the protest of the child against insanitary and artificial treatment.
In its upright, unostentatious cradle it is protected against that
injudicious fondling and dangerous promiscuous osculation to which, as
an infant in human arms, it is so often subjected. Above all, it is kept
from that shameless and mortifying publicity so unjust to the weak and
unformed animal. The child repays this consideration by a gratifying
silence. It cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or
actions; it cannot participate in our pleasures. Why should it be
forced into premature contact with them, merely to feed our vanity or
selfishness? Why should we assume our particular parental accident
as superior to the common lot? If we do not give our offspring that
prominence before our visitors so common to the young wife and husband,
it is for that reason solely; and this may account for what seemed the
forgetfulness of Enriquez in speaking of it or pointing it out to
you. And I think his action in calling you back to see it was somewhat
precipitate. As one does not usually introduce an unknown and inferior
stranger without some previous introduction, he might have asked you if
you wished to see the baby before he recalled you.”
I looked from Urania's unfathomable eyes to Enriquez's impenetrable
countenance. I might have been equal to either of them alone, but
together they were invincible. I looked hopelessly at the baby. With
its sharp little eyes and composed face, it certainly was a marvelous
miniature of Enriquez. I said so.
“It would be singular if it was not,” said Mrs. Saltillo dryly; “and as
I believe it is by no means an uncommon fact in human nature, it seems
to me strange that people should insist upon it as a discovery. It is
an inheritance, however, that in due time progress and science will no
doubt interrupt, to the advancement of the human race. I need not
say that both Enriquez and myself look forward to it with confident
tranquillity.”
There was clearly nothing for me to do now but to shake hands again and
take my leave. Yet I was so much impressed with the unreality of the
whole scene that when I reached the front door I had a strong impulse
to return suddenly and fall in upon them in their relaxed and natural
attitudes. They could not keep up this pose between themselves; and I
half expected to see their laughing faces at the window, as I glanced up
before wending my perilous way to the street.
I found Mrs. Saltillo's manuscript well written and, in the narrative
parts, even graphic and sparkling. I suppressed some general remarks
on the universe, and some correlative theories of existence, as
not appertaining particularly to the Aztecs, and as not meeting any
unquenchable thirst for information on the part of the readers of the
“Daily Excelsior.” I even promoted my fair contributor to the position
of having been commissioned, at great expense, to make the Mexican
journey especially for the “Excelsior.” This, with Mrs. Saltillo's
somewhat precise preraphaelite drawings and water-colors, vilely
reproduced by woodcuts, gave quite a sensational air to her production,
which, divided into parts, for two or three days filled a whole page
of the paper. I am not aware of any particular service that it did to
ethnology; but, as I pointed out in the editorial column, it showed that
the people of California were not given over by material greed to the
exclusion of intellectual research; and as it was attacked instantly
in long communications from one or two scientific men, it thus produced
more copy.
Briefly, it was a boom for the author and the “Daily Excelsior.” I
should add, however, that a rival newspaper intimated that it was also a
boom for Mrs. Saitillo's HUSBAND, and called attention to the fact that
a deserted Mexican mine, known as “El Bolero,” was described graphically
in the Aztec article among the news, and again appeared in the
advertising columns of the same paper. I turned somewhat indignantly
to the file of the “Excelsior,” and, singularly enough, found in the
elaborate prospectus of a new gold-mining company the description of the
El Bolero mine as a QUOTATION from the Aztec article, with extraordinary
inducements for the investment of capital in the projected working of an
old mine. If I had had any difficulty in recognizing in the extravagant
style the flamboyant hand of Enriquez in English writing, I might have
read his name plainly enough displayed as president of the company. It
was evidently the prospectus of one of the ventures he had shown me. I
was more amused than indignant at the little trick he had played upon
my editorial astuteness. After all, if I had thus benefited the young
couple I was satisfied. I had not seen them since my first visit, as I
was very busy,--my communications with Mrs. Saltillo had been carried on
by letters and proofs,--and when I did finally call at their house, it
was only to find that they were visiting at San Jose. I wondered whether
the baby was still hanging on the wall, or, if he was taken with them,
who carried him.
A week later the stock of El Bolero was quoted at par. More than that,
an incomprehensible activity had been given to all the deserted Mexican
mines, and people began to look up scrip hitherto thrown aside as
worthless. Whether it was one of those extraordinary fevers which
attacked Californian speculation in the early days, or whether Enriquez
Saltillo had infected the stock-market with his own extravagance, I
never knew; but plans as wild, inventions as fantastic, and arguments
as illogical as ever emanated from his own brain, were set forth “on
'Change” with a gravity equal to his own. The most reasonable hypothesis
was that it was the effect of the well-known fact that the Spanish
Californian hitherto had not been a mining speculator, nor connected
in any way with the gold production on his native soil, deeming it
inconsistent with his patriarchal life and landed dignity, and that when
a “son of one of the oldest Spanish families, identified with the land
and its peculiar character for centuries, lent himself to its mineral
exploitations,”--I beg to say that I am quoting from the advertisement
in the “Excelsior,”--“it was a guerdon of success.” This was so far true
that in a week Enriquez Saltillo was rich, and in a fair way to become a
millionaire.
It was a hot afternoon when I alighted from the stifling Wingdam coach,
and stood upon the cool, deep veranda of the Carquinez Springs Hotel.
After I had shaken off the dust which had lazily followed us, in our
descent of the mountain road, like a red smoke, occasionally overflowing
the coach windows, I went up to the room I had engaged for my brief
holiday. I knew the place well, although I could see that the hotel
itself had lately been redecorated and enlarged to meet the increasing
requirements of fashion. I knew the forest of enormous redwoods where
one might lose one's self in a five minutes' walk from the veranda. I
knew the rocky trail that climbed the mountain to the springs, twisting
between giant boulders. I knew the arid garden, deep in the wayside
dust, with its hurriedly planted tropical plants, already withering in
the dry autumn sunshine, and washed into fictitious freshness, night
and morning by the hydraulic irrigating-hose. I knew, too, the cool,
reposeful night winds that swept down from invisible snow-crests beyond,
with the hanging out of monstrous stars, that too often failed to bring
repose to the feverish guests. For the overstrained neurotic workers
who fled hither from the baking plains of Sacramento, or from the chill
sea-fogs of San Francisco, never lost the fierce unrest that had driven
them here. Unaccustomed to leisure, their enforced idleness impelled
them to seek excitement in the wildest gayeties; the bracing mountain
air only reinvigorated them to pursue pleasure as they had pursued the
occupations they had left behind. Their sole recreations were furious
drives over break-neck roads; mad, scampering cavalcades through the
sedate woods; gambling parties in private rooms, where large sums were
lost by capitalists on leave; champagne suppers; and impromptu balls
that lasted through the calm, reposeful night to the first rays of light
on the distant snowline. Unimaginative men, in their temporary sojourn
they more often outraged or dispossessed nature in her own fastnesses
than courted her for sympathy or solitude. There were playing-cards left
lying behind boulders, and empty champagne bottles forgotten in forest
depths.
I remembered all this when, refreshed by a bath, I leaned from the
balcony of my room and watched the pulling up of a brake, drawn by six
dusty, foam-bespattered horses, driven by a noted capitalist. As
its hot, perspiring, closely veiled yet burning-faced fair occupants
descended, in all the dazzling glory of summer toilets, and I saw the
gentlemen consult their watches with satisfaction, and congratulate
their triumphant driver, I knew the characteristic excitement they had
enjoyed from a “record run,” probably for a bet, over a mountain road in
a burning sun.
“Not bad, eh? Forty-four minutes from the summit!”
The voice seemed at my elbow. I turned quickly, to recognize an
acquaintance, a young San Francisco broker, leaning from the next
balcony to mine. But my attention was just then preoccupied by the face
and figure, which seemed familiar to me, of a woman who was alighting
from the brake.
“Who is that?” I asked; “the straight slim woman in gray, with the white
veil twisted round her felt hat?”
“Mrs. Saltillo,” he answered; “wife of 'El Bolero' Saltillo, don't you
know. Mighty pretty woman, if she is a little stiffish and set up.”
Then I had not been mistaken! “Is Enriquez--is her husband--here?” I
asked quickly.
The man laughed. “I reckon not. This is the place for other people's
husbands, don't you know.”
Alas! I DID know; and as there flashed upon me all the miserable
scandals and gossip connected with this reckless, frivolous caravansary,
I felt like resenting his suggestion. But my companion's next words were
more significant:--
“Besides, if what they say is true, Saltillo wouldn't be very popular
here.”
“I don't understand,” I said quickly.
“Why, after all that row he had with the El Bolero Company.”
“I never heard of any row,” I said, in astonishment.
The broker laughed incredulously. “Come! and YOU a newspaper man! Well,
maybe they DID try to hush it up, and keep it out of the papers, on
account of the stock. But it seems he got up a reg'lar shindy with the
board, one day; called 'em thieves and swindlers, and allowed he was
disgracing himself as a Spanish hidalgo by having anything to do with
'em. Talked, they say, about Charles V. of Spain, or some other royal
galoot, giving his ancestors the land in trust! Clean off his head,
I reckon. Then shunted himself off the company, and sold out. You can
guess he wouldn't be very popular around here, with Jim Bestley, there,”
pointing to the capitalist who had driven the brake, “who used to be on
the board with him. No, sir. He was either lying low for something, or
was off his head. Think of his throwing up a place like that!”
“Nonsense!” I said indignantly. “He is mercurial, and has the quick
impulsiveness of his race, but I believe him as sane as any who sat with
him on the board. There must be some mistake, or you haven't got the
whole story.” Nevertheless, I did not care to discuss an old friend
with a mere acquaintance, and I felt secretly puzzled to account for his
conduct, in the face of his previous cleverness in manipulating the El
Bolero, and the undoubted fascination he had previously exercised over
the stockholders. The story had, of course, been garbled in repetition.
I had never before imagined what might be the effect of Enriquez's
peculiar eccentricities upon matter-of-fact people,--I had found them
only amusing,--and the broker's suggestion annoyed me. However, Mrs.
Saltillo was here in the hotel, and I should, of course, meet her. Would
she be as frank with me?
I was disappointed at not finding her in the drawing-room or on the
veranda; and the heat being still unusually oppressive, I strolled out
toward the redwoods, hesitating for a moment in the shade before I ran
the fiery gauntlet of the garden. To my surprise, I had scarcely passed
the giant sentinels on its outskirts before I found that, from some
unusual condition of the atmosphere, the cold undercurrent of air
which generally drew through these pillared aisles was withheld that
afternoon; it was absolutely hotter than in the open, and the wood was
charged throughout with the acrid spices of the pine. I turned back to
the hotel, reascended to my bedroom, and threw myself in an armchair by
the open window. My room was near the end of a wing; the corner room at
the end was next to mine, on the same landing. Its closed door, at right
angles to my open one, gave upon the staircase, but was plainly visible
from where I sat. I remembered being glad that it was shut, as it
enabled me without offense to keep my own door open.
The house was very quiet. The leaves of a catalpa, across the roadway,
hung motionless. Somebody yawned on the veranda below. I threw away
my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes. I think I had not lost
consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was awakened by the
shaking and thrilling of the whole building. As I staggered to my feet,
I saw the four pictures hanging against the wall swing outwardly from
it on their cords, and my door swing back against the wall. At the same
moment, acted upon by the same potential impulse, the door of the end
room in the hall, opposite the stairs, also swung open. In that brief
moment I had a glimpse of the interior of the room, of two figures, a
man and a woman, the latter clinging to her companion in abject terror.
It was only for an instant, for a second thrill passed through the
house, the pictures clattered back against the wall, the door of the end
room closed violently on its strange revelation, and my own door swung
back also. Apprehensive of what might happen, I sprang toward it, but
only to arrest it an inch or two before it should shut, when, as my
experience had taught me, it might stick by the subsidence of the walls.
But it did stick ajar, and remained firmly fixed in that position. From
the clattering of the knob of the other door, and the sound of hurried
voices behind it, I knew that the same thing had happened there when
that door had fully closed.
I was familiar enough with earthquakes to know that, with the second
shock or subsidence of the earth, the immediate danger was passed, and
so I was able to note more clearly what else was passing. There was the
usual sudden stampede of hurrying feet, the solitary oath and scream,
the half-hysterical laughter, and silence. Then the tumult was
reawakened to the sound of high voices, talking all together, or the
impatient calling of absentees in halls and corridors. Then I heard
the quick swish of female skirts on the staircase, and one of the fair
guests knocked impatiently at the door of the end room, still immovably
fixed. At the first knock there was a sudden cessation of the hurried
whisperings and turning of the doorknob.
“Mrs. Saltillo, are you there? Are you frightened?” she called.
“Mrs. Saltillo”! It was SHE, then, who was in the room! I drew nearer
my door, which was still fixed ajar. Presently a voice,--Mrs. Saltillo's
voice,--with a constrained laugh in it, came from behind the door: “Not
a bit. I'll come down in a minute.”
“Do,” persisted the would-be intruder. “It's all over now, but we're all
going out into the garden; it's safer.”
“All right,” answered Mrs. Saltillo. “Don't wait, dear. I'll follow. Run
away, now.”
The visitor, who was evidently still nervous, was glad to hurry away,
and I heard her retreating step on the staircase. The rattling of the
door began again, and at last it seemed to yield to a stronger pull,
and opened sufficiently to allow Mrs. Saltillo to squeeze through. I
withdrew behind my door. I fancied that it creaked as she passed, as if,
noticing it ajar, she had laid an inquiring hand upon it. I waited, but
she was not followed by any one. I wondered if I had been mistaken. I
was going to the bell-rope to summon assistance to move my own door when
a sudden instinct withheld me. If there was any one still in that room,
he might come from it just as the servant answered my call, and a public
discovery would be unavoidable. I was right. In another instant the
figure of a man, whose face I could not discern, slipped out of the
room, passed my door, and went stealthily down the staircase.
Convinced of this, I resolved not to call public attention to my being
in my own room at the time of the incident; so I did not summon any one,
but, redoubling my efforts, I at last opened the door sufficiently to
pass out, and at once joined the other guests in the garden. Already,
with characteristic recklessness and audacity, the earthquake was
made light of; the only dictate of prudence had resolved itself into
a hilarious proposal to “camp out” in the woods all night, and have
a “torch-light picnic.” Even then preparations were being made for
carrying tents, blankets, and pillows to the adjacent redwoods; dinner
and supper, cooked at campfires, were to be served there on stumps of
trees and fallen logs. The convulsion of nature had been used as an
excuse for one of the wildest freaks of extravagance that Carquinez
Springs had ever known. Perhaps that quick sense of humor which
dominates the American male in exigencies of this kind kept the
extravagances from being merely bizarre and grotesque, and it was
presently known that the hotel and its menage were to be appropriately
burlesqued by some of the guests, who, attired as Indians, would
personate the staff, from the oracular hotel proprietor himself down to
the smart hotel clerk.
During these arrangements I had a chance of drawing near Mrs. Saltillo.
I fancied she gave a slight start as she recognized me; but her
greetings were given with her usual precision. “Have you been here
long?” she asked.
“I have only just come,” I replied laughingly; “in time for the shock.”
“Ah, you felt it, then? I was telling these ladies that our eminent
geologist, Professor Dobbs, assured me that these seismic disturbances
in California have a very remote centre, and are seldom serious.”
“It must be very satisfactory to have the support of geology at such a
moment,” I could not help saying, though I had not the slightest idea
whose the figure was that I had seen, nor, indeed, had I recognized
it among the guests. She did not seem to detect any significance in
my speech, and I added: “And where is Enriquez? He would enjoy this
proposed picnic to-night.”
“Enriquez is at Salvatierra Rancho, which he lately bought from his
cousin.”
“And the baby? Surely, here is a chance for you to hang him up on a
redwood tonight, in his cradle.”
“The boy,” said Mrs. Saltillo quickly, “is no longer in his cradle; he
has passed the pupa state, and is now free to develop his own perfected
limbs. He is with his father. I do not approve of children being
submitted to the indiscriminate attentions of a hotel. I am here myself
only for that supply of ozone indicated for brain exhaustion.”
She looked so pretty and prim in her gray dress, so like her old correct
self, that I could not think of anything but her mental attitude, which
did not, by the way, seem much like mental depression. Yet I was aware
that I was getting no information of Enriquez's condition or affairs,
unless the whole story told by the broker was an exaggeration. I did
not, however, dare to ask more particularly.
“You remember Professor Dobbs?” she asked abruptly.
This recalled a suspicion awakened by my vision, so suddenly that I
felt myself blushing. She did not seem to notice it, and was perfectly
composed.
“I do remember him. Is he here?”
“He is; that is what makes it so particularly unfortunate for me. You
see, after that affair of the board, and Enriquez's withdrawal, although
Enriquez may have been a little precipitate in his energetic way, I
naturally took my husband's part in public; for although we preserve
our own independence inviolable, we believe in absolute confederation as
against society.”
“But what has Professor Dobbs to do with the board?” I interrupted.
“The professor was scientific and geological adviser to the board, and
it was upon some report or suggestion of his that Enriquez took issue,
against the sentiment of the board. It was a principle affecting
Enriquez's Spanish sense of honor.”
“Do tell me all about it,” I said eagerly; “I am very anxious to know
the truth.”
“As I was not present at the time,” said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my
eagerness with a gentle frigidity, “I am unable to do so. Anything else
would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte. I do not approve of
gossip.”
“But what did Enriquez tell you? You surely know that.”
“THAT, being purely confidential, as between husband and wife,--perhaps
I should say partner and partner,--of course you do not expect me to
disclose. Enough that I was satisfied with it. I should not have spoken
to you about it at all, but that, through myself and Enriquez, you are
an acquaintance of the professor's, and I might save you the awkwardness
of presenting yourself with him. Otherwise, although you are a friend of
Enriquez, it need not affect your acquaintance with the professor.”
“Hang the professor!” I ejaculated. “I don't care a rap for HIM.”
“Then I differ with you,” said Mrs. Saltillo, with precision. “He is
distinctly an able man, and one cannot but miss the contact of his
original mind and his liberal teachings.”
Here she was joined by one of the ladies, and I lounged away. I dare say
it was very mean and very illogical, but the unsatisfactory character
of this interview made me revert again to the singular revelation I had
seen a few hours before. I looked anxiously for Professor Dobbs; but
when I did meet him, with an indifferent nod of recognition, I found
I could by no means identify him with the figure of her mysterious
companion. And why should I suspect him at all, in the face of Mrs.
Saltillo's confessed avoidance of him? Who, then, could it have been? I
had seen them but an instant, in the opening and the shutting of a door.
It was merely the shadowy bulk of a man that flitted past my door,
after all. Could I have imagined the whole thing? Were my perceptive
faculties--just aroused from slumber, too insufficiently clear to be
relied upon? Would I not have laughed had Urania, or even Enriquez
himself, told me such a story?
As I reentered the hotel the clerk handed me a telegram. “There's been
a pretty big shake all over the country,” he said eagerly. “Everybody
is getting news and inquiries from their friends. Anything fresh?” He
paused interrogatively as I tore open the envelope. The dispatch had
been redirected from the office of the “Daily Excelsior.” It was dated,
“Salvatierra Rancho,” and contained a single line: “Come and see your
old uncle 'Ennery.”
There was nothing in the wording of the message that was unlike
Enriquez's usual light-hearted levity, but the fact that he should have
TELEGRAPHED it to me struck me uneasily. That I should have received it
at the hotel where his wife and Professor Dobbs were both staying, and
where I had had such a singular experience, seemed to me more than a
mere coincidence. An instinct that the message was something personal
to Enriquez and myself kept me from imparting it to Mrs. Saltillo. After
worrying half the night in our bizarre camp in the redwoods, in the
midst of a restless festivity which was scarcely the repose I had been
seeking at Carquinez Springs, I resolved to leave the next day for
Salvatierra Rancho. I remembered the rancho,--a low, golden-brown,
adobe-walled quadrangle, sleeping like some monstrous ruminant in a
hollow of the Contra Costa Range. I recalled, in the midst of this noisy
picnic, the slumberous coolness of its long corridors and soundless
courtyard, and hailed it as a relief. The telegram was a sufficient
excuse for my abrupt departure. In the morning I left, but without again
seeing either Mrs. Saltillo or the professor.