Bill's disappearance brought quick changes to the little hotel at
Calivada. His ready acceptance of Mrs. Jones's alternative was a
complete surprise, and it was several days before she and Millie
realized that he had taken her at her word. Even then they thought he
had gone off on one of his temporary jaunts in the hills. When the days
grew into a fortnight and he did not return they instituted a search
among the near-by villages and mining-camps. Everett Hammond and Raymond
Thomas were solicitous aids in the inquiry, not for the two women they
were defrauding, nor because they felt any concern for Bill's welfare.
Rather was their full attention turned toward securing a deed which the
Pacific Railroad would consider law-proof. Had the property been
entirely within the state of Nevada, Bill's signature would not have
been imperative, but the California laws regarding the sale of property
were evadable by numerous small technicalities, and shrewd counsel
demanded that bona-fide deeds must appear as freewill transfers from
both the husband and wife. It was for this reason that Bill's
disappearance was a matter of deep satisfaction to both Hammond and
Thomas. They had begun to despair of his putting his name to the deed.
Now, should he not return within six months, they evolved a new scheme
and one which would be law-proof if it could be carried through.
If Mrs. Jones could be persuaded into a divorce, and the decree obtained
with full rights to the property, the deed would be legal without Bill's
name. It was for this reason that Hammond and Thomas put themselves at
Mrs. Jones's service and did everything in their power to discover
Bill's whereabouts. It was several weeks before they traced him to
Sacramento and from there to the veterans' home at Yountville. By this
time Mrs. Jones was quite beside herself, for, in spite of Bill's
shiftlessness, which was quite enough to wear away the patience of the
average woman, she felt a deep affection for the generous-hearted,
whimsical old creature and his companionship through fifteen years, and
at a time when her father's death had left her desolate had relieved the
monotony of a life which had had little else but hard work. Millie, too,
missed her foster-father, whose frequent sallies kept humor alive when
work and poverty pressed hard. In reverent and grateful memory she held
the thought of his care for her when she had been left a waif by her own
father's death. And so, together, Millie and Mrs. Jones pressed Thomas
for news of Bill.
He knew that if they learned his whereabouts they would not rest until
they had brought him home again. Mrs. Jones's persistent melancholy
since Bill's departure told Thomas that in order to get Bill back, the
deed itself would be abrogated by her, should that be one of his
conditions of return. Therefore both he and Hammond determined that they
would not let the two women know of Bill's whereabouts. Instead, they
said they had traced him as far as Placerville, known to old-timers as
the Hangtown of the gold days, and that from there he had taken the
trail up over the Georgetown Divide, where he said he was going to find
work in the mines. Search throughout the entire district, Hammond and
Thomas informed her, had failed to locate him, and they assured her and
Millie that inquiry should be kept up until he was found.
Winter came, bringing with it no news from Bill, and Mrs. Jones settled
into a melancholy resignation wherein she seldom smiled and where she
spent most of her time in the rocking-chair by the front window, gazing
down the path up which Bill had usually zigzagged his recalcitrant way.
Thomas was quick to recognize her symptoms and he resolved upon his
master-stroke.
One day toward the end of March when a heavy storm had blown up from the
lake and the entire forest was torn and twisted by a wind in high and
angry mood, Mrs. Jones sat crying in front of the window, wondering
where Bill was and beset with the fear that some place beyond the ridge
in that vast ocean of mountain billows Bill might be homeless and cold
and without food. A sudden gust shook the hillside, bringing down a
grizzled pine that had stood close to the house. The crash of its
falling resounded down the slope and Mrs. Jones, keyed to high pitch by
her vigil of three months, was brought to a sudden burst of despair just
as Thomas, who had come to Calivada to superintend the wiring of the
house which was now to be put on modern basis, came down the stairs. It
was his chance and he took it.
"Mrs. Jones!" There was a surcharge of pity in his voice as he glided
across the room and stood over her chair, placing a gentle hand upon
her shoulder. "I hate to see you upset. We've done everything in our
power to find Mr. Jones and we will leave no stone unturned until we
succeed. In the mean time you must think of yourself and Millie."
"It was thinking of myself and Millie that drove him out of his home."
Mrs. Jones buried her head on her hand and leaned against the
window-sill. The wind, with renewed shock, beat the sleet against the
window-pane. "He may be out this minute wandering the hills with no
place to go," she sobbed, "and he ain't young no more, neither.
"Of course, I thought all along," she went on, "that by selling the
place I could take care of him in his old age, and now he ain't here and
the place can't be sold."
"The place can be sold, Mrs. Jones, and you will then have enough money
to institute a real search for Mr. Jones." Thomas's emphasis of the
possibility of a sale without Bill's signature relaxed Mrs. Jones's mood
and she sat up straight in her chair, lifting questioning eyes toward
him.
"There is a way." He answered her unspoken inquiry with calm
deliberation, while he scrutinized her for the least sign of
encouragement or of antagonism as his plan unfolded. "It is a difficult
way and one which you may balk at pursuing, but it will justify itself
in the end."
"Oh, what is it, Mr. Thomas?" Mrs. Jones's brown eyes widened and hope
returned to them as she smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in her gingham
apron and folded her arms across her waist, rocking expectantly back and
forth. "I'd do 'most anything if I thought it'd bring Bill back," she
exclaimed, raising her voice to an enthusiastic pitch.
Thomas brought an arm-chair from the center-table and sat down beside
her. Clasping his hands, he leaned forward, "You can get a divorce,
and--"
"Oh, I could never do that!" Mrs. Jones protested and stopped rocking as
she lifted up her hands in horror. "He 'ain't never done anything; and
besides--"
"That's not the question." Thomas was quick to interrupt her flow of
excuses. "I know he has done nothing, Mrs. Jones. But as things stand at
present you have neither Bill nor the money for the place. You can't
give a clear title to the place while you are married to Mr. Jones
unless it bears his signature. You have not the money to find him. A
divorce will straighten all this out. You can sell the place for enough
money to find Bill. You can remarry him and you will both have a
comfortable old age."
"Oh!!!" Mrs. Jones drew the word out with a long inflection of surprise,
and she shook her head in the wisdom of a new light. "I see what ye
mean." After a moment's abstraction in which she pondered Thomas's
suggestion, she continued, "Some way or 'nuther it don't seem straight
by Bill."
"It's the only way I see to settle matters. But I sha'n't try to
persuade you against your will, Mrs. Jones." Thomas brought to bear on
the situation his finest modulations, both in voice and manner, as he
sat nonchalantly in his chair, one knee cocked over the other and his
foot swinging listlessly back and forth, portraying a personal
indifference which Mrs. Jones's simple mind could not penetrate.
"It does seem a good way," she mused aloud, adding, in little spurts,
"but I guess--maybe--Well--I think I'll talk it over with Millie."
Mrs. Jones did talk it over with Millie. Also, she had several prolonged
interviews with Thomas on the subject, and three days later she put her
name to the petition which asked for a divorce from Bill Jones without
so much as giving the document a thorough reading. Whatever Thomas
proposed was to her, by the very fact of its being his idea, a thing
worthy to be done. Millie, being of the same turn of mind, aided her in
accepting his decision. And it was only when the first publication of
summons appeared in the Reno papers that her heart sank at the words
which characterized Bill as a drunkard and a man who was cruel to his
wife--lies which Thomas justified as necessary to strengthen the one
truthful ground for the divorce--that of failure to provide. Even that
Mrs. Jones felt was beside the truth, for although Bill had never
exerted himself needlessly, he had performed the chores, gone after the
mail, made beds, and, by his gift to her on their marriage day of his
three hundred and twenty acres, which were far the better portion of the
property, he had made some slight concession to his responsibilities.
Bill's digressions had been those of omission rather than those of
commission, and Mrs. Jones's misgivings were frequent during the three
months that followed.
In the mean time, Thomas and Hammond were quick to inaugurate a new
regime at the hotel. Mrs. Jones and Millie remained on in the capacity
of guests, while a clerk and a housekeeper were brought from the city to
take over the management. Modern improvements and equipment soon turned
it into a hostelry that verged on the fashionable. With the early spring
freshet augmenting the waterfall and the stream into a cataract whose
potential horse-power did not escape Everett Hammond, he made a hurried
trip from San Francisco with an official of the Pacific Railroad and
succeeded in persuading the company to advance a comfortable sum of
money for an option on the Jones property. Mrs. Jones and Millie,
fretting under the suspense and without funds, were given a small amount
to tide them over until the sale should be consummated, when they were
to receive a large block of certificates in the Golden Gate Land
Company.
All would have been well with Thomas, who saw life spreading before him
in a panorama of ease and elegance, had it not been for two
people--Lemuel Townsend and John Marvin. Lemuel Townsend had been placed
by the November elections on the list of Superior Court judges, where he
immediately came into his own as presiding judge in the majority of
divorce cases in Reno. Thomas, unable to withstand the role of popular
and irresistible Beau Brummell among the prospective divorcees at the
hotel, had run against Townsend's displeasure two days before the
election, when he had dared to play interloper in Lemuel Townsend's
attentions to Mrs. Margaret Davis. With Townsend, it had been love at
first sight. With Mrs. Davis it was something less, her only idea at
that time being a quick snatch at freedom and a hurried trip back to
Broadway, where she hoped to sign up for the summer circuit. Lem
Townsend did well enough to pass the time, and it was her own diversion
rather than any feeling for him which bade her accept his attentions.
Thomas on frequent trips had scattered his flatteries between Millie and
the various divorcees. Mrs. Davis came in for her full share and several
times there had been clashes between the two men, Thomas invariably
stepping aside, but only after verbal skirmishes with Townsend.
Marvin had not been seen in the neighborhood since a few days after Bill
Jones had disappeared. He had returned to his cabin, after having
established himself in an office in San Francisco with the intention of
taking Bill back with him. During the days spent on the trails in search
of the old man he had successfully evaded Sheriff Blodgett and had gone
back to his office, where he had received a forwarded letter from Bill
at the veterans' home at Yountville. He had taken one trip to the home
with the purpose of persuading Bill to return with him to the city. But
when he saw how comfortable Bill was there in the hillside country,
surrounded by the old veterans who vied with one another in recounting
their past prowess, he decided to let him alone until such time as he
could effect a reconciliation between Bill and Mrs. Jones.
This, he trusted, would be at the termination of the case brought
against him by the Pacific Railroad to recover the timber which he had
sold to Rodney Harper previous to the sale of his timber-land to the
Golden Gate Land Company by Mrs. Marvin. Then, too, he hoped the way
would be made straight for him and Millie, although he had half lost
hope under his realization of Thomas's superior eligibility.
These things, known to the latter, destroyed his composure and made the
lapse between the filing of Mrs. Jones's divorce suit and the
termination of its three months' summons by publication, required by
law, a period of anxiety. He knew that if Marvin were vindicated before
Mrs. Jones could secure her divorce his whole framework would collapse,
as Millie and Mrs. Jones, straightforward as they were, would brook no
hint of dishonesty on his part. Once discovered as unworthy of trust,
their confidence in him would be broken and Marvin would be restored to
full standing, not only in Millie's affections, but in Mrs. Jones's
approval.
In the latter part of March he took a hurried trip to Reno, where, in
conference with Blodgett, who had never been able to forgive Marvin's
evasion of arrest, maneuvers to have the two suits tried at the same
time sent him back to San Francisco rejoicing in the anticipation that
his days of discomfort would soon be over and he could return to his
own world again.