As the day advanced the excitement over the financial crisis increased
at Hymettus, until, in spite of its remote and peaceful isolation,
it seemed to throb through all its verandas and corridors with some
pulsation from the outer world. Besides the letters and dispatches
brought by hurried messengers and by coach from the Divide, there was
a crowd of guests and servants around the branch telegraph at the new
Heavy Tree post-office which was constantly augmenting. Added to the
natural anxiety of the deeply interested was the stimulated fever of the
few who wished to be “in the fashion.” It was early rumored that a heavy
operator, a guest of the hotel, who was also a director in the telegraph
company, had bought up the wires for his sole use, that the dispatches
were doctored in his interests as a “bear,” and there was wild talk
of lynching by the indignant mob. Passengers from Sacramento, San
Francisco, and Marysville brought incredible news and the wildest
sensations. Firm after firm had failed in the great cities. Old
established houses that dated back to the “spring of '49,” and had
weathered the fires and inundations of their perilous Californian
infancy, collapsed before this mysterious, invisible, impalpable
breath of panic. Companies rooted in respectability and sneered at for
old-fashioned ways were discovered to have shamelessly speculated with
trusts! An eminent deacon and pillar of the church was found dead in
his room with a bullet in his heart and a damning confession on the desk
before him! Foreign bankers were sending their gold out of the country;
government would be appealed to to open the vaults of the Mint; there
would be an embargo on all bullion shipment! Nothing was too wild or
preposterous to be repeated or credited.
And with this fever of sordid passion the summer temperature had
increased. For the last two weeks the thermometer had stood abnormally
high during the day-long sunshine; and the metallic dust in the roads
over mineral ranges pricked the skin like red-hot needles. In the
deepest woods the aromatic sap stood in beads on felled logs and
splintered tree-shafts; even the mountain night breeze failed to cool
these baked and heated fastnesses. There were ominous clouds of smoke by
day that were pillars of fire by night along the distant valleys. Some
of the nearer crests were etched against the midnight sky by dull red
creeping lines like a dying firework. The great hotel itself creaked
and crackled and warped though all its painted, blistered, and veneered
expanse, and was filled with the stifling breath of desiccation. The
stucco cracked and crumbled away from the cornices; there were yawning
gaps in the boarded floors beneath the Turkey carpets. Plate-glass
windows became hopelessly fixed in their warped and twisted sashes,
and added to the heat; there was a warm incense of pine sap in the
dining-room that flavored all the cuisine. And yet the babble of stocks
and shares went on, and people pricked their ears over their soup to
catch the gossip of the last arrival.
Demorest, loathing it all in his new-found bitterness, was nevertheless
impatient in his inaction, and was eagerly awaiting a telegram from
Stacy; Barker had disappeared since luncheon. Suddenly there was
a commotion on the veranda as a carriage drove up with a handsome,
gray-haired woman. In the buzzing of voices around him Demorest heard
the name of Mrs. Van Loo. In further comments, made in more smothered
accents, he heard that Van Loo had been stopped at Canyon Station, but
that no warrant had yet been issued against him; that it was generally
believed that the bank dared not hold him; that others openly averred
that he had been used as a scapegoat to avert suspicion from higher
guilt. And certainly Mrs. Van Loo's calm, confident air seemed to
corroborate these assertions.
He was still wondering if the strange coincidence which had brought both
mother and son into his own life was not merely a fancy, as far as SHE
was concerned, when a waiter brought a message from Mrs. Van Loo that
she would be glad to see him for a few moments in her room. Last
night he could scarcely have restrained his eagerness to meet her and
elucidate the mystery of the photograph; now he was conscious of an
equally strong revulsion of feeling, and a dull premonition of evil.
However, it was no doubt possible that the man had told her of his
previous inquiries, and she had merely acknowledged them by that
message.
Demorest found Mrs. Van Loo in the private sitting-room where he and his
old partners had supped on the preceding night. She received him with
unmistakable courtesy and even a certain dignity that might or might
not have been assumed. He had no difficulty in recognizing the son's
mechanical politeness in the first, but he was puzzled at the second.
“The manager of this hotel,” she began, with a foreigner's precision of
English, “has just told me that you were at present occupying my rooms
at his invitation, but that you wished to see me at once on my return,
and I believe that I was not wrong in apprehending that you preferred
to hear my wishes from my own lips rather than from an innkeeper. I had
intended to keep these rooms for some weeks, but, unfortunately for me,
though fortunately for you, the present terrible financial crisis, which
has most unjustly brought my son into such scandalous prominence, will
oblige me to return to San Francisco until his reputation is fully
cleared of these foul aspersions. I shall only ask you to allow me the
undisturbed possession of these rooms for a couple of hours until I can
pack my trunks and gather up a few souvenirs that I almost always keep
with me.”
“Pray, consider that your wishes are my own in respect to that, my
dear madam,” returned Demorest gravely, “and that, indeed, I protested
against even this temporary intrusion upon your apartments; but I
confess that now that you have spoken of your souvenirs I have the
greatest curiosity about one of them, and that even my object in seeking
this interview was to gratify it. It is in regard to a photograph which
I saw on the chimney-piece in your bedroom, which I think I recognized
as that of some one whom I formerly knew.”
There was a sudden look of sharp suspicion and even hard aggressiveness
that quite changed the lady's face as he mentioned the word “souvenir,”
but it quickly changed to a smile as she put up her fan with a gesture
of arch deprecation, and said:
“Ah! I see. Of course, a lady's photograph.”
The reply irritated Demorest. More than that, he felt a sudden sense of
the absolute sentimentality of his request, and the consciousness
that he was about to invite the familiar confidence of this strange
woman--whose son had forged his name--in regard to HER!
“It was a Venetian picture,” he began, and stopped, a singular disgust
keeping him from voicing the name.
But Mrs. Van Loo was less reticent. “Oh, you mean my dearest friend--a
lovely picture, and you know her? Why, yes, surely. You are THE Mr.
Demorest who--Of course, that old love-affair. Well, you are a marvel!
Five years ago, at least, and you have not forgotten! I really must
write and tell her.”
“Write and tell her!” Then it was all a lie about her death! He felt
not only his faith, his hope, his future leaving him, but even his
self-control. With an effort he said.--
“I think you have already satisfied my curiosity. I was told five years
ago that she was dead. It was because of the date of the photograph--two
years later--that I ventured to intrude upon you. I was anxious only to
know the truth.”
“She certainly was very much living and of the world when I saw her
last, two years ago,” said Mrs. Van Loo, with an easy smile. “I dare say
that was a ruse of her relatives--a very stupid one--to break off the
affair, for I think they had other plans. But, dear me! now I remember,
was there not some little quarrel between you before? Some letter from
you that was not very kind? My impression is that there was something
of the sort, and that the young lady was indignant. But only for a time,
you know. She very soon forgot it. I dare say if you wrote something
very charming to her it might not be too late. We women are very
forgiving, Mr. Demorest, and although she is very much sought after, as
are all young American girls whose fathers can give them a comfortable
'dot', her parents might be persuaded to throw over a poor prince for
a rich countryman in the end. Of course, you know, to you Republicans
there is always something fascinating in titles and blood, and our dear
friend is like other girls. Still, it is worth the risk. And five years
of waiting and devotion really ought to tell. It's quite a romance!
Shall I write to her and tell her I have seen you, looking well and
prosperous? Nothing more. Do let me! I should be delighted.”
“I think it hardly worth while for you to give yourself that trouble,”
said Demorest quietly, looking in Mrs. Van Loo's smiling eyes, “now that
I know the story of the young lady's death was a forgery. And I will not
intrude further on your time. Pray give yourself no needless hurry over
your packing. I may go to San Francisco this afternoon, and not even
require the rooms to-night.”
“At least, let me make you a present of the souvenir as an
acknowledgment of your courtesy,” said Mrs. Van Loo, passing into her
bedroom and returning with the photograph. “I feel that with your five
years of constancy it is more yours than mine.” As a gentleman Demorest
knew he could not refuse, and taking the photograph from her with a low
bow, with another final salutation he withdrew.
Alone by himself in a corner of the veranda he was surprised that
the interview had made so little impression on him, and had so little
altered his conviction. His discovery that the announcement of his
betrothed's death was a fiction did not affect the fact that though
living she was yet dead to him, and apparently by her own consent.
The contrast between her life and his during those five years had been
covertly accented by Mrs. Van Loo, whether intentionally or not, and
he saw again as last night the full extent of his sentimental folly. He
could not even condole with himself that he was the victim of miserable
falsehoods that others had invented. SHE had accepted them, and had even
excused her desertion of him by that last deceit of the letter.
He drew out her photograph and again examined it, but not as a
lover. Had she really grown stouter and more self-complacent? Was the
spirituality and delicacy he had worshiped in her purely his own idiotic
fancy? Had she always been like this? Yes. There was the girl who could
weakly strive, weakly revenge herself, and weakly forget. There was the
figure that he had expected to find carved upon the tomb which he had
long sought that he might weep over. He laughed aloud.
It was very hot, and he was stifling with inaction. What was Barker
doing, and why had not Stacy telegraphed to him? And what were those
people in the courtyard doing? Were they discussing news of further
disaster and ruin? Perhaps he was even now a beggar. Well, his fortune
might go with his faith.
But the crowd was simply looking at the roof of the hotel, and he
now saw that a black smoke was drifting across the courtyard, and was
conscious of a smell of soot and burning. He stepped down from the
veranda among the mingled guests and servants, and saw that the smoke
was only pouring from a chimney. He heard, too, that the chimney had
been on fire, and that it was Mrs. Van Loo's bedroom chimney, and that
when the startled servants had knocked at the locked door she had told
them that she was only burning some old letters and newspapers, the
refuse of her trunks. There was naturally some indignation that the
hotel had been so foolishly endangered, in such scorching weather, and
the manager had had a scene with her which resulted in her leaving the
hotel indignantly with her half-packed boxes. But even after the smoke
had died away and the fire been extinguished in the chimney and hearth,
there was an acrid smell of smouldering pine penetrating the upper
floors of the hotel all that afternoon.
When Mrs. Van Loo drove away, the manager returned with Demorest to the
rooms. The marble hearth was smoked and discolored and still littered
with charred ashes of burnt paper. “My belief is,” said the manager
darkly, “that the old hag came here just to burn up a lot of
incriminating papers that her son had intrusted to her keeping. It looks
mighty suspicious. You see she got up an awful lot of side when I told
her I didn't reckon to run a smelting furnace in a wooden hotel with the
thermometer at one hundred in the office, and I reckon it was just an
excuse for getting off in a hurry.”
But the continued delay in Stacy's promised telegram had begun to
work upon Demorest's usual equanimity, and he scarcely listened in his
anxiety for his old partner. He knew that Stacy should have arrived in
San Francisco by noon. He had almost determined to take the next train
from the Divide when two horsemen dashed into the courtyard. There
was the usual stir on the veranda and rush for news, but the two new
arrivals turned out to be Barker, on a horse covered with foam, and a
dashing, elegantly dressed stranger on a mustang as carefully groomed
and as spotless as himself. Demorest instantly recognized Jack Hamlin.
He had not seen Hamlin since that day, five years before, when the
latter had accompanied the three partners with their treasure to
Boomville, and had handed him the mysterious packet. As the two men
dismounted hurriedly and moved towards him, he felt a premonition of
something as fateful and important as then. In obedience to a sign from
Barker he led them to a more secluded angle of the veranda. He could not
help noticing that his younger partner's face was mobile as ever, but
more thoughtful and older; yet his voice rang with the old freemasonry
of the camp, as he said, with a laugh, “The signal has been given, and
it's boot and saddle and away.”
“But I have had no dispatch from Stacy,” said Demorest in surprise. “He
was to telegraph to me from San Francisco in any emergency.”
“He never got there at all,” said Barker. “Jack ran slap into Van Loo at
the Divide, and sent a dispatch to Jim, which stopped him halfway until
Jack could reach him, which he nearly broke his neck to do; and then
Jack finished up by bringing a message from Stacy to us that we should
all meet together on the slope of Heavy Tree, near the Bar. I met Jack
just as I was riding into the Divide, and came back with him. He will
tell you the rest, and you can swear by what Jack says, for he's white
all through,” he added, laying his hand affectionately on Hamlin's
shoulder.
Hamlin winced slightly. For he had NOT told Barker that his wife was
with Van Loo, nor his first reason for interfering. But he related how
he had finally overtaken Van Loo at Canyon Station, and how the fugitive
had disclosed the conspiracy of Steptoe and Hall against the bank and
Marshall as the price of his own release. On this news, remembering that
Stacy had passed the Divide on his way to the station, he had first sent
a dispatch to him, and then met him at the first station on the road.
“I reckon, gentlemen,” said Hamlin, with an unusual earnestness in his
voice, “that he'd not only got my telegram, but ALL THE NEWS that had
been flying around this morning, for he looked like a man to whom it
was just a 'toss-up' whether he took his own life then and there or was
willing to have somebody else take it for him, for he said, 'I'll go
myself,' and telegraphed to have the surveyor stopped from coming. Then
he told me to tell you fellows, and ask you to come too.” Jack paused,
and added half mischievously, “He sort of asked ME what I would take
to stand by him in the row, if there was one, and I told him I'd
take--whiskey! You see, boys, it's a kind of off-night with me, and
I wouldn't mind for the sake of old times to finish the game with old
Steptoe that I began a matter of five years ago.”
“All right,” said Demorest, with a kindling eye; “I suppose we'd better
start at once. One moment,” he added. “Barker boy, will you excuse me if
I speak a word to Hamlin?” As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of
the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, “You and I,” he said hurriedly,
“are SINGLE men; Barker has a wife and child. This is likely to be no
child's play.”
But Jack Hamlin was no fool, and from certain leading questions which
Barker had already put, but which he had skillfully evaded, he surmised
that Barker knew something of his wife's escapade. He answered a little
more seriously than his wont, “I don't think as regards HIS WIFE that
would make much difference to him or her how stiff the work was.”
Demorest turned away with his last pang of bitterness. It needed only
this confirmation of all that Stacy had hinted, of what he himself had
seen in his brief interview with Mrs. Barker since his return, to shake
his last remaining faith. “We'll all go together, then,” he said, with
a laugh, “as in the old times, and perhaps it's as well that we have no
woman in our confidence.”
An hour later the three men passed quietly out of the hotel, scarcely
noticed by the other guests, who were also oblivious of their absence
during the evening. For Mrs. Barker, quite recovered from her fatiguing
ride, was in high spirits and the most beautiful and spotless of summer
gowns, and was considered quite a heroine by the other ladies as she
dwelt upon the terrible heat of her return journey. “Only I knew Mr.
Barker would be worried--and the poor man actually walked a mile down
the Divide road to meet me--I believe I should have stayed there all
day.” She glanced round the other groups for Mrs. Horncastle, but that
lady had retired early. Possibly she alone had noticed the absence of
the two partners.
The guests sat up until quite late, for the heat seemed to grow still
more oppressive, and the strange smell of burning wood revived the
gossip about Mrs. Van Loo and her stupidity in setting fire to her
chimney. Some averred that it would be days before the smell could be
got out of the house; others referred it to the fires in the woods,
which were now dangerously near. One spoke of the isolated position
of the hotel as affording the greatest security, but was met by the
assertion of a famous mountaineer that the forest fires were wont to
leap from crest to crest mysteriously, without any apparent continuous
contact. This led to more or less light-hearted conjecture of present
danger and some amusing stories of hotel fires and their ludicrous
revelations. There were also some entertaining speculations as to what
they would do and what they would try to save in such an emergency.
“For myself,” said Mrs. Barker audaciously, “I should certainly let Mr.
Barker look after Sta and confine myself entirely to getting away with
my diamonds. I know the wretch would never think of them.”
It was still later when, exhausted by the heat and some reaction from
the excitement of the day, they at last deserted the veranda for their
rooms, and for a while the shadowy bulk of the whole building was picked
out with regularly spaced lights from its open windows, until now these
finally faded and went out one by one. An hour later the whole building
had sunk to rest. It was said that it was only four in the morning when
a yawning porter, having put out the light in a dark, upper corridor,
was amazed by a dull glow from the top of the wall, and awoke to the
fact that a red fire, as yet smokeless and flameless, was creeping along
the cornice. He ran to the office and gave the alarm; but on returning
with assistance was stopped in the corridor by an impenetrable wall of
smoke veined with murky flashes. The alarm was given in all the lower
floors, and the occupants rushed from their beds half dressed to the
courtyard, only to see, as they afterwards averred, the flames burst
like cannon discharges from the upper windows and unite above the
crackling roof. So sudden and complete was the catastrophe, although
slowly prepared by a leak in the overheated chimney between the floors,
that even the excitement of fear and exertion was spared the survivors.
There was bewilderment and stupor, but neither uproar nor confusion.
People found themselves wandering in the woods, half awake and half
dressed, having descended from the balconies and leaped from the
windows,--they knew not how. Others on the upper floor neither awoke nor
moved from their beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first
an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration
possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building
was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked
speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they
would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no
crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. It was only when Mrs.
Barker awoke disheveled in the courtyard, and with an hysterical outcry
rushed back into the hotel, that there was any sign of panic.
Mrs. Horncastle, who was standing near, fully dressed as from some
night-long vigil, quickly followed her. The half-frantic woman was
making directly for her own apartments, whose windows those in
the courtyard could see were already belching smoke. Suddenly Mrs.
Horncastle stopped with a bitter cry and clasped her forehead. It had
just flashed upon her that Mrs. Barker had told her only a few hours
before that Sta had been removed with the nurse to the UPPER FLOOR! It
was not the forgotten child that Mrs. Barker was returning for, but her
diamonds! Mrs. Horncastle called her; she did not reply. The smoke was
already pouring down the staircase. Mrs. Horncastle hesitated for a
moment only, and then, drawing a long breath, dashed up the stairs. On
the first landing she stumbled over something--the prostrate figure of
the nurse. But this saved her, for she found that near the floor she
could breathe more freely. Before her appeared to be an open door. She
crept along towards it on her hands and knees. The frightened cry of
a child, awakened from its sleep in the dark, gave her nerve to rise,
enter the room, and dash open the window. By the flashing light she
could see a little figure rising from a bed. It was Sta. There was not
a moment to be lost, for the open window was beginning to draw the smoke
from the passage. Luckily, the boy, by some childish instinct, threw
his arms round her neck and left her hands free. Whispering him to
hold tight, she clambered out of the window. A narrow ledge of cornice
scarcely wide enough for her feet ran along the house to a distant
balcony. With her back to the house she zigzagged her feet along the
cornice to get away from the smoke, which now poured directly from the
window. Then she grew dizzy; the weight of the child on her bosom seemed
to be toppling her forward towards the abyss below. She closed her eyes,
frantically grasping the child with crossed arms on her breast as she
stood on the ledge, until, as seen from below through the twisting
smoke, they might have seemed a figure of the Madonna and Child niched
in the wall. Then a voice from above called to her, “Courage!” and she
felt the flap of a twisted sheet lowered from an upper window against
her face. She grasped it eagerly; it held firmly. Then she heard a cry
from below, saw them carrying a ladder, and at last was lifted with her
burden from the ledge by powerful hands. Then only did she raise her
eyes to the upper window whence had come her help. Smoke and flame were
pouring from it. The unknown hero who had sacrificed his only chance of
escape to her remained forever unknown.
*****
Only four miles away that night a group of men were waiting for the dawn
in the shadow of a pine near Heavy Tree Bar. As the sky glowed redly
over the crest between them and Hymettus, Hamlin said:--
“Another one of those forest fires. It's this side of Black Spur, and a
big one, I reckon.”
“Do you know,” said Barker thoughtfully, “I was thinking of the time
the old cabin burnt up on Heavy Tree. It looks to be about in the same
place.”
“Hush!” said Stacy sharply.