Before noon the next day, it was generally believed throughout Four
Forks that Ridgeway Dent had been attacked and wounded at Chemisal Ridge
by a highwayman, who fled on the approach of the Wingdam coach. It is to
be presumed that this statement met with Ridgeway's approval, as he did
not contradict it, nor supplement it with any details. His wound was
severe, but not dangerous. After the first excitement had subsided,
there was, I think, a prevailing impression common to the provincial
mind, that his misfortune was the result of the defective moral quality
of his being a stranger, and was, in a vague sort of a way, a warning to
others, and a lesson to him. “Did you hear how that San Francisco feller
was took down the other night?” was the average tone of introductory
remark. Indeed, there was a general suggestion that Ridgeway's presence
was one that no self-respecting, high-minded highwayman, honorably
conservative of the best interests of Tuolumne County, could for a
moment tolerate.
Except for the few words spoken on that eventful morning, Ridgeway was
reticent of the past. When Jenny strove to gather some details of
the affray that might offer a clew to his unknown assailant, a subtle
twinkle in his brown eyes was the only response. When Mr. McClosky
attempted the same process, the young gentleman threw abusive epithets,
and, eventually slippers, teaspoons, and other lighter articles within
the reach of an invalid, at the head of his questioner. “I think he's
coming round, Jinny,” said Mr. McClosky: “he laid for me this morning
with a candlestick.”
It was about this time that Miss Jenny, having sworn her father to
secrecy regarding the manner in which Ridgeway had been carried into the
house, conceived the idea of addressing the young man as “Mr. Dent,”
and of apologizing for intruding whenever she entered the room in the
discharge of her household duties. It was about this time that she
became more rigidly conscientious to those duties, and less general in
her attentions. It was at this time that the quality of the invalid's
diet improved, and that she consulted him less frequently about it. It
was about this time that she began to see more company, that the house
was greatly frequented by her former admirers, with whom she rode,
walked, and danced. It was at about this time also, and when Ridgeway
was able to be brought out on the veranda in a chair, that, with great
archness of manner, she introduced to him Miss Lucy Ashe, the sister of
her betrothed, a flashing brunette, and terrible heart-breaker of Four
Forks. And, in the midst of this gayety, she concluded that she would
spend a week with the Robinsons, to whom she owed a visit. She
enjoyed herself greatly there, so much, indeed, that she became quite
hollow-eyed, the result, as she explained to her father, of a too
frequent indulgence in festivity. “You see, father, I won't have many
chances after John and I are married: you know how queer he is, and I
must make the most of my time;” and she laughed an odd little laugh,
which had lately become habitual to her. “And how is Mr. Dent getting
on?” Her father replied that he was getting on very well indeed,--so
well, in fact, that he was able to leave for San Francisco two days ago.
“He wanted to be remembered to you, Jinny,--'remembered kindly,'--yes,
they is the very words he used,” said Mr. McClosky, looking down, and
consulting one of his large shoes for corroboration. Miss Jenny was glad
to hear that he was so much better. Miss Jenny could not imagine any
thing that pleased her more than to know that he was so strong as to be
able to rejoin his friends again, who must love him so much, and be so
anxious about him. Her father thought she would be pleased, and, now
that he was gone, there was really no necessity for her to hurry
back. Miss Jenny, in a high metallic voice, did not know that she
had expressed any desire to stay, still if her presence had become
distasteful at home, if her own father was desirous of getting rid
of her, if, when she was so soon to leave his roof forever, he still
begrudged her those few days remaining, if--“My God, Jinny, so help me!”
said Mr. McClosky, clutching despairingly at his beard, “I didn't go for
to say any thing of the kind. I thought that you”--“Never mind, father,”
interrupted Jenny magnanimously, “you misunderstood me: of course you
did, you couldn't help it--you're a MAN!” Mr. McClosky, sorely crushed,
would have vaguely protested; but his daughter, having relieved herself,
after the manner of her sex, with a mental personal application of an
abstract statement, forgave him with a kiss.
Nevertheless, for two or three days after her return, Mr. McClosky
followed his daughter about the house with yearning eyes, and
occasionally with timid, diffident feet. Sometimes he came upon her
suddenly at her household tasks, with an excuse so palpably false, and
a careless manner so outrageously studied, that she was fain to be
embarrassed for him. Later, he took to rambling about the house at
night, and was often seen noiselessly passing and repassing through the
hall after she had retired. On one occasion, he was surprised, first by
sleep, and then by the early-rising Jenny, as he lay on the rug outside
her chamber-door. “You treat me like a child, father,” said Jenny. “I
thought, Jinny,” said the father apologetically,--“I thought I
heard sounds as if you was takin' on inside, and, listenin' I fell
asleep.”--“You dear, old simple-minded baby!” said Jenny, looking
past her father's eyes, and lifting his grizzled locks one by one with
meditative fingers: “what should I be takin' on for? Look how much
taller I am than you!” she said, suddenly lifting herself up to the
extreme of her superb figure. Then rubbing his head rapidly with both
hands, as if she were anointing his hair with some rare unguent, she
patted him on the back, and returned to her room. The result of this and
one or two other equally sympathetic interviews was to produce a
change in Mr. McClosky's manner, which was, if possible, still more
discomposing. He grew unjustifiably hilarious, cracked jokes with the
servants, and repeated to Jenny humorous stories, with the attitude of
facetiousness carefully preserved throughout the entire narration, and
the point utterly ignored and forgotten. Certain incidents reminded him
of funny things, which invariably turned out to have not the slightest
relevancy or application. He occasionally brought home with him
practical humorists, with a sanguine hope of setting them going, like
the music-box, for his daughter's edification. He essayed the singing of
melodies with great freedom of style, and singular limitation of note.
He sang “Come haste to the Wedding, Ye Lasses and Maidens,” of which he
knew a single line, and that incorrectly, as being peculiarly apt and
appropriate. Yet away from the house and his daughter's presence, he was
silent and distraught. His absence of mind was particularly noted by his
workmen at the Empire Quartz Mill. “Ef the old man don't look out and
wake up,” said his foreman, “he'll hev them feet of his yet under the
stamps. When he ain't givin' his mind to 'em, they is altogether too
promiskuss.”
A few nights later, Miss Jenny recognized her father's hand in a timid
tap at the door. She opened it, and he stood before her, with a valise
in his hand, equipped as for a journey. “I takes the stage to-night,
Jinny dear, from Four Forks to 'Frisco. Maybe I may drop in on Jack
afore I go. I'll be back in a week. Good-by.”
“Good-by.” He still held her hand. Presently he drew her back into the
room, closing the door carefully, and glancing around. There was a look
of profound cunning in his eye as he said slowly,--
“Bear up, and keep dark, Jinny dear, and trust to the old man. Various
men has various ways. Thar is ways as is common, and ways as is
uncommon; ways as is easy, and ways as is oneasy. Bear up, and keep
dark.” With this Delphic utterance he put his finger to his lips, and
vanished.
It was ten o'clock when he reached Four Forks. A few minutes later,
he stood on the threshold of that dwelling described by the Four Forks
“Sentinel” as “the palatial residence of John Ashe,” and known to the
local satirist as the “ash-box.” “Hevin' to lay by two hours, John,” he
said to his prospective son-in-law, as he took his hand at the door,
“a few words of social converse, not on business, but strictly
private, seems to be about as nat'ral a thing as a man can do.” This
introduction, evidently the result of some study, and plainly committed
to memory, seemed so satisfactory to Mr. McClosky, that he repeated
it again, after John Ashe had led him into his private office, where,
depositing his valise in the middle of the floor, and sitting down
before it, he began carefully to avoid the eye of his host. John Ashe, a
tall, dark, handsome Kentuckian, with whom even the trifles of life
were evidently full of serious import, waited with a kind of chivalrous
respect the further speech of his guest. Being utterly devoid of any
sense of the ridiculous, he always accepted Mr. McClosky as a grave
fact, singular only from his own want of experience of the class.
“Ores is running light now,” said Mr. McClosky with easy indifference.
John Ashe returned that he had noticed the same fact in the receipts of
the mill at Four Forks.
Mr. McClosky rubbed his beard, and looked at his valise, as if for
sympathy and suggestion.
“You don't reckon on having any trouble with any of them chaps as you
cut out with Jinny?”
John Ashe, rather haughtily, had never thought of that. “I saw Rance
hanging round your house the other night, when I took your daughter
home; but he gave me a wide berth,” he added carelessly.
“Surely,” said Mr. McClosky, with a peculiar winking of the eye. After a
pause, he took a fresh departure from his valise.
“A few words, John, ez between man and man, ez between my daughter's
father and her husband who expects to be, is about the thing, I take it,
as is fair and square. I kem here to say them. They're about Jinny, my
gal.”
Ashe's grave face brightened, to Mr. McClosky's evident discomposure.
“Maybe I should have said about her mother; but, the same bein' a
stranger to you, I says naterally, 'Jinny.'”
Ashe nodded courteously. Mr. McClosky, with his eyes on his valise, went
on,--
“It is sixteen year ago as I married Mrs. McClosky in the State of
Missouri. She let on, at the time, to be a widder,--a widder with one
child. When I say let on, I mean to imply that I subsekently found out
that she was not a widder, nor a wife; and the father of the child was,
so to speak, onbeknowst. Thet child was Jinny--my gal.”
With his eyes on his valise, and quietly ignoring the wholly-crimsoned
face and swiftly-darkening brow of his host, he continued,--
“Many little things sorter tended to make our home in Missouri
onpleasant. A disposition to smash furniture, and heave knives around;
an inclination to howl when drunk, and that frequent; a habitooal use of
vulgar language, and a tendency to cuss the casooal visitor,--seemed to
pint,” added Mr. McClosky with submissive hesitation “that--she--was--so
to speak--quite onsuited to the marriage relation in its holiest
aspeck.”
“Damnation! Why didn't”--burst out John Ashe, erect and furious.
“At the end of two year,” continued Mr. McClosky, still intent on the
valise, “I allowed I'd get a diworce. Et about thet time, however,
Providence sends a circus into thet town, and a feller ez rode three
horses to onct. Hevin' allez a taste for athletic sports, she left town
with this feller, leavin' me and Jinny behind. I sent word to her, thet,
if she would give Jinny to me, we'd call it quits. And she did.”
“Tell me,” gasped Ashe, “did you ask your daughter to keep this from me?
or did she do it of her own accord?”
“She doesn't know it,” said Mr. McClosky. “She thinks I'm her father,
and that her mother's dead.”
“Then, sir, this is your”--
“I don't know,” said Mr. McClosky slowly, “ez I've asked any one to
marry my Jinny. I don't know ez I've persood that ez a biziness, or even
taken it up as a healthful recreation.”
John Ashe paced the room furiously. Mr. McClosky's eyes left the
valise, and followed him curiously. “Where is this woman?” demanded Ashe
suddenly. McClosky's eyes sought the valise again.
“She went to Kansas; from Kansas she went into Texas; from Texas she
eventooally came to Californy. Being here, I've purvided her with money,
when her business was slack, through a friend.”
John Ashe groaned. “She's gettin' rather old and shaky for hosses, and
now does the tight-rope business and flying trapeze. Never hevin' seen
her perform,” continued Mr. McClosky with conscientious caution, “I
can't say how she gets on. On the bills she looks well. Thar is
a poster,” said Mr. McClosky glancing at Ashe, and opening his
valise,--“thar is a poster givin' her performance at Marysville next
month.” Mr. McClosky slowly unfolded a large yellow-and-blue printed
poster, profusely illustrated. “She calls herself 'Mams'elle J.
Miglawski, the great Russian Trapeziste.'”
John Ashe tore it from his hand. “Of course,” he said, suddenly facing
Mr. McClosky, “you don't expect me to go on with this?”
Mr. McClosky took up the poster, carefully refolded it, and returned
it to his valise. “When you break off with Jinny,” he said quietly,
“I don't want any thing said 'bout this. She doesn't know it. She's a
woman, and I reckon you're a white man.”
“But what am I to say? How am I to go back of my word?”
“Write her a note. Say something hez come to your knowledge (don't say
what) that makes you break it off. You needn't be afeard Jinny'll ever
ask you what.”
John Ashe hesitated. He felt he had been cruelly wronged. No gentleman,
no Ashe, could go on further in this affair. It was preposterous to
think of it. But somehow he felt at the moment very unlike a gentleman,
or an Ashe, and was quite sure he should break down under Jenny's steady
eyes. But then--he could write to her.
“So ores is about as light here as on the Ridge. Well, I reckon they'll
come up before the rains. Good-night.” Mr. McClosky took the hand that
his host mechanically extended, shook it gravely, and was gone.
When Mr. McClosky, a week later, stepped again upon his own veranda, he
saw through the French window the figure of a man in his parlor. Under
his hospitable roof, the sight was not unusual; but, for an instant, a
subtle sense of disappointment thrilled him. When he saw it was not the
face of Ashe turned toward him, he was relieved; but when he saw the
tawny beard, and quick, passionate eyes of Henry Rance, he felt a new
sense of apprehension, so that he fell to rubbing his beard almost upon
his very threshold.
Jenny ran into the hall, and seized her father with a little cry of joy.
“Father,” said Jenny in a hurried whisper, “don't mind HIM,” indicating
Rance with a toss of her yellow braids: “he's going soon. And I think,
father, I've done him wrong. But it's all over with John and me now.
Read that note, and see how he's insulted me.” Her lip quivered; but she
went on, “It's Ridgeway that he means, father; and I believe it was HIS
hand struck Ridgeway down, or that he knows who did. But hush now! not a
word.”
She gave him a feverish kiss, and glided back into the parlor, leaving
Mr. McClosky, perplexed and irresolute, with the note in his hand. He
glanced at it hurriedly, and saw that it was couched in almost the very
words he had suggested. But a sudden, apprehensive recollection came
over him. He listened; and, with an exclamation of dismay, he seized his
hat, and ran out of the house, but too late. At the same moment a quick,
nervous footstep was heard upon the veranda; the French window flew
open, and, with a light laugh of greeting, Ridgeway stepped into the
room.
Jenny's finer ear first caught the step. Jenny's swifter feelings had
sounded the depths of hope, of joy, of despair, before he entered the
room. Jenny's pale face was the only one that met his, self-possessed
and self-reliant, when he stood before them. An angry flush suffused
even the pink roots of Rance's beard as he rose to his feet. An ominous
fire sprang into Ridgeway's eyes, and a spasm of hate and scorn passed
over the lower part of his face, and left the mouth and jaw immobile and
rigid.
Yet he was the first to speak. “I owe you an apology,” he said to Jenny,
with a suave scorn that brought the indignant blood back to her cheek,
“for this intrusion; but I ask no pardon for withdrawing from the only
spot where that man dare confront me with safety.”
With an exclamation of rage, Rance sprang toward him. But as quickly
Jenny stood between them, erect and menacing. “There must be no quarrel
here,” she said to Rance. “While I protect your right as my guest, don't
oblige me to remind you of mine as your hostess.” She turned with a
half-deprecatory air to Ridgeway; but he was gone. So was her father.
Only Rance remained with a look of ill-concealed triumph on his face.
Without looking at him, she passed toward the door. When she reached
it, she turned. “You asked me a question an hour ago. Come to me in the
garden, at nine o'clock tonight, and I will answer you. But promise me,
first, to keep away from Mr. Dent. Give me your word not to seek him--to
avoid him, if he seeks you. Do you promise? It is well.”
He would have taken her hand; but she waved him away. In another moment
he heard the swift rustle of her dress in the hall, the sound of her
feet upon the stair, the sharp closing of her bedroom door, and all was
quiet.
And even thus quietly the day wore away; and the night rose slowly from
the valley, and overshadowed the mountains with purple wings that fanned
the still air into a breeze, until the moon followed it, and lulled
every thing to rest as with the laying-on of white and benedictory
hands. It was a lovely night; but Henry Rance, waiting impatiently
beneath a sycamore at the foot of the garden, saw no beauty in earth or
air or sky. A thousand suspicions common to a jealous nature, a vague
superstition of the spot, filled his mind with distrust and doubt.
“If this should be a trick to keep my hands off that insolent pup!” he
muttered. But, even as the thought passed his tongue, a white figure
slid from the shrubbery near the house, glided along the line of
picket-fence, and then stopped, midway, motionless in the moonlight.
It was she. But he scarcely recognized her in the white drapery that
covered her head and shoulders and breast. He approached her with a
hurried whisper. “Let us withdraw from the moonlight. Everybody can see
us here.”
“We have nothing to say that cannot be said in the moonlight, Henry
Rance,” she replied, coldly receding from his proffered hand. She
trembled for a moment, as if with a chill, and then suddenly turned upon
him. “Hold up your head, and let me look at you! I've known only what
men are: let me see what a traitor looks like!”
He recoiled more from her wild face than her words. He saw from the
first that her hollow cheeks and hollow eyes were blazing with fever. He
was no coward; but he would have fled.
“You are ill, Jenny,” he said: “you had best return to the house.
Another time”--
“Stop!” she cried hoarsely. “Move from this spot, and I'll call for
help! Attempt to leave me now, and I'll proclaim you the assassin that
you are!”
“It was a fair fight,” he said doggedly.
“Was it a fair fight to creep behind an unarmed and unsuspecting man?
Was it a fair fight to try to throw suspicion on some one else? Was it a
fair fight to deceive me? Liar and coward that you are!”
He made a stealthy step toward her with evil eyes, and a wickeder hand
that crept within his breast. She saw the motion; but it only stung her
to newer fury.
“Strike!” she said with blazing eyes, throwing her hands open before
him. “Strike! Are you afraid of the woman who dares you? Or do you keep
your knife for the backs of unsuspecting men? Strike, I tell you!
No? Look, then!” With a sudden movement, she tore from her head and
shoulders the thick lace shawl that had concealed her figure, and stood
before him. “Look!” she cried passionately, pointing to the bosom and
shoulders of her white dress, darkly streaked with faded stains and
ominous discoloration,--“look! This is the dress I wore that morning
when I found him lying here,--HERE,--bleeding from your cowardly knife.
Look! Do you see? This is his blood,--my darling boy's blood!--one drop
of which, dead and faded as it is, is more precious to me than the whole
living pulse of any other man. Look! I come to you to-night, christened
with his blood, and dare you to strike,--dare you to strike him again
through me, and mingle my blood with his. Strike, I implore you! Strike!
if you have any pity on me, for God's sake! Strike! if you are a man!
Look! Here lay his head on my shoulder; here I held him to my breast,
where never--so help me my God!--another man--Ah!”--
She reeled against the fence, and something that had flashed in Rance's
hand dropped at her feet; for another flash and report rolled him over
in the dust; and across his writhing body two men strode, and caught her
ere she fell.
“She has only fainted,” said Mr. McClosky. “Jinny dear, my girl, speak
to me!”
“What is this on her dress?” said Ridgeway, kneeling beside her, and
lifting his set and colorless face. At the sound of his voice, the color
came faintly back to her cheek: she opened her eyes, and smiled.
“It's only your blood, dear boy,” she said; “but look a little deeper,
and you'll find my own.”
She put up her two yearning hands, and drew his face and lips down to
her own. When Ridgeway raised his head again, her eyes were closed; but
her mouth still smiled as with the memory of a kiss.
They bore her to the house, still breathing, but unconscious. That night
the road was filled with clattering horsemen; and the summoned skill of
the countryside for leagues away gathered at her couch. The wound, they
said, was not essentially dangerous; but they had grave fears of the
shock to a system that already seemed suffering from some strange and
unaccountable nervous exhaustion. The best medical skill of Tuolumne
happened to be young and observing, and waited patiently an opportunity
to account for it. He was presently rewarded.
For toward morning she rallied, and looked feebly around. Then she
beckoned her father toward her, and whispered, “Where is he?”
“They took him away, Jinny dear, in a cart. He won't trouble you agin.”
He stopped; for Miss Jenny had raised herself on her elbow, and was
levelling her black brows at him. But two kicks from the young surgeon,
and a significant motion towards the door, sent Mr. McClosky away
muttering. “How should I know that 'HE' meant Ridgeway?” he said
apologetically, as he went and returned with the young gentleman. The
surgeon, who was still holding her pulse, smiled, and thought
that--with a little care--and attention--the stimulants--might
be--diminished--and---he--might leave--the patient for some hours with
perfect safety. He would give further directions to Mr. McClosky--down
stairs.
It was with great archness of manner, that, half an hour later, Mr.
McClosky entered the room with a preparatory cough; and it was with some
disappointment that he found Ridgeway standing quietly by the window,
and his daughter apparently fallen into a light doze. He was still more
concerned, when, after Ridgeway had retired, noticing a pleasant smile
playing about her lips, he said softly:--
“You was thinking of some one, Jinny?”
“Yes, father,” the gray eyes met his steadily,--“of poor John Ashe!”
Her recovery was swift. Nature, that had seemed to stand jealously aloof
from her in her mental anguish, was kind to the physical hurt of her
favorite child. The superb physique, which had been her charm and her
trial, now stood her in good stead. The healing balsam of the pine, the
balm of resinous gums, and the rare medicaments of Sierran altitudes,
touched her as it might have touched the wounded doe; so that in two
weeks she was able to walk about. And when, at the end of the month,
Ridgeway returned from a flying visit to San Francisco, and jumped from
the Wingdam coach at four o'clock in the morning, the Rose of Tuolumne,
with the dewy petals of either cheek fresh as when first unfolded to his
kiss, confronted him on the road.
With a common instinct, their young feet both climbed the little hill
now sacred to their thought. When they reached its summit, they were
both, I think, a little disappointed. There is a fragrance in the
unfolding of a passion, that escapes the perfect flower. Jenny thought
the night was not as beautiful; Ridgeway, that the long ride had blunted
his perceptions. But they had the frankness to confess it to each
other, with the rare delight of such a confession, and the comparison
of details which they thought each had forgotten. And with this, and an
occasional pitying reference to the blank period when they had not known
each other, hand in hand they reached the house.
Mr. McClosky was awaiting them impatiently upon the veranda. When Miss
Jenny had slipped up stairs to replace a collar that stood somewhat
suspiciously awry, Mr. McClosky drew Ridgeway solemnly aside. He held a
large theatre poster in one hand, and an open newspaper in the other.
“I allus said,” he remarked slowly, with the air of merely renewing a
suspended conversation,--“I allus said that riding three horses to onct
wasn't exactly in her line. It would seem that it ain't. From remarks in
this yer paper, it would appear that she tried it on at Marysville last
week, and broke her neck.”