I
The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequential
chest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of the
Asgard group, a famous mining property of northern California.
The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric titles on the
western slope of the foot-hills,--land enough for the preservation of a
natural park within its own boundaries where fire-lines were cleared,
forest-trees respected, and roads kept up. Wherever the company erected a
board fence, gate, or building, the same was methodically painted a color
known as "monopoly brown." The most conspicuous of these objects cropped
out on the sunset dip of the property where the woods for twenty years
had been cut, and the Sacramento valley surges up in heat and glare, with
yearly visitations of malaria.
Higher than the buildings in brown, a gray-shingled bungalow ranged itself
on the lap of its broad lawns against a slope of orchard tops climbing to
the dark environment of the forest. Not the original forest: of that only
three stark pines were left, which rose one hundred feet out of a gulch
below the house and lent their ancient majesty to the modern uses of
electric wires and telephone lines. Their dreaming tops were in the sky;
their feet were in the sluicings of the stamp-mill that reared its long
brown back in a semi-recumbent posture, resting one elbow on the hill; and
beneath the valley smouldered, a pale mirage by day, by night a vision of
color transcendent and rich as the gates of the Eternal City.
At half past five the night watchman, on his way from town, stopped at
the superintendent's gate, ran up the blazing path, and thrust a newspaper
between the dark blue canvas curtains that shaded the entrance of the
porch. For hours the house had slept behind its heat defenses, every
shutter closed, yards of piazza blind and canvas awning fastened down. The
sun, a ball of fire, went slowly down the west. Rose-vines drooped against
the hanging lattices, printing their watery lines of split bamboo with
a shadow-pattern of leaf and flower. The whole house-front was decked
with dead roses, or roses blasted in full bloom, as if to celebrate with
appropriate insignia the passing of the hottest day of the year.
Half-way down the steps the watchman stopped, surprised by a voice from
behind the curtains. He came back in answer to his name.
A thin white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker
of a fan held against the light.
"Oh, Hughson, will you tell Mr. Thorne that I am here? He doesn't know I
have come."
"Tell him that Mrs. Thorne is home?" the man translated slowly.
"Yes. He does not expect me. You will tell him at once, please?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The curtain was fastened again from inside. A woman's step went restlessly
up and down, up and down the long piazza floors, now muffled on a rug, now
light on a matting, or distinct on the bare boards.