies--two long legs with a short tack
between, gentle all the way--and it brings you out by the Necropolis
gate. You can hitch the horse up there.'"
"By ten o'clock I had saddled the brown horse, and was walking him
down the track at an easy pace. Hewson had omitted to praise its
beauty. Pine-needles lay underfoot as thick and soft as a Persian
carpet; and what with the pine-tops arching and almost meeting
overhead, and the red trunks raying out left and right into aisles as
I went by, and the shafts of light breaking the greenish gloom here
and there with glimpses of aching white snowfields high above, 'twas
like walking in a big cathedral with bits of the real heaven shining
through the roof. The river ran west for a while from Cornice House,
and then tacked north-east with a sudden bend round the base of the
foot-hills; and since my track formed a sort of rough hypotenuse to
this angle, I heard the voice of the rapids die away and almost
cease, and then begin again to whisper and murmur, until, as I came
within a mile or so of Eucalyptus, they were loud at my feet, though
still unseen. I am not a devout man, but I can take off my hat now
and then; and all the way that morning a couple of sentences were
ring-dinging in my head: 'Lift up your hearts! We lift them up unto
the Lord!' You know where they come from, I dare say.
"By and by the track took a sharp and steep trend down hill, then a
curve; the trees on my right seemed to drop away; and we found
ourselves on the edge of a steep bluff overhanging the valley, the
whole eastern slope of which broke full into sight in that instant,
from the river tumbling below--by sticking out a leg I could see it
shining through my stirrup--to the rocky _aretes_ and smoothed-out
snowfields round the peaks. It made a big spectacle, and I suppose I
must have stared at it till my eyes were dazzled, for, on turning
again to follow the track, which at once dived among the pines and
into the dusk again, I did not observe, until quite close upon her, a
woman coming towards me.
"And yet she was not rigged out to escape notice. She had on a
scarlet Garibaldi, a striped red-and-white skirt, bunched up behind
into an immense polonaise, and high-heeled shoes that tilted her far
forward. She wore no hat, but carried a scarlet sunshade over her
shoulder. Her hair, in a towsled chignon, was golden, or rather had
been dyed to that colour; her face was painted; and she was glaringly
drunk.
"This sudden apparition shook me down with a jerk; and I suppose the
sight of me had something of the same effect on the woman, who
staggered to the side of the track, and, plumping down amid her
flounces, beckoned me feebly with her sunshade. I pulled up, and
asked what I could do for her.
"'You're the doctor?' she said slowly, with a tight hold on her
pronunciation.
"'That's so.'
"'From Cornice House?'
"I nodded.
"She nodded back. 'That's so. Oh, dear, dear! _you_ said that.
I can't help it. I'm drunk, and it's no use pretending!'
"She fell to wringing her hands, and the tears began to run from her
bistred eyes.
"'Now, see here, Mrs.--Miss--'
"'Floncemorency.'
"'Miss Florence Montmorency?' I hazarded as a translation.
"'That's so. Formerly of the Haughty Coal.'
"'I beg your pardon? Ah! . . . of the Haute Ecole?'
"'That's so: '_questrienne_.'
"'Well, you'll take my advice, and return home at once and put
yourself to bed.'
"'Don't you worry about me. It's the Bishop you've got to prescribe
for. I allowed I'd reach Cornice House and fetch you down, if it
took my last breath. Pete Stroebel at the drug store told me this
morning that Mr. Hewson had a doctor come to stop with him, so I
started right along.'
"'And how far did you calculate to reach in those shoes?'
"'I didn't calculate at all; I just started along. If the shoes had
hurt, I'd have kicked them off and gone without, or maybe crawled.'
"'Very good,' said I. 'Now, before we go any farther, will you
kindly tell me who the Bishop is?'
"'He's a young man, and he boards with me. See here, mister,' she
went on, pulling herself together and speaking low and earnest, 'he's
good; he's good right through: you've got to make up your mind to
that. And he's powerful sick. But what you've got to lay hold of is
that he's good. The house is No. 67, West fifteenth Street, which
is pretty easy to find, seeing it's the only street in Eucalyptus.
The rest haven't got beyond paper, and old Huz-and-Buz totes them
round in his pocket, which isn't good for their growth.'
"'Won't you take me there?'
"'Not to-day. I guess I've got to sit here till I feel better.
Another thing is, you'll be doing me a kindness if you don't let on
to the Bishop that you found me in this--this state. He never saw me
like this: he's good, I tell you. And he'd be sick and sorry if he
knew. I'm just mad with myself, too; but I swear I never meant to be
like this to-day. I just took a dose to fix me up for the journey;
but ever since I've been holding off from the whisky the least drop
gets into my walk. You didn't happen to notice a spring anywhere
hereabouts, did you? There used to be one that ran right across the
track.'
"'I passed it about a hundred yards back.'
"I dismounted and led her to the spring, where she knelt and bathed
her face in the water, cold from the melting snowfields above.
Then she pulled out a small handkerchief, edged with cheap lace, and
fell to dabbing her eyes.
"'Hullo!' she cried, breaking off sharply.
"'Yes,' I answered, 'you had forgotten that. But another wash will
take it all off, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you won't look
any the worse. After that you shall soak my handkerchief and bandage
it round your forehead till you feel better. Here, let me help.'
"'Thank you,' she said, as I tied the knot. 'And now hurry along,
please. Sixty-seven, West Fifteenth Street. I'll be waiting here
with your handkerchief.'
"I mounted and rode on. At the end of half a mile the track began to
dip more steeply, and finally emerged by a big clearing and the two
marble pillars of which Hewson had spoken; and here I tethered the
brown horse, and had a look around before walking down into
Eucalyptus. Within the clearing a few groups of Norfolk pines had
been left to stand, and between these were burial lots marked out and
numbered, with here and there a painted wooden cross; but the
inhabitants of this acre were few enough. Behind and above the
'Necropolis' the hill rose steeply; and there, high up, were traces
of the disused cinnabar mines--patches of orange-coloured earth
thrusting out among the pines.
"The road below the cemetery ran abruptly down for a bit, then heaved
itself over a green knoll and descended upon what I may call a very
big and flat meadow beside the river. It was here that Eucalyptus
stood; and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the
town, I had my first good view of it--one long street of low wooden
houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed
mills and wharves straggled to north and south--a T, or headless
cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the
knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun you
could have swept it clean from end to end, and, what's more, you
wouldn't have hurt a soul. The place was dead empty--not so much as
a cur to sit on the sidewalk--and the only hint of life was the
laughing and banjo-playing indoors. You could hear that plain
enough. Every second house in the place was a saloon, and every
saloon seemed to have a billiard-table and a banjo player. I never
heard anything like it. I should say, if you divided the population
into four parts, that two of these were playing billiards, one
tum-tumming 'Hey, Juliana' on the banjo, and the remaining fourth
looking on and drinking whisky, and occasionally taking part in the
chorus. All the way down the sidewalk I had these two sounds--the
_click, click_ of the balls and the _thrum, thrum, tinkle, tinkle_ of
'Juliana'--ahead of me; and left silence in my wake, as the
inhabitants dropped their occupations and sauntered out to stare at
'the Last Invalid,' which was the name promptly coined for me by the
disheartened but still humorous promoters of America's Peerless
Sanatorium.
"You don't know 'Juliana'--neither tune nor words? Nor did I when I
set foot in Eucalyptus; but I lived on pretty close terms with it for
the next two months, and it ended by clearing me out of the
neighbourhood. It was a sort of nigger camp-meeting song, and a
hybrid at that. It went something like this:"
'O, de lost ell-an'-yard is a-huntin' fer de morn'--