When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at
Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall
whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the
freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a
dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and
the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the
coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in
iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows'
housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their
eyes met.
“Broken?” he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old
deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.
“Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite,” responded the negress.
“Snake bite!” repeated Courtland with languid interest, “what snake?”
“Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which,” she replied.
“But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone.
Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de
lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed.”
Some faint chord of memory was touched by the girl's peculiar
vocabulary.
“Ah,” said Courtland quickly, “you're Miss Dows' Sophy. Then you can
tell me”--
“Nuffin, sah absomlutely nuffin!” interrupted the girl, shaking her head
with impressive official dignity. “It's done gone fo'bid by de doctor!
Yo' 're to lie dar and shut yo'r eye, honey,” she added, for the moment
reverting unconsciously to the native maternal tenderness of her race,
“and yo' 're not to bodder yo'se'f ef school keeps o' not. De medical
man say distinctly, sah,” she concluded, sternly recalling her duty
again, “no conversation wid de patient.”
But Courtland had winning ways with all dependents. “But you will answer
me ONE question, Sophy, and I'll not ask another. Has”--he hesitated
in his still uncertainty as to the actuality of his experience and its
probable extent--“has--Cato--escaped?”
“If yo' mean dat sassy, bull-nigger oberseer of yo'se, cunnle, HE'S
safe, yo' bet!” returned Sophy sharply. “Safe in his own quo'tahs night
afo' las', after braggin' about the bloodhaowns he killed; and safe ober
the county line yes'day moan'in, after kicking up all dis rumpus. If
dar is a sassy, highfalutin' nigger I jiss 'spises--its dat black nigger
Cato o' yo'se! Now,”--relenting--“yo' jiss wink yo' eye, honey,
and don't excite yo'se'f about sach black trash; drap off to sleep
comfor'ble. Fo' you do'an get annuder word out o' Sophy, shuah!”
As if in obedience, Courtland closed his eyes. But even in his weak
state he was conscious of the blood coming into his cheek at Sophy's
relentless criticism of the man for whom he had just periled his life
and position. Much of it he felt was true; but how far had he been a
dupe in his quixotic defense of a quarrelsome blusterer and cowardly
bully? Yet there was the unmistakable shot and cold-blooded attempt at
Cato's assassination! And there were the bloodhounds sent to track the
unfortunate man! That was no dream--but a brutal inexcusable fact!
The medical practitioner of Redlands he remembered was conservative,
old-fashioned, and diplomatic. But his sympathies had been broadened by
some army experiences, and Courtland trusted to some soldierly and frank
exposition of the matter from him. Nevertheless, Dr. Maynard was first
healer, and, like Sophy, professionally cautious. The colonel had better
not talk about it now. It was already two days old; the colonel had been
nearly forty-eight hours in bed. It was a regrettable affair, but the
natural climax of long-continued political and racial irritation--and
not without GREAT provocation! Assassination was a strong word; could
Colonel Courtland swear that Cato was actually AIMED AT, or was it not
merely a demonstration to frighten a bullying negro? It might have been
necessary to teach him a lesson--which the colonel by this time ought
to know could only be taught to these inferior races by FEAR. The
bloodhounds! Ah, yes!--well, the bloodhounds were, in fact, only a
part of that wholesome discipline. Surely Colonel Courtland was not so
foolish as to believe that, even in the old slave-holding days, planters
sent dogs after runaways to mangle and destroy THEIR OWN PROPERTY? They
might as well, at once, let them escape! No, sir! They were used only
to frighten and drive the niggers out of swamps, brakes, and
hiding-places--as no nigger had ever dared to face 'em. Cato might lie
as much as he liked, but everybody knew WHO it was that killed Major
Reed's hounds. Nobody blamed the colonel for it,--not even Major
Reed,--but if the colonel had lived a little longer in the South, he'd
have known it wasn't necessary to do that in self-preservation, as the
hounds would never have gone for a white man. But that was not a matter
for the colonel to bother about NOW. He was doing well; he had slept
nearly thirty hours; there was no fever, he must continue to doze off
the exhaustion of his powerful stimulant, and he, the doctor, would
return later in the afternoon.
Perhaps it was his very inability to grasp in that exhausted state the
full comprehension of the doctor's meaning, perhaps because the physical
benumbing of his brain was stronger than any mental excitement, but he
slept again until the doctor reappeared. “You're doing well enough now,
colonel,” said the physician, after a brief examination of his patient,
“and I think we can afford to wake you up a bit, and even let you move
your arm. You're luckier than poor Tom Higbee, who won't be able to
set his leg to the floor for three weeks to come. I haven't got all the
buckshot out of it yet that Jack Dumont put there the other night.”
Courtland started slightly. Jack Dumont! That was the name of Sally Dows
cousin of whom Champney had spoken! He had resolutely put aside from his
returning memory the hazy recollection of the young girl's voice--the
last thing he had heard that night--and the mystery that seemed to
surround it. But there was no delusion in this cousin--his rival,
and that of the equally deceived Champney. He controlled himself and
repeated coldly:--
“Jack Dumont!”
“Yes. But of course you knew nothing of all that, while you were off
in the swamp there. Yet, by Jingo! it was Dumont's shooting Higbee that
helped YOU to get off your nigger a darned sight more than YOUR killing
the dogs.”
“I don't understand,” returned Courtland coldly.
“Well, you see, Dumont, who had taken up No'th'n principles, I reckon,
more to goad the Higbees and please Sally Dows than from any conviction,
came over here that night. Whether he suspected anything was up, or
wanted to dare Higbee for bedevilment, or was only dancing attendance on
Miss Sally, no one knows. But he rode slap into Highee's party, called
out, 'If you're out hunting, Tom, here's a chance for your score!'
meaning their old vendetta feud, and brings his shot-gun up to his
shoulder. Higbee wasn't quick enough, Dumont lets fly, drops Higbee, and
then gallops off chased by the Reeds to avenge Higbee, and followed
by the whole crowd to see the fun, which was a little better than
nigger-driving. And that let you and Cato out, colonel.”
“And Dumont?”
“Got clean away to Foxboro' Station, leaving another score on his side
for the Reeds and Higbees to wipe out as best they can. You No'th'n men
don't believe in these sort of things, colonel, but taken as a straight
dash and hit o' raiding, that stroke of Sally Dows' cousin was mighty
fine!”
Courtland controlled himself with difficulty. The doctor had spoken
truly. The hero of this miserable affair was HER cousin--HIS RIVAL! And
to him--perhaps influenced by some pitying appeal of Miss Sally for the
man she had deceived--Courtland owed his life! He instinctively drew a
quick, sharp breath.
“Are you in pain?”
“Not at all. When can I get up?”
“Perhaps to-morrow.”
“And this arm?”
“Better not use it for a week or two.” He stopped, and, glancing
paternally at the younger man, added gravely but kindly: “If you'll
take my unprofessional advice, Colonel Courtland, you'll let this matter
simmer down. It won't hurt you and your affairs here that folks have had
a taste of your quality, and the nigger a lesson that his fellows won't
forget.”
“I thank you,” returned Courtland coldly; “but I think I already
understand my duty to the company I represent and the Government I have
served.”
“Possibly, colonel,” said the doctor quietly; “but you'll let an older
man remind you and the Government that you can't change the habits or
relations of two distinct races in a few years. Your friend, Miss Sally
Dows--although not quite in my way of thinking--has never attempted
THAT.”
“I am fully aware that Miss Dows possesses diplomatic accomplishments
and graces that I cannot lay claim to,” returned Courtland bitterly.
The doctor lifted his eyebrows slightly and changed the subject.
When he had gone, Courtland called for writing materials. He had already
made up his mind, and one course alone seemed proper to him. He wrote to
the president of the company, detailing the circumstances that had just
occurred, admitting the alleged provocation given by his overseer,
but pointing out the terrorism of a mob-law which rendered his
own discipline impossible. He asked that the matter be reported to
Washington, and some measures taken for the protection of the freedmen,
in the mean time he begged to tender his own resignation, but he would
stay until his successor was appointed, or the safety of his employees
secured. Until then, he should act upon his own responsibility and
according to his judgment. He made no personal charges, mentioned no
names, asked for no exemplary prosecution or trial of the offenders, but
only demanded a safeguard against a repetition of the offense. His next
letter, although less formal and official, was more difficult. It was
addressed to the commandant of the nearest Federal barracks, who was an
old friend and former companion-in-arms. He alluded to some conversation
they had previously exchanged in regard to the presence of a small
detachment of troops at Redlands during the elections, which Courtland
at the time, however, had diplomatically opposed. He suggested it now
as a matter of public expediency and prevention. When he had sealed
the letters, not caring to expose them to the espionage of the local
postmaster or his ordinary servants, he intrusted them to one of Miss
Sally's own henchmen, to be posted at the next office, at Bitter Creek
Station, ten miles distant.
Unfortunately, this duty accomplished, the reaction consequent on
his still weak physical condition threw him back upon himself and his
memory. He had resolutely refused to think of Miss Sally; he had
been able to withstand the suggestions of her in the presence of her
handmaid--supposed to be potent in nursing and herb-lore--whom she
had detached to wait upon him, and he had returned politely formal
acknowledgments to her inquiries. He had determined to continue this
personal avoidance as far as possible until he was relieved, on
the ground of that BUSINESS expediency which these events had made
necessary. She would see that he was only accepting the arguments with
which she had met his previous advances. Briefly, he had recourse to
that hopeless logic by which a man proves to himself that he has no
reason for loving a certain woman, and is as incontestably convinced
by the same process that he has. And in the midst of it he weakly fell
asleep, and dreamed that he and Miss Sally were walking in the cemetery;
that a hideous snake concealed among some lilies, over which the young
girl was bending, had uplifted its triangular head to strike. That he
seized it by the neck, struggled with it until he was nearly exhausted,
when it suddenly collapsed and shrunk, leaving in his palm the limp,
crushed, and delicately perfumed little thread glove which he remembered
to have once slipped from her hand.
When he awoke, that perfume seemed to be still in the air, distinct
from the fresh but homelier scents of the garden which stole through the
window. A sense of delicious coolness came with the afternoon breeze,
that faintly trilled the slanting slats of the blind with a slumberous
humming as of bees. The golden glory of a sinking southern sun was
penciling the cheap paper on the wall with leafy tracery and glowing
arabesques. But more than that, the calm of some potent influence--or
some unseen presence--was upon him, which he feared a movement might
dispel. The chair at the foot of his bed was empty. Sophy had gone
out. He did not turn his head to look further; his languid eyes falling
aimlessly upon the carpet at his bedside suddenly dilated. For they fell
also on the “smallest foot in the State.”
He started to his elbow, but a soft hand was laid gently yet firmly upon
his shoulder, and with a faint rustle of muslin skirts Miss Sally rose
from an unseen chair at the head of his bed, and stood beside him.
“Don't stir, co'nnle, I didn't sit where I could look in yo'r face for
fear of waking yo'. But I'll change seats now.” She moved to the chair
which Sophy had vacated, drew it slightly nearer the bed, and sat down.
“It was very kind of you--to come,” said Courtland hesitatingly, as with
a strong effort he drew his eyes away from the fascinating vision, and
regained a certain cold composure, “but I am afraid my illness has been
greatly magnified. I really am quite well enough to be up and about my
business, if the doctor would permit it. But I shall certainly manage to
attend to my duty to-morrow, and I hope to be at your service.
“Meaning that yo' don't care to see me NOW, co'nnle,” she said lightly,
with a faint twinkle in her wise, sweet eyes. “I thought of that, but as
my business wouldn't wait, I brought it to yo'.” She took from the folds
of her gown a letter. To his utter amazement it was the one he had given
his overseer to post to the commandant that morning. To his greater
indignation the seal was broken.
“Who has dared?” he demanded, half rising.
Her little hand was thrust out half deprecatingly. “No one yo' can
fight, co'nnle; only ME. I don't generally open other folks' letters,
and I wouldn't have done it for MYSELF; I did for yo'.”
“For me?”
“For yo'. I reckoned what yo' MIGHT do, and I told Sam to bring ME the
letters first. I didn't mind what yo' wrote to the company--for they'll
take care of yo', and their own eggs are all in the same basket. I
didn't open THAT one, but I did THIS when I saw the address. It was as
I expected, and yo' 'd given yo'self away! For if yo' had those soldiers
down here, yo' 'd have a row, sure! Don't move, co'nnle, YO' may not
care for that, it's in YO'R line. But folks will say that the soldiers
weren't sent to prevent RIOTING, but that Co'nnle Courtland was using
his old comrades to keep order on his property at Gov'ment expense. Hol'
on! Hol' on! co'nnle,” said the little figure, rising and waving its
pretty arms with a mischievous simulation of terrified deprecation.
“Don't shoot! Of course yo' didn't mean THAT, but that's about the way
that So'th'n men will put it to yo'r Gov'ment. For,” she continued, more
gently, yet with the shrewdest twinkle in her gray eyes, “if yo' really
thought the niggers might need Federal protection, yo' 'd have let ME
write to the commandant to send an escort--not to YO, but to CATO--that
HE might be able to come back in safety. Yo' 'd have had yo'r soldiers;
I'd have had back my nigger, which”--demurely--“yo' don't seem to worry
yo'self much about, co'nnle; and there isn't a So'th'n man would have
objected. But,” still more demurely, and affectedly smoothing out her
crisp skirt with her little hands, “yo' haven't been troubling me much
with yo'r counsel lately.”
A swift and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland. For the
first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was,
perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly
now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected
and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her
frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born
daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their
dexterity, tact, and expediency rose here incarnate, with the added
grace of womanhood. A strange sense of relief--perhaps a dawning of
hope--stole over him.
“But how will this insure Cato's safety hereafter, or give protection to
the others?” he said, fixing his eyes upon her.
“The future won't concern YO' much, co'nnle, if as yo' say here yo'r
resignation is sent in, and yo'r successor appointed,” she replied, with
more gravity than she had previously shown.
“But you do not think I will leave YOU in this uncertainty,” he said
passionately. He stopped suddenly, his brow darkened. “I forgot,” he
added coldly, “you will be well protected. Your--COUSIN--will give you
the counsel of race--and--closer ties.”
To his infinite astonishment, Miss Sally leaned forward in her chair
and buried her laughing face in both of her hands. When her dimples
had become again visible, she said with an effort, “Don't yo' think,
co'nnle, that as a peacemaker my cousin was even a bigger failure than
yo'self?”
“I don't understand,” stammered Courtland.
“Don't yo' think,” she continued, wiping her eyes demurely, “that if a
young woman about my size, who had got perfectly tired and sick of
all this fuss made about yo', because yo' were a No'th'n man, managing
niggers--if that young woman wanted to show her people what sort of a
radical and abolitionist a SO'TH'N man of their own sort might become,
she'd have sent for Jack Dumont as a sample? Eh? Only, I declare
to goodness, I never reckoned that he and Higbee would revive the
tomfooling of the vendetta, and take to shootin' each other at once.”
“And your sending for your cousin was only a feint to protect me?” said
Courtland faintly.
“Perhaps he didn't have to be SENT for, co'nnle,” she said, with a
slight touch of coquetry. “Suppose we say, I LET HIM COME. He'd be
hanging round, for he has property here, and wanted to get me to take it
up with mine in the company. I knew what his new views and ideas were,
and I thought I'd better consult Champney--who, being a foreigner, and
an older resident than yo', was quite neutral. He didn't happen to tell
YO' anything about it--did he, co'nnle?” she added with a grave mouth,
but an indescribable twinkle in her eyes.
Courtland's face darkened. “He did--and he further told me, Miss Dows,
that he himself was your suitor, and that you had refused him because of
the objections of your people.”
She raised her eyes to his swiftly and dropped them.
“And yo' think I ought to have accepted him?” she said slowly.
“No! but--you know--you told me”--he began hurriedly. But she had
already risen, and was shaking out the folds of her dress.
“We're not talking BUSINESS co'nnle--and business was my only excuse for
coming here, and taking Sophy's place. I'll send her in to yo', now.”
“But, Miss Dows!--Miss Sally!”
She stopped--hesitated--a singular weakness for so self-contained a
nature--and then slowly produced from her pocket a second letter--the
one that Courtland had directed to the company. “I didn't read THIS
letter, as I just told yo' co'nnle, for I reckon I know what's in it,
but I thought I'd bring it with me too, in case YO' CHANGED YO'R MIND.”
He raised himself on his pillow as she turned quickly away; but in that
single vanishing glimpse of her bright face he saw what neither he nor
any one else had ever seen upon the face of Sally Dows--a burning blush!
“Miss Sally!” He almost leaped from the bed, but she was gone. There was
another rustle at the door--the entrance of Sophy.
“Call her back, Sophy, quick!” he said.
The negress shook her turbaned head. “Not much, honey! When Miss Sally
say she goes--she done gone, shuah!”
“But, Sophy!” Perhaps something in the significant face of the girl
tempted him; perhaps it was only an impulse of his forgotten youth.
“Sophy!” appealingly--“tell me!--is Miss Sally engaged to her cousin?”
“Wat dat?” said Sophy in indignant scorn. “Miss Sally engaged to dat
Dumont! What fo'? Yo' 're crazy! No!”
“Nor Champney? Tell me, Sophy, has she a LOVER?”
For a moment the whites of Sophy's eyes were uplifted in speechless
scorn. “Yo' ask dat! Yo' lyin' dar wid dat snake-bit arm! Yo' lyin' dar,
and Miss Sally--who has only to whistle to call de fust quality in de
State raoun her--coming and going here wid you, and trotting on yo'r
arrants--and yo' ask dat! Yes! she has a lover, and what's me', she
CAN'T HELP IT; and yo' 're her lover; and what's me', YO' can't help it
either! And yo' can't back out of it now--bo'fe of yo'--nebber! Fo' yo'
're hers, and she's yo'rs--fo' ebber. For she sucked yo' blood.”
“What!” gasped Courtland, aghast at what he believed to be the sudden
insanity of the negress.
“Yes! Whar's yo'r eyes? whar's yo'r years? who's yo' dat yo' didn't see
nor heah nuffin? When dey dragged yo' outer de swamp dat night--wid de
snake-bite freshen yo'r arm--didn't SHE, dat poh chile!--dat same Miss
Sally--frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de
wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her
own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood
and one soul! Go way, white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down
dar! Hol' on, co'nnle, for massy's sake. Well, dar--I'll call her back!”
And she did!
“Look here--don't you know--it rather took me by surprise,” said
Champney, a few days later, with a hearty grip of the colonel's
uninjured hand; “but I don't bear malice, old fellow, and, by Jove! it
was SUCH a sensible, all-round, business-like choice for the girl to
make that no wonder we never thought of it before. Hang it all, you see
a fellow was always so certain it would be something out of the way and
detrimental, don't you know, that would take the fancy of a girl like
that--somebody like that cousin of hers or Higbee, or even ME, by Jove
that we never thought of looking beyond our noses--never thought of the
BUSINESS! And YOU all the time so cold and silent and matter-of-fact
about it! But I congratulate you! You've got the business down on a safe
basis now, and what's more, you've got the one woman who can run it.”
They say he was a true prophet. At least the Syndicate affairs
prospered, and in course of time even the Reeds and the Higbees
participated in the benefits. There were no more racial disturbances;
only the districts polled a peaceful and SMALLER Democratic majority at
the next election. There were not wanting those who alleged that Colonel
Courtland had simply become MRS. COURTLAND'S SUPERINTENDENT; that she
had absorbed him as she had every one who had come under her influence,
and that she would not rest until she had made him a Senator (to
represent Mrs. Courtland) in the councils of the nation. But when I last
dined with them in Washington, ten years ago, I found them both very
happy and comfortable, and I remember that Mrs. Courtland's remarks upon
Federal and State interests, the proper education of young girls, and
the management of the family, were eminently wise and practical.
THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER.
PART I.
On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay a line of bluffs terminates
in a promontory, at whose base, formed by the crumbling debris of the
cliff above, there is a narrow stretch of beach, salt meadow, and scrub
oak. The abrupt wall of rock behind it seems to isolate it as completely
from the mainland as the sea before it separates it from the opposite
shore. In spite of its contiguity to San Francisco,--opposite also, but
hidden by the sharp re-entering curve of coast,--the locality was wild,
uncultivated, and unfrequented. A solitary fisherman's cabin half hidden
in the rocks was the only trace of habitation. White drifts of sea-gulls
and pelican across the face of the cliff, gray clouds of sandpipers
rising from the beach, the dripping flight of ducks over the salt
meadows, and the occasional splash of a seal from the rocks, were the
only signs of life that could be seen from the decks of passing ships.
And yet the fisherman's cabin was occupied by Zephas Bunker and
his young wife, and he had succeeded in wresting from the hard soil
pasturage for a cow and goats, while his lateen-sailed fishing-boat
occasionally rode quietly in the sheltered cove below.
Three years ago Zephas Bunker, an ex-whaler, had found himself stranded
on a San Francisco wharf and had “hired out” to a small Petaluma farmer.
At the end of a year he had acquired little taste for the farmer's
business, but considerable for the farmer's youthful daughter, who,
equally weary of small agriculture, had consented to elope with him
in order to escape it. They were married at Oakland; he put his scant
earnings into a fishing-boat, discovered the site for his cabin, and
brought his bride thither. The novelty of the change pleased her,
although perhaps it was but little advance on her previous humble
position. Yet she preferred her present freedom to the bare restricted
home life of her past; the perpetual presence of the restless sea was a
relief to the old monotony of the wheat field and its isolated drudgery.
For Mary's youthful fancy, thinly sustained in childhood by the lightest
literary food, had neither been stimulated nor disillusioned by her
marriage. That practical experience which is usually the end of girlish
romance had left her still a child in sentiment. The long absences
of her husband in his fishing-boat kept her from wearying of or even
knowing his older and unequal companionship; it gave her a freedom her
girlhood had never known, yet added a protection that suited her still
childish dependency, while it tickled her pride with its equality. When
not engaged in her easy household duties in her three-roomed cottage, or
the care of her rocky garden patch, she found time enough to indulge her
fancy over the mysterious haze that wrapped the invisible city so near
and yet unknown to her; in the sails that slipped in and out of the
Golden Gate, but of whose destination she knew nothing; and in the long
smoke trail of the mail steamer which had yet brought her no message.
Like all dwellers by the sea, her face and her thoughts were more
frequently turned towards it; and as with them, it also seemed to her
that whatever change was coming into her life would come across that
vast unknown expanse. But it was here that Mrs. Bunker was mistaken.
It had been a sparkling summer morning. The waves were running before
the dry northwest trade winds with crystalline but colorless brilliancy.
Sheltered by the high, northerly bluff, the house and its garden were
exposed to the untempered heat of the cloudless sun refracted from the
rocky wall behind it. Some tarpaulin and ropes lying among the rocks
were sticky and odorous; the scrub oaks and manzanita bushes gave out
the aroma of baking wood; occasionally a faint pot-pourri fragrance from
the hot wild roses and beach grass was blown along the shore; even the
lingering odors of Bunker's vocation, and of Mrs. Bunker's cooking, were
idealized and refined by the saline breath of the sea at the doors and
windows. Mrs. Bunker, in the dazzling sun, bending over her peas
and lettuces with a small hoe, felt the comfort of her brown holland
sunbonnet. Secure in her isolation, she unbuttoned the neck of her gown
for air, and did not put up the strand of black hair that had escaped
over her shoulder. It was very hot in the lee of the bluff, and very
quiet in that still air. So quiet that she heard two distinct reports,
following each other quickly, but very faint and far. She glanced
mechanically towards the sea. Two merchant-men in midstream were shaking
out their wings for a long flight, a pilot boat and coasting schooner
were rounding the point, but there was no smoke from their decks. She
bent over her work again, and in another moment had forgotten it. But
the heat, with the dazzling reflection from the cliff, forced her to
suspend her gardening, and stroll along the beach to the extreme limit
of her domain. Here she looked after the cow that had also strayed
away through the tangled bush for coolness. The goats, impervious to
temperature, were basking in inaccessible fastnesses on the cliff
itself that made her eyes ache to climb. Over an hour passed, she was
returning, and had neared her house, when she was suddenly startled to
see the figure of a man between her and the cliff. He was engaged in
brushing his dusty clothes with a handkerchief, and although he saw her
coming, and even moved slowly towards her, continued his occupation
with a half-impatient, half-abstracted air. Her feminine perception was
struck with the circumstance that he was in deep black, with scarcely a
gleam of white showing even at his throat, and that he wore a tall black
hat. Without knowing anything of social customs, it seemed to her that
his dress was inconsistent with his appearance there.
“Good-morning,” he said, lifting his hat with a preoccupied air. “Do you
live here?”
“Yes,” she said wonderingly.
“Anybody else?”
“My husband.”
“I mean any other people? Are there any other houses?” he said with a
slight impatience.
“No.”
He looked at her and then towards the sea. “I expect some friends who
are coming for me in a boat. I suppose they can land easily here?”
“Didn't you yourself land here just now?” she said quickly.
He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a
hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, “No, I came over the
cliff.”
“Down the cliff?” she repeated incredulously.
“Yes,” he said, glancing at his clothes; “it was a rough scramble, but
the goats showed me the way.”
“And you were up on the bluff all the time?” she went on curiously.
“Yes. You see--I”--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the
beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of
its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, “Yes, I was there.”
Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss
this lack of explanation. He was a very good-looking man of middle age,
with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men
had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven. She had never seen
any one like him before. She thought he looked like an illustration of
some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.
“Won't you come in and rest yourself?” she said, motioning to the cabin.
“Thank you,” he said, still half absently. “Perhaps I'd better. It may
be some time yet before they come.”
She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly
furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed
to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some
water on the table before him. He thanked her again very gently, poured
out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water. But when she
glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it,
and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast
of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea. There was
something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might
be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the
eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.
His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his
preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her,
only excited her interest the more. And then there was such an odd
sadness in his eyes.
“Are you anxious for your folks' coming?” she said at last, following
his outlook.
“I--oh no!” he returned, quickly recalling himself, “they'll be sure to
come--sooner or later. No fear of that,” he added, half smilingly, half
wearily.
Mrs. Bunker passed into the kitchen, where, while apparently attending
to her household duties, she could still observe her singular guest.
Left alone, he seated himself mechanically in the chair, and gazed
fixedly at the fireplace. He remained a long time so quiet and unmoved,
in spite of the marked ostentatious clatter Mrs. Bunker found it
necessary to make with her dishes, that an odd fancy that he was
scarcely a human visitant began to take possession of her. Yet she was
not frightened. She remembered distinctly afterwards that, far from
having any concern for herself, she was only moved by a strange and
vague admiration of him.
But her prolonged scrutiny was not without effect. Suddenly he raised
his dark eyes, and she felt them pierce the obscurity of her kitchen
with a quick, suspicious, impatient penetration, which as they met hers
gave way, however, to a look that she thought was gently reproachful.
Then he rose, stretched himself to his full height, and approaching the
kitchen door leaned listlessly against the door-post.
“I don't suppose you are ever lonely here?”
“No, sir.”
“Of course not. You have yourself and husband. Nobody interferes with
you. You are contented and happy together.”
Mrs. Bunker did not say, what was the fact, that she had never before
connected the sole companionship of her husband with her happiness.
Perhaps it had never occurred to her until that moment how little it had
to do with it. She only smiled gratefully at the change in her guest's
abstraction.
“Do you often go to San Francisco?” he continued.
“I have never been there at all. Some day I expect we will go there to
live.”
“I wouldn't advise you to,” he said, looking at her gravely. “I don't
think it will pay you. You'll never be happy there as here. You'll never
have the independence and freedom you have here. You'll never be
your own mistress again. But how does it happen you never were in San
Francisco?” he said suddenly.
If he would not talk of himself, here at least was a chance for Mrs.
Bunker to say something. She related how her family had emigrated from
Kansas across the plains and had taken up a “location” at Contra Costa.
How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man
who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as
unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at
times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked
to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally. Even his
dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs. Bunker to put up her hair and button
her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.
“Then your husband's name is Bunker?” he said when she paused at last.
“That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for
generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan. Well, Mrs. Bunker, YOUR
family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your
father calls himself a Free-States man. You ought to know something of
farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who
emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers.”
All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being. And
Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family
was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not
end there. He talked of her husband's business--he explained the vast
fishing resources of the bay and coast. He showed her how the large
colony of Italian fishermen were inimical to the interests of California
and to her husband--particularly as a native American trader. He told
her of the volcanic changes of the bay and coast line, of the formation
of the rocky ledge on which she lived. He pointed out to her its value
to the Government for defensive purposes, and how it naturally commanded
the entrance of the Golden Gate far better than Fort Point, and that it
ought to be in its hands. If the Federal Government did not buy it of
her husband, certainly the State of California should. And here he fell
into an abstraction as deep and as gloomy as before. He walked to the
window, paced the floor with his hand in his breast, went to the door,
and finally stepped out of the cabin, moving along the ledge of rocks to
the shore, where he stood motionless.
Mrs. Bunker had listened to him with parted lips and eyes of eloquent
admiration. She had never before heard anyone talk like THAT--she had
not believed it possible that any one could have such knowledge. Perhaps
she could not understand all he said, but she would try to remember it
after he had gone. She could only think now how kind it was of him that
in all this mystery of his coming, and in the singular sadness that was
oppressing him, he should try to interest her. And thus looking at him,
and wondering, an idea came to her.
She went into her bedroom and took down her husband's heavy pilot
overcoat and sou'wester, and handed them to her guest.
“You'd better put them on if you're going to stand there,” she said.
“But I am not cold,” he said wonderingly.
“But you might be SEEN,” she said simply. It was the first suggestion
that had passed between them that his presence there was a secret. He
looked at her intently, then he smiled and said, “I think you're right,
for many reasons,” put the pilot coat over his frock coat, removed
his hat with the gesture of a bow, handed it to her, and placed the
sou'wester in its stead. Then for an instant he hesitated as if about
to speak, but Mrs. Bunker, with a delicacy that she could not herself
comprehend at the moment, hurried back to the cabin without giving him
an opportunity.
Nor did she again intrude upon his meditations. Hidden in his disguise,
which to her eyes did not, however, seem to conceal his characteristic
figure, he wandered for nearly an hour under the bluff and along the
shore, returning at last almost mechanically to the cabin, where,
oblivious of his surroundings, he reseated himself in silence by
the table with his cheek resting on his hand. Presently, her quick,
experienced ear detected the sound of oars in their row-locks; she could
plainly see from her kitchen window a small boat with two strangers
seated at the stern being pulled to the shore. With the same strange
instinct of delicacy, she determined not to go out lest her presence
might embarrass her guest's reception of his friends. But as she turned
towards the living room she found he had already risen and was removing
his hat and pilot coat. She was struck, however, by the circumstance
that not only did he exhibit no feeling of relief at his deliverance,
but that a half-cynical, half-savage expression had taken the place of
his former melancholy. As he went to the door, the two gentlemen hastily
clambered up the rocks to greet him.
“Jim reckoned it was you hangin' round the rocks, but I couldn't tell at
that distance. Seemed you borrowed a hat and coat. Well--it's all fixed,
and we've no time to lose. There's a coasting steamer just dropping down
below the Heads, and it will take you aboard. But I can tell you you've
kicked up a h-ll of a row over there.” He stopped, evidently at some
sign from her guest. The rest of the man's speech followed in a hurried
whisper, which was stopped again by the voice she knew. “No. Certainly
not.” The next moment his tall figure was darkening the door of the
kitchen; his hand was outstretched. “Good-by, Mrs. Bunker, and many
thanks for your hospitality. My friends here,” he turned grimly to the
men behind him, “think I ought to ask you to keep this a secret even
from your husband. I DON'T! They also think that I ought to offer you
money for your kindness. I DON'T! But if you will honor me by keeping
this ring in remembrance of it”--he took a heavy seal ring from his
finger--“it's the only bit of jewelry I have about me--I'll be very
glad. Good-by!” She felt for a moment the firm, soft pressure of his
long, thin fingers around her own, and then--he was gone. The sound of
retreating oars grew fainter and fainter and was lost. The same reserve
of delicacy which now appeared to her as a duty kept her from going to
the window to watch the destination of the boat. No, he should go as he
came, without her supervision or knowledge.
Nor did she feel lonely afterwards. On the contrary, the silence and
solitude of the isolated domain had a new charm. They kept the memory of
her experience intact, and enabled her to refill it with his presence.
She could see his tall figure again pausing before her cabin, without
the incongruous association of another personality; she could hear his
voice again, unmingled with one more familiar. For the first time, the
regular absence of her husband seemed an essential good fortune instead
of an accident of their life. For the experience belonged to HER, and
not to him and her together. He could not understand it; he would have
acted differently and spoiled it. She should not tell him anything of
it, in spite of the stranger's suggestion, which, of course, he had only
made because he didn't know Zephas as well as she did. For Mrs. Bunker
was getting on rapidly; it was her first admission of the conjugal
knowledge that one's husband is inferior to the outside estimate of
him. The next step--the belief that he was deceiving HER as he was
THEM--would be comparatively easy.
Nor should she show him the ring. The stranger had certainly never said
anything about that! It was a heavy ring, with a helmeted head carved on
its red carnelian stone, and what looked like strange letters around it.
It fitted her third finger perfectly; but HIS fingers were small, and
he had taken it from his little finger. She should keep it herself. Of
course, if it had been money, she would have given it to Zephas; but the
stranger knew that she wouldn't take money. How firmly he had said that
“I don't!” She felt the warm blood fly to her fresh young face at the
thought of it. He had understood her. She might be living in a
poor cabin, doing all the housework herself, and her husband only a
fisherman, but he had treated her like a lady.
And so the afternoon passed. The outlying fog began to roll in at the
Golden Gate, obliterating the headland and stretching a fleecy bar
across the channel as if shutting out from vulgar eyes the way that he
had gone. Night fell, but Zephas had not yet come. This was unusual,
for he was generally as regular as the afternoon “trades” which blew
him there. There was nothing to detain him in this weather and at this
season. She began to be vaguely uneasy; then a little angry at this new
development of his incompatibility. Then it occurred to her, for the
first time in her wifehood, to think what she would do if he were lost.
Yet, in spite of some pain, terror, and perplexity at the possibility,
her dominant thought was that she would be a free woman to order her
life as she liked.
It was after ten before his lateen sail flapped in the little cove. She
was waiting to receive him on the shore. His good-humored hirsute face
was slightly apologetic in expression, but flushed and disturbed with
some new excitement to which an extra glass or two of spirits had
apparently added intensity. The contrast between his evident
indulgence and the previous abstemiousness of her late guest struck her
unpleasantly. “Well--I declare,” she said indignantly, “so THAT'S what
kept you!”
“No,” he said quickly; “there's been awful times over in 'Frisco!
Everybody just wild, and the Vigilance Committee in session. Jo
Henderson's killed! Shot by Wynyard Marion in a duel! He'll be lynched,
sure as a gun, if they ketch him.”
“But I thought men who fought duels always went free.”
“Yes, but this ain't no common duel; they say the whole thing was
planned beforehand by them Southern fire-eaters to get rid o' Henderson
because he's a Northern man and anti-slavery, and that they picked out
Colonel Marion to do it because he was a dead shot. They got him to
insult Henderson, so he was bound to challenge Marion, and that giv'
Marion the chyce of weppings. It was a reg'lar put up job to kill him.”
“And what's all this to do with you?” she asked, with irritation.
“Hold on, won't you! and I'll tell you. I was pickin' up nets off
Saucelito about noon, when I was hailed by one of them Vigilance tugs,
and they set me to stand off and on the shore and watch that Marion
didn't get away, while they were scoutin' inland. Ye see THE DUEL TOOK
PLACE JUST OVER THE BLUFF THERE--BEHIND YE--and they allowed that
Marion had struck away north for Mendocino to take ship there. For after
overhaulin' his second's boat, they found out that they had come away
from Saucelito ALONE. But they sent a tug around by sea to Mendocino to
head him off there, while they're closin' in around him inland. They're
bound to catch him sooner or later. But you ain't listenin', Mollie?”
She was--in every fibre--but with her head turned towards the window,
and the invisible Golden Gate through which the fugitive had escaped.
For she saw it all now--that glorious vision--her high-bred, handsome
guest and Wynyard Marion were one and the same person. And this rough,
commonplace man before her--her own husband--had been basely set to
capture him!
PART II.
During that evening and the next Mrs. Bunker, without betraying her
secret, or exciting the least suspicion on the part of her husband,
managed to extract from him not only a rough description of Marion which
tallied with her own impressions, but a short history of his career. He
was a famous politician who had held high office in the South; he was an
accomplished lawyer; he had served in the army; he was a fiery speaker;
he had a singular command of men. He was unmarried, but there were queer
stories of his relations with some of the wives of prominent officials,
and there was no doubt that he used them in some of his political
intrigues. He, Zephas, would bet something that it was a woman who had
helped him off! Did she speak?
Yes, she had spoken. It made her sick to sit there and hear such
stories! Because a man did not agree with some people in politics it
was perfectly awful to think how they would abuse him and take away his
character! Men were so awfully jealous, too; if another man happened to
be superior and fine-looking there wasn't anything bad enough for them
to say about him! No! she wasn't a slavery sympathizer either, and
hadn't anything to do with man politics, although she was a Southern
woman, and the MacEwans had come from Kentucky and owned slaves. Of
course, he, Zephas, whose ancestors were Cape Cod Quakers and had always
been sailors, couldn't understand. She did not know what he meant by
saying “what a long tail our cat's got,” but if he meant to call her
a cat, and was going to use such language to her, he had better have
stayed in San Francisco with his Vigilance friends. And perhaps it would
have been better if he had stayed there before he took her away from her
parents at Martinez. Then she wouldn't have been left on a desert rock
without any chance of seeing the world, or ever making any friends or
acquaintances!
It was their first quarrel. Discreetly made up by Mrs. Bunker in some
alarm at betraying herself; honestly forgiven by Zephas in a rude,
remorseful consciousness of her limited life. One or two nights later,
when he returned, it was with a mingled air of mystery and satisfaction.
“Well, Mollie,” he said cheerfully, “it looks as if your pets were not
as bad as I thought them.”
“My pets!” repeated Mrs. Bunker, with a faint rising of color.
“Well, I call these Southern Chivs your pets, Mollie, because you stuck
up for them so the other night. But never mind that now. What do you
suppose has happened? Jim Rider, you know, the Southern banker and
speculator, who's a regular big Injin among the 'Chivs,' he sent Cap
Simmons down to the wharf while I was unloadin' to come up and see him.
Well, I went, and what do y'u think? He told me he was gettin' up an
American Fishin' Company, and wanted me to take charge of a first-class
schooner on shares. Said he heard of me afore, and knew I was an
American and a white man, and just the chap ez could knock them
Eytalians outer the market.”
“Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Bunker quickly, but emphatically, “the fishing
interest ought to be American and protected by the State, with regular
charters and treaties.”
“I say, Mollie,” said her astonished but admiring husband, “you've been
readin' the papers or listenin' to stump speakin' sure.”
“Go on,” returned Mrs. Bunker impatiently, “and say what happened next.”
“Well,” returned Zephas, “I first thought, you see, that it had suthin'
to do with that Marion business, particklerly ez folks allowed he was
hidin' somewhere yet, and they wanted me to run him off. So I thought
Rider might as well know that I wasn't to be bribed, so I ups and tells
him how I'd been lyin' off Saucelito the other day workin' for the
other side agin him. With that he laughs, says he didn't want any better
friends than me, but that I must be livin' in the backwoods not to
know that Wynyard Marion had escaped, and was then at sea on his way
to Mexico or Central America. Then we agreed to terms, and the long and
short of it is, Mollie, that I'm to have the schooner with a hundred and
fifty dollars a month, and ten per cent. shares after a year! Looks like
biz, eh, Mollie, old girl? but you don't seem pleased.”
She had put aside the arm with which he was drawing her to him, and
had turned her white face away to the window. So HE had gone--this
stranger--this one friend of her life--she would never see him again,
and all that would ever come of it was this pecuniary benefit to her
husband, who had done nothing. He would not even offer her money, but he
had managed to pay his debt to her in this way that their vulgar poverty
would appreciate. And this was the end of her dream!
“You don't seem to take it in, Mollie,” continued the surprised Zephas.
“It means a house in 'Frisco and a little cabin for you on the schooner
when you like.”
“I don't want it! I won't have it! I shall stay here,” she burst out
with a half-passionate, half-childish cry, and ran into her bedroom,
leaving the astonished Zephas helpless in his awkward consternation.
“By Gum! I must take her to 'Frisco right off, or she'll be havin' the
high strikes here alone. I oughter knowed it would come to this!” But
although he consulted “Cap” Simmons the next day, who informed him it
was all woman's ways when “struck,” and advised him to pay out all the
line he could at such delicate moments, she had no recurrence of the
outbreak. On the contrary, for days and weeks following she seemed
calmer, older, and more “growed up;” although she resisted changing her
seashore dwelling for San Francisco, she accompanied him on one or two
of his “deep sea” trips down the coast, and seemed happier on their
southern limits. She had taken to reading the political papers and
speeches, and some cheap American histories. Captain Bunker's crew,
profoundly convinced that their skipper's wife was a “woman's rights”
fanatic, with the baleful qualities of “sea lawyer” superadded, marveled
at his bringing her.
It was on returning home from one of these trips that they touched
briefly at San Francisco, where the Secretary of the Fishing Company
came on board. Mrs. Bunker was startled to recognize in him one of the
two gentlemen who had taken Mr. Marion off in the boat, but as he did
not appear to recognize her even after an awkward introduction by her
husband, she would have recovered her equanimity but for a singular
incident. As her husband turned momentarily away, the Secretary, with a
significant gesture, slipped a letter into her hand. She felt the blood
rush to her face as, with a smile, he moved away to follow her husband.
She came down to the little cabin and impatiently tore open the
envelope, which bore no address. A small folded note contained the
following lines:--
“I never intended to burden you with my confidence, but the discretion,
tact, and courage you displayed on our first meeting, and what I know
of your loyalty since, have prompted me to trust myself again to your
kindness, even though you are now aware whom you have helped, and the
risks you ran. My friends wish to communicate with me and to forward to
me, from time to time, certain papers of importance, which, owing to the
tyrannical espionage of the Government, would be discovered and stopped
in passing through the express or post-office. These papers will be left
at your house, but here I must trust entirely to your wit and judgment
as to the way in which they should be delivered to my agent at the
nearest Mexican port. To facilitate your action, your husband will
receive directions to pursue his course as far south as Todos Santos,
where a boat will be ready to take charge of them when he is sighted. I
know I am asking a great favor, but I have such confidence in you that I
do not even ask you to commit yourself to a reply to this. If it can
be done I know that you will do it; if it cannot, I will understand and
appreciate the reason why. I will only ask you that when you are ready
to receive the papers you will fly a small red pennant from the little
flagstaff among the rocks. Believe me, your friend and grateful debtor,
“W. M.”
Mrs. Bunker cast a hasty glance around her, and pressed the letter
to her lips. It was a sudden consummation of her vaguest, half-formed
wishes, the realization of her wildest dreams! To be the confidante of
the gallant but melancholy hero in his lonely exile and persecution was
to satisfy all the unformulated romantic fancies of her girlish reading;
to be later, perhaps, the Flora Macdonald of a middle-aged Prince
Charlie did not, however, evoke any ludicrous associations in her mind.
Her feminine fancy exalted the escaped duelist and alleged assassin into
a social martyr. His actual small political intrigues and ignoble aims
of office seemed to her little different from those aspirations of
royalty which she had read about--as perhaps they were. Indeed, it is to
be feared that in foolish little Mrs. Bunker, Wynyard Marion had found
the old feminine adoration of pretension and privilege which every
rascal has taken advantage of since the flood.
Howbeit, the next morning after she had returned and Zephas had sailed
away, she flew a red bandana handkerchief on the little flagstaff before
the house. A few hours later, a boat appeared mysteriously from around
the Point. Its only occupant--a common sailor--asked her name, and
handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been
at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some
ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her
husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to
deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly
to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a note to Marion, which, with
a new and amazing diffidence, she composed and altered a dozen times, at
last addressing the following in a large, school-girl hand: “Sir, I obey
your commands to the last. Whatever your oppressors or enemies may do,
you can always rely and trust upon She who in deepest sympathy signs
herself ever, Mollie Rosalie MacEwan.” The substitution of her maiden
name in full seemed in her simplicity to be a delicate exclusion of
her husband from the affair, and a certain disguise of herself to alien
eyes. The superscription, “To Mrs. Marion MacEwan from Mollie Bunker, to
be called for by hand at Todos Santos,” also struck her as a marvel of
ingenuity. The package was safely and punctually delivered by Zephas,
who brought back a small packet directed to her, which on private
examination proved to contain a letter addressed to “J. E. Kirby, to
be called for,” with the hurried line: “A thousand thanks, W. M.” Mrs.
Bunker drew a long, quick breath. He might have written more; he might
have--but the wish remained still unformulated. The next day she ran up
a signal; the same boat and solitary rower appeared around the Point,
and took the package. A week later, when her husband was ready for sea,
she again hoisted her signal. It brought a return package for Mexico,
which she inclosed and readdressed, and gave to her husband. The
recurrence of this incident apparently struck a bright idea from the
simple Zephas.
“Look here, Mollie, why don't you come YOURSELF and see your aunt. I
can't go into port without a license, and them port charges cost a heap
o' red tape, for they've got a Filibuster scare on down there just
now, but you can go ashore in the boat and I'll get permission from the
Secretary to stand off and wait for you there for twenty-four hours.”
Mrs. Bunker flushed and paled at the thought. She could see him! The
letter would be sufficient excuse, the distrust suggested by her husband
would give color to her delivering it in person. There was perhaps a
brief twinge of conscience in taking this advantage of Zephas' kindness,
but the next moment, with that peculiar logic known only to the sex, she
made the unfortunate man's suggestion a condonation of her deceit. SHE
hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her. He had only himself to
thank.
Meantime the political excitement in which she had become a partisan
without understanding or even conviction, presently culminated with the
Presidential campaign and the election of Abraham Lincoln. The intrigues
of Southern statesmen were revealed in open expression, and echoed in
California by those citizens of Southern birth and extraction who
had long, held place, power, and opinion there. There were rumors
of secession, of California joining the South, or of her founding an
independent Pacific Empire. A note from “J. E. Kirby” informed Mrs.
Bunker that she was to carefully retain any correspondence that might be
in her hands until further orders, almost at the same time that Zephas
as regretfully told her that his projected Southern trip had been
suspended. Mrs. Bunker was disappointed, and yet, in some singular
conditions of her feelings, felt relieved that her meeting with Marion
was postponed. It is to be feared that some dim conviction, unworthy
a partisan, that in the magnitude of political events her own petty
personality might be overlooked by her hero tended somewhat to her
resignation.
Meanwhile the seasons had changed. The winter rains had set in; the
trade winds had shifted to the southeast, and the cottage, although
strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good
fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but
was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long
nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles,
or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were
brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of
dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly
lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. At such
times, in her accepted solitude, Mrs. Bunker gave herself up to strange
moods and singular visions; the more audacious and more striking it
seemed to her from their very remoteness, and the difficulty she was
beginning to have in materializing them. The actual personality of
Wynyard Marion, as she knew it in her one interview, had become very
shadowy and faint in the months that passed, yet when the days were
heavy she sometimes saw herself standing by his side in some vague
tropical surroundings, and hailed by the multitude as the faithful wife
and consort of the great Leader, President, Emperor--she knew not what!
Exactly how this was to be managed, and the manner of Zephas' effacement
from the scene, never troubled her childish fancy, and, it is but fair
to say, her woman's conscience. In the logic before alluded to, it
seemed to her that all ethical responsibility for her actions rested
with the husband who had unduly married her. Nor were those visions
always roseate. In the wild declamation of that exciting epoch which
filled the newspapers there was talk of short shrift with traitors. So
there were days when the sudden onset of a squall of hail against her
window caused her to start as if she had heard the sharp fusillade of
that file of muskets of which she had sometimes read in history.
One day she had a singular fright. She had heard the sound of oars
falling with a precision and regularity unknown to her. She was startled
to see the approach of a large eight-oared barge rowed by men in
uniform, with two officers wrapped in cloaks in the stern sheets, and
before them the glitter of musket barrels. The two officers appeared to
be conversing earnestly, and occasionally pointing to the shore and the
bluff above. For an instant she trembled, and then an instinct of revolt
and resistance followed. She hurriedly removed the ring, which she
usually wore when alone, from her finger, slipped it with the packet
under the mattress of her bed, and prepared with blazing eyes to face
the intruders. But when the boat was beached, the two officers, with
scarcely a glance towards the cottage, proceeded leisurely along the
shore. Relieved, yet it must be confessed a little piqued at their
indifference, she snatched up her hat and sallied forth to confront
them.
“I suppose you don't know that this is private property?” she said
sharply.
The group halted and turned towards her. The orderly, who was following,
turned his face aside and smiled. The younger officer demurely lifted
his cap. The elder, gray, handsome, in a general's uniform, after a
moment's half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure,
gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.
“I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of
that. We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a
possible view of fortifying the bluff. It is very doubtful if you will
be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government
will not fail to make it good to you.” He turned carelessly to the aide
beside him. “I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?”
“I don't know about that, general. They say that Marion, after he killed
Henderson, escaped down this way,” said the young man.
“Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?”
“They say that Mrs. Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for
him. The story of the escape is all out now.”
They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs. Bunker, only the
younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn't
as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.
She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed.
Who was this Mrs. Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary
devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was
equally well known that he went in the ship alone. If they had heard
that some woman was with him here--why should they have supposed it was
Mrs. Fairfax? Zephas might know something--but he was away. The thought
haunted her that day and the next. On the third came a more startling
incident.
She had been wandering along the edge of her domain in a state of
restlessness which had driven her from the monotony of the house when
she heard the barking of the big Newfoundland dog which Zephas had
lately bought for protection and company. She looked up and saw the boat
and its solitary rower at the landing. She ran quickly to the house to
bring the packet. As she entered she started back in amazement. For the
sitting-room was already in possession of a woman who was seated calmly
by the table.
The stranger turned on Mrs. Bunker that frankly insolent glance and
deliberate examination which only one woman can give another. In that
glance Mrs. Bunker felt herself in the presence of a superior, even if
her own eyes had not told her that in beauty, attire, and bearing the
intruder was of a type and condition far beyond her own, or even that of
any she had known. It was the more crushing that there also seemed to be
in this haughty woman the same incongruousness and sharp contrast to the
plain and homely surroundings of the cottage that she remembered in HIM.
“Yo' aw Mrs. Bunker, I believe,” she said in languid Southern accents.
“How de doh?”
“I am Mrs. Bunker,” said Mrs. Bunker shortly.
“And so this is where Cunnle Marion stopped when he waited fo' the
boat to take him off,” said the stranger, glancing lazily around, and
delaying with smiling insolence the explanation she knew Mrs. Bunker was
expecting. “The cunnle said it was a pooh enough place, but I don't see
it. I reckon, however, he was too worried to judge and glad enough to
get off. Yo' ought to have made him talk--he generally don't want much
prompting to talk to women, if they're pooty.”
“He didn't seem in a hurry to go,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly. The
next moment she saw her error, even before the cruel, handsome smile of
her unbidden guest revealed it.
“I thought so,” she said lazily; “this IS the place and here's where the
cunnle stayed. Only yo' oughtn't have given him and yo'self away to the
first stranger quite so easy. The cunnle might have taught yo' THAT the
two or three hours he was with yo'.”
“What do you want with me?” demanded Mrs. Bunker angrily.
“I want a letter yo' have for me from Cunnle Marion.”
“I have nothing for you,” said Mrs. Bunker. “I don't know who you are.”
“You ought to, considering you've been acting as messenger between the
cunnle and me,” said the lady coolly.
“That's not true,” said Mrs. Bunker hotly, to combat an inward sinking.
The lady rose with a lazy, languid grace, walked to the door and called
still lazily, “O Pedro!”
The solitary rower clambered up the rocks and appeared on the cottage
threshold.
“Is this the lady who gave you the letters for me and to whom you took
mine?”
“Si, senora.”
“They were addressed to a Mr. Kirby,” said Mrs. Bunker sullenly. “How
was I to know they were for Mrs. Kirby?”
“Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby, and myself are all the same. You don't suppose
the cunnle would give my real name and address? Did you address yo'r
packet to HIS real name or to some one else. Did you let your husband
know who they were for?”
Oddly, a sickening sense of the meanness of all these deceits and
subterfuges suddenly came over Mrs. Bunker. Without replying she went
to her bedroom and returned with Colonel Marion's last letter, which she
tossed into her visitor's lap.
“Thank yo', Mrs. Bunker. I'll be sure to tell the cunnle how careful yo'
were not to give up his correspondence to everybody. It'll please him
mo' than to hear yo' are wearing his ring--which everybody knows--before
people.”
“He gave it to me--he--he knew I wouldn't take money,” said Mrs. Bunker
indignantly.
“He didn't have any to give,” said the lady slowly, as she removed the
envelope from her letter and looked up with a dazzling but cruel smile.
“A So'th'n gentleman don't fill up his pockets when he goes out to
fight. He don't tuck his maw's Bible in his breast-pocket, clap his dear
auntie's locket big as a cheese plate over his heart, nor let his sole
leather cigyar case that his gyrl gave him lie round him in spots when
he goes out to take another gentleman's fire. He leaves that to Yanks!”
“Did you come here to insult my husband?” said Mrs. Bunker in the rage
of desperation.
“To insult yo' husband! Well--I came here to get a letter that his wife
received from his political and natural enemy and--perhaps I DID!” With
a side glance at Mrs. Bunker's crimson cheek she added carelessly, “I
have nothing against Captain Bunker; he's a straightforward man and
must go with his kind. He helped those hounds of Vigilantes because he
believes in them. We couldn't bribe him if we wanted to. And we don't.”
If she only knew something of this woman's relations to Marion--which
she only instinctively suspected--and could retaliate upon her, Mrs.
Bunker felt she would have given up her life at that moment.
“Colonel Marion seems to find plenty that he can bribe,” she said
roughly, “and I've yet to know who YOU are to sit in judgment on them.
You've got your letter, take it and go! When he wants to send you
another through me, somebody else must come for it, not you. That's
all!”
She drew back as if to let the intruder pass, but the lady, without
moving a muscle, finished the reading of her letter, then stood
up quietly and began carefully to draw her handsome cloak over her
shoulders. “Yo' want to know who I am, Mrs. Bunker,” she said, arranging
the velvet collar under her white oval chin. “Well, I'm a So'th'n woman
from Figinya, and I'm Figinyan first, last, and all the time.” She shook
out her sleeves and the folds of her cloak. “I believe in State rights
and slavery--if you know what that means. I hate the North, I hate the
East, I hate the West. I hate this nigger Government, I'd kill that man
Lincoln quicker than lightning!” She began to draw down the fingers of
her gloves, holding her shapely hands upright before her. “I'm hard and
fast to the Cause. I gave up house and niggers for it.” She began to
button her gloves at the wrist with some difficulty, tightly setting
together her beautiful lips as she did so. “I gave up my husband for
it, and I went to the man who loved it better and had risked more for it
than ever he had. Cunnle Marion's my friend. I'm Mrs. Fairfax,
Josephine Hardee that was; HIS disciple and follower. Well, maybe those
puritanical No'th'n folks might give it another name!”
She moved slowly towards the door, but on the threshold paused, as
Colonel Marion had, and came back to Mrs. Bunker with an outstretched
hand. “I don't see that yo' and me need quo'll. I didn't come here for
that. I came here to see yo'r husband, and seeing YO' I thought it was
only right to talk squarely to yo', as yo' understand I WOULDN'T talk to
yo'r husband. Mrs. Bunker, I want yo'r husband to take me away--I want
him to take me to the cunnle. If I tried to go in any other way I'd
be watched, spied upon and followed, and only lead those hounds on his
track. I don't expect yo' to ASK yo' husband for me, but only not to
interfere when I do.”
There was a touch of unexpected weakness in her voice and a look of pain
in her eyes which was not unlike what Mrs. Bunker had seen and pitied in
Marion. But they were the eyes of a woman who had humbled her, and Mrs.
Bunker would have been unworthy her sex if she had not felt a cruel
enjoyment in it. Yet the dominance of the stranger was still so strong
that she did not dare to refuse the proffered hand. She, however,
slipped the ring from her finger and laid it in Mrs. Fairfax's palm.
“You can take that with you,” she said, with a desperate attempt to
imitate the other's previous indifference. “I shouldn't like to deprive
you and YOUR FRIEND of the opportunity of making use of it again. As for
MY husband, I shall say nothing of you to him as long as you say nothing
to him of me--which I suppose is what you mean.”
The insolent look came back to Mrs. Fairfax's face. “I reckon yo' 're
right,” she said quietly, putting the ring in her pocket as she fixed
her dark eyes on Mrs. Bunker, “and the ring may be of use again.
Good-by, Mrs. Bunker.”
She waved her hand carelessly, and turning away passed out of the house.
A moment later the boat and its two occupants pushed from the shore, and
disappeared round the Point.
Then Mrs. Bunker looked round the room, and down upon her empty finger,
and knew that it was the end of her dream. It was all over now--indeed,
with the picture of that proud, insolent woman before her she wondered
if it had ever begun. This was the woman she had allowed herself to
think SHE might be. This was the woman HE was thinking of when he sat
there; this was the Mrs. Fairfax the officers had spoken of, and who
had made her--Mrs. Bunker--the go-between for their love-making! All
the work that she had done for him, the deceit she had practiced on her
husband, was to bring him and this woman together! And they both knew
it, and had no doubt laughed at her and her pretensions!
It was with a burning cheek that she thought how she had intended to go
to Marion, and imagined herself arriving perhaps to find that shameless
woman already there. In her vague unformulated longings she had never
before realized the degradation into which her foolish romance might
lead her. She saw it now; that humiliating moral lesson we are all apt
to experience in the accidental display of our own particular vices in
the person we hate, she had just felt in Mrs. Fairfax's presence. With
it came the paralyzing fear of her husband's discovery of her secret.
Secure as she had been in her dull belief that he had in some way
wronged her by marrying her, she for the first time began to doubt if
this condoned the deceit she had practiced on him. The tribute Mrs.
Fairfax had paid him--this appreciation of his integrity and honesty
by an enemy and a woman like herself--troubled her, frightened her, and
filled her with her first jealousy! What if this woman should tell him
all; what if she should make use of him as Marion had of her! Zephas was
a strong Northern partisan, but was he proof against the guileful
charms of such a devil? She had never thought before of questioning his
fidelity to her; she suddenly remembered now some rough pleasantries of
Captain Simmons in regard to the inconstancy of his calling. No! there
was but one thing for her to do: she would make a clean breast to him;
she would tell him everything she had done except the fatal fancy that
compelled her to it! She began to look for his coming now with alternate
hope and fear--with unabated impatience! The night that he should have
arrived passed slowly; morning came, but not Zephas. When the mist had
lifted she ran impatiently to the rocks and gazed anxiously towards the
lower bay. There were a few gray sails scarce distinguishable above
the grayer water--but they were not his. She glanced half mechanically
seaward, and her eyes became suddenly fixed. There was no mistake! She
knew the rig!--she could see the familiar white lap-streak as the vessel
careened on the starboard tack--it was her husband's schooner slowly
creeping out of the Golden Gate!
PART III.
Her first wild impulse was to run to the cove, for the little dingey
always moored there, and to desperately attempt to overtake him. But
the swift consciousness of its impossibility was followed by a dull,
bewildering torpor, that kept her motionless, helplessly following the
vessel with straining eyes, as if they could evoke some response from
its decks. She was so lost in this occupation that she did not see that
a pilot-boat nearly abreast of the cove had put out a two-oared gig,
which was pulling quickly for the rocks. When she saw it, she trembled
with the instinct that it brought her intelligence. She was right;
it was a brief note from her husband, informing her that he had been
hurriedly dispatched on a short sea cruise; that in order to catch the
tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain
everything on his return. Her relief was only partial; she was already
experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble
one. He could easily have “fetched” the bluff in tacking out of the Gate
and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat. The next day she
locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where
the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took up passengers to San
Francisco. Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this last trip;
indeed, did not know that he had gone out of the Bay. Mrs. Bunker was
seized with a desperate idea. She called upon the Secretary of the
Fishing Trust. That gentle man was business-like, but neither expansive
nor communicative. Her husband had NOT been ordered out to sea by them;
she ought to know that Captain Bunker was now his own master, choosing
his own fishing grounds, and his own times and seasons. He was not
aware of any secret service for the Company in which Captain Bunker was
engaged. He hoped Mrs. Bunker would distinctly remember that the little
matter of the duel to which she referred was an old bygone affair,
and never anything but a personal matter, in which the Fishery had no
concern whatever, and in which HE certainly should not again engage. He
would advise Mrs. Bunker, if she valued her own good, and especially her
husband's, to speedily forget all about it. These were ugly times, as
it was. If Mrs. Bunker's services had not been properly rewarded or
considered it was certainly a great shame, but really HE could not be
expected to make it good. Certain parties had cost him trouble enough
already. Besides, really, she must see that his position between her
husband, whom he respected, and a certain other party was a delicate
one. But Mrs. Bunker heard no more. She turned and ran down the
staircase, carrying with her a burning cheek and blazing eye that
somewhat startled the complacent official.
She did not remember how she got home again. She had a vague
recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the
people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived
by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in
knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the
bulletin boards that had such strange legends as “The Crisis,” “Details
of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government,” “The Assassin of
Henderson to the Fore Again,” “Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier.”
Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied
they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried
treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her
benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had
happened long ago. When she reached her house, late that night, the
familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with
it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it,
that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that
with their meeting she would know it no more. For through all her
childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one
steadfast resolution. She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst.
Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet
him.
And so the days and nights slowly passed. The solitude which her
previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions
now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery. Had she
been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have
suffered less. Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest
knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she
accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her
wrongdoing. Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs. Fairfax--and SHE
could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs. Bunker knew now
that she herself had never had one--and was alone! Mrs. Fairfax had
broken openly with her husband; but SHE had DECEIVED hers, and the
experience and reckoning were still to come. In her miserable confession
it was not strange that this half child, half woman, sometimes looked
towards that gray sea, eternally waiting for her,--that sea which had
taken everything from her and given her nothing in return,--for an
obliterating and perhaps exonerating death!
The third day of her waiting isolation was broken upon by another
intrusion. The morning had been threatening, with an opaque, motionless,
livid arch above, which had taken the place of the usual flying scud and
shaded cloud masses of the rainy season. The whole outlying ocean, too,
beyond the bar, appeared nearer, and even seemed to be lifted higher
than the Bay itself, and was lit every now and then with wonderful
clearness by long flashes of breaking foam like summer lightning. She
knew that this meant a southwester, and began, with a certain mechanical
deliberation, to set her little domain in order against the coming gale.
She drove the cows to the rude shed among the scrub oaks, she collected
the goats and young kids in the corral, and replenished the stock of
fuel from the woodpile. She was quite hidden in the shrubbery when she
saw a boat making slow headway against the wind towards the little cove
where but a moment before she had drawn up the dingey beyond the reach
of breaking seas. It was a whaleboat from Saucelito containing a few
men. As they neared the landing she recognized in the man who seemed to
be directing the boat the second friend of Colonel Marion--the man who
had come with the Secretary to take him off, but whom she had never
seen again. In her present horror of that memory she remained hidden,
determined at all hazards to avoid a meeting. When they had landed,
one of the men halted accidentally before the shrubbery where she was
concealed as he caught his first view of the cottage, which had been
invisible from the point they had rounded.
“Look here, Bragg,” he said, turning to Marion's friend, in a voice
which was distinctly audible to Mrs. Bunker. “What are we to say to
these people?”
“There's only one,” returned the other. “The man's at sea. His wife's
here. She's all right.”
“You said she was one of us?”
“After a fashion. She's the woman who helped Marion when he was here. I
reckon he made it square with her from the beginning, for she forwarded
letters from him since. But you can tell her as much or as little as you
find necessary when you see her.”
“Yes, but we must settle that NOW,” said Bragg sharply, “and I propose
to tell her NOTHING. I'm against having any more petticoats mixed up
with our affairs. I propose to make an examination of the place without
bothering our heads about her.”
“But we must give some reason for coming here, and we must ask her to
keep dark, or we'll have her blabbing to the first person she meets,”
urged the other.
“She's not likely to see anybody before night, when the brig will be in
and the men and guns landed. Move on, and let Jim take soundings off
the cove, while I look along the shore. It's just as well that there's
a house here, and a little cover like this”--pointing to the
shrubbery--“to keep the men from making too much of a show until after
the earthworks are up. There are sharp eyes over at the Fort.”
“There don't seem to be any one in the house now,” returned the other
after a moment's scrutiny of the cottage, “or the woman would surely
come out at the barking of the dog, even if she hadn't seen us. Likely
she's gone to Saucelito.”
“So much the better. Just as well that she should know nothing until
it happens. Afterwards we'll settle with the husband for the price of
possession; he has only a squatter's rights. Come along; we'll have
bad weather before we get back round the Point again, but so much the
better, for it will keep off any inquisitive longshore cruisers.”
They moved away. But Mrs. Bunker, stung through her benumbed and
brooding consciousness, and made desperate by this repeated revelation
of her former weakness, had heard enough to make her feverish to hear
more. She knew the intricacies of the shrubbery thoroughly. She knew
every foot of shade and cover of the clearing, and creeping like a cat
from bush to bush she managed, without being discovered, to keep
the party in sight and hearing all the time. It required no great
discernment, even for an inexperienced woman like herself, at the end of
an hour, to gather their real purpose. It was to prepare for the secret
landing of an armed force, disguised as laborers, who, under the outward
show of quarrying in the bluff, were to throw up breastworks, and
fortify the craggy shelf. The landing was fixed for that night, and was
to be effected by a vessel now cruising outside the Heads.
She understood it all now. She remembered Marion's speech about the
importance of the bluff for military purposes; she remembered the visit
of the officers from the Fort opposite. The strangers were stealing a
march upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It was
perhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension that
she took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there was
little to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terrible
catastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, of
which any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least those
officers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers of
the Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed with
an inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?
But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to San
Francisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself,
rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security of
success. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was getting
up--but she would try.
She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous
dread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished round
the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her
husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was a
heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not until
she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind
and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. She
had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few
points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff
bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while
it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from
swamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never
impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up
its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast
gaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering free
from any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threatening
seas on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her very
weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all
the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but
persistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headway
to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current
sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now
sluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, she
was delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of her
cottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it. She was, in fact,
on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of the
gale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination in
a semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed. She was
moving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, above
its green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, and
whose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from the
rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the
wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated
by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden
fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it
was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging
frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the
boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to
capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began
to drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could
hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above
her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms
moving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitless
effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards
the Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.
She knew now what it all meant. This was what she had come for; this
was the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer to
wait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she had
longed for but had not dared to seek. It was not her fault; they could
not blame HER. He would come back and never know what had happened--nor
even know how she had tried to atone for her deceit. And he would find
his house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not die
yet, at least not until she had warned the Fort. She seized the oars
again with frenzied strength; the boat had stopped under the unwonted
strain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of it
over her bow, struck down Mrs. Bunker under half a ton of blue water
that wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, swept
them over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of the
boat.
*****
“Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down.”
“Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!”
“Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook. Now then,
hold har-rd!”
The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound of
rasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousers
around her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.
When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in a
soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery
corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge
she had remembered. But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish
lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew of
mingled artillerymen and infantry.
“And where did ye drift from, darlint?”
Mrs. Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.
“I didn't drift. I was going to the Fort.”
“The Fort, is it?”
“Yes. I want to see the general.”
“Wadn't the liftenant do ye? Or shure there's the adjutant; he's a foine
man.”
“Silence, Flanigan,” said the young officer sharply. Then turning to
Mrs. Bunker he said, “Don't mind HIM, but let his wife take you to the
canteen, when we get in, and get you some dry clothes.”
But Mrs. Bunker, spurred to convalescence at the indignity, protested
stiffly, and demanded on her arrival to be led at once to the general's
quarters. A few officers, who had been attracted to the pier by the
rescue, acceded to her demand.
She recognized the gray-haired, handsome man who had come ashore at her
house. With a touch of indignation at her treatment, she briefly told
her story. But the general listened coldly and gravely with his eyes
fixed upon her face.
“You say you recognized in the leader of the party a man you had seen
before. Under what circumstances?”
Mrs. Bunker hesitated with burning cheeks. “He came to take Colonel
Marion from our place.”
“When you were hiding him,--yes, we've heard the story. Now, Mrs.
Bunker, may I ask you what you, as a Southern sympathizer, expect to
gain by telling me this story?”
But here Mrs. Bunker burst out. “I am not a Southern sympathizer! Never!
Never! Never! I'm a Union woman,--wife of a Northern man. I helped that
man before I knew who he was. Any Christian, Northerner or Southerner,
would have done the same!”
Her sincerity and passion were equally unmistakable. The general rose,
opened the door of the adjoining room, said a few words to an orderly on
duty, and returned. “What you are asking of me, Mrs. Bunker, is almost
as extravagant and unprecedented as your story. You must understand, as
well as your husband, that if I land a force on your property it will be
to TAKE POSSESSION of it in the name of the Government, for Government
purposes.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Bunker eagerly; “I know that. I am willing; Zephas
will be willing.”
“And,” continued the general, fixing his eyes on her face, “you will
also understand that I may be compelled to detain you here as a hostage
for the safety of my men.”
“Oh no! no! please!” said Mrs. Bunker, springing up with an imploring
feminine gesture; “I am expecting my husband. He may be coming back at
any moment; I must be there to see him FIRST! Please let me go back,
sir, with your men; put me anywhere ashore between them and those men
that are coming. Lock me up; keep me a prisoner in my own home; do
anything else if you think I am deceiving you; but don't keep me here to
miss him when he comes!”
“But you can see him later,” said the general.
“But I must see him FIRST,” said Mrs. Bunker desperately. “I must see
him first, for--for--HE KNOWS NOTHING OF THIS. He knows nothing of my
helping Colonel Marion; he knows nothing of--how foolish I have been,
and--he must not know it from others! There!” It was out at last. She
was sobbing now, but her pride was gone. She felt relieved, and did not
even notice the presence of two or three other officers, who had entered
the room, exchanged a few hurried words with their superior, and were
gazing at her in astonishment.
The general's brow relaxed, and he smiled. “Very well, Mrs. Bunker;
it shall be as you like, then. You shall go and meet your husband with
Captain Jennings here,”--indicating one of the officers,--“who will take
charge of you and the party.”
“And,” said Mrs. Bunker, looking imploringly through her wet but pretty
lashes at the officer, “he won't say anything to Zephas, either?”
“Not a syllable,” said Captain Jennings gravely. “But while the tug is
getting ready, general, hadn't Mrs. Bunker better go to Mrs. Flanigan?”
“I think not,” said the general, with a significant look at the officer
as he gallantly offered his arm to the astonished Mrs. Bunker, “if she
will allow me the pleasure of taking her to my wife.”
There was an equally marked respect in the manner of the men and
officers as Mrs. Bunker finally stepped on board the steam tug that was
to convey the party across the turbulent bay. But she heeded it
not, neither did she take any concern of the still furious gale, the
difficult landing, the preternatural activity of the band of sappers,
who seemed to work magic with their picks and shovels, the shelter tents
that arose swiftly around her, the sheds and bush inclosures that were
evoked from the very ground beneath her feet; the wonderful skill,
order, and discipline that in a few hours converted her straggling
dominion into a formal camp, even to the sentinel, who was already
calmly pacing the rocks by the landing as if he had being doing it for
years! Only one thing thrilled her--the sudden outburst, fluttering and
snapping of the national flag from her little flagstaff. He would see
it--and perhaps be pleased!
And indeed it seemed as if the men had caught the infection of her
anxiety, for when her strained eyes could no longer pierce the murky
twilight settling over the Gate, one came running to her to say that the
lookout had just discovered through his glass a close-reefed schooner
running in before the wind. It was her husband, and scarcely an hour
after night had shut in the schooner had rounded to off the Point,
dropped her boat, and sped away to anchorage. And then Mrs. Bunker,
running bareheaded down the rocks, breaking in upon the hurried
explanation of the officer of the guard, threw herself upon her
husband's breast, and sobbed and laughed as if her heart would break!
Nor did she scarcely hear his hurried comment to the officer and
unconscious corroboration of her story: how a brig had raced them from
the Gate, was heading for the bar, but suddenly sheered off and put
away to sea again, as if from some signal from the headland. “Yes--the
bluff,” interrupted Captain Jennings bitterly, “I thought of that, but
the old man said it was more diplomatic just now to PREVENT an attempt
than even to successfully resist it.”
But when they were alone again in their little cottage, and Zephas'
honest eyes--with no trace of evil knowledge or suspicion in their
homely, neutral lightness--were looking into hers with his usual
simple trustfulness, Mrs. Bunker trembled, whimpered, and--I grieve
to say--basely funked her boasted confession. But here the Deity which
protects feminine weakness intervened with the usual miracle. As he
gazed at his wife's troubled face, an apologetic cloud came over his
rugged but open brow, and a smile of awkward deprecating embarrassment
suffused his eyes. “I declare to goodness, Mollie, but I must tell you
suthin, although I guess I didn't kalkilate to say a word about it. But,
darn it all, I can't keep it in. No! Lookin' inter that innercent
face o' yourn”--pressing her flushing cheeks between his cool brown
hands--“and gazing inter them two truthful eyes”--they blinked at this
moment with a divine modesty--“and thinkin' of what you've just did for
your kentry--like them revolutionary women o' '76--I feel like a darned
swab of a traitor myself. Well! what I want ter tell you is this: Ye
know, or ye've heard me tell o' that Mrs. Fairfax, as left her husband
for that fire-eatin' Marion, and stuck to him through thick and thin,
and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus
they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself.
Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard.
“'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.
“'That's me, ma'am,' I says.
“'You're a Northern man and you go with your kind,' sez she; 'but you're
a white man, and thar's no cur blood in you.' But you ain't listenin',
Mollie; you're dead tired, lass,”--with a commiserating look at her now
whitening face,--“and I'll haul in line and wait. Well, to cut it short,
she wanted me to take her down the coast a bit to where she could
join Marion. She said she'd been shook by his friends, followed by
spies--and, blame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down
and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them
Chivalry folks--ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and
their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer
their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind--was jes the
kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder
thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o'
Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her I didn't want the jewelry and
dimons she offered me, but if she would come down to the wharf, after
dark, I'd smuggle her aboard, and I'd allow to the men that she was YOUR
AUNTIE ez I was givin' a free passage to! Lord! dear! think o' me takin'
the name o' Mollie Bunker's aunt in vain for that sort o' woman! Think
o' me,” continued Captain Bunker with a tentative chuckle, “sort o'
pretendin' to hand yo'r auntie to Kernel Marion for--for his lady love!
I don't wonder ye's half frighted and half laffin',” he added, as his
wife uttered a hysterical cry; “it WAS awful! But it worked, and I got
her off, and wot's more I got her shipped to Mazatlan, where she'll join
Marion, and the two are goin' back to Virginy, where I guess they won't
trouble Californy again. Ye know now, deary,” he went on, speaking with
difficulty through Mrs. Bunker's clinging arms and fast dripping tears,
“why I didn't heave to to say 'good-by.' But it's all over now--I've
made a clean breast of it, Mollie--and don't you cry!”