The winter rains were over and gone, and the whole long line of
Californian coast was dashed with color. There were miles of yellow and
red poppies, leagues of lupines that painted the gently rounded hills
with soft primary hues, and long continuous slopes, like low mountain
systems, of daisies and dandelions. At Sacramento it was already summer;
the yellow river was flashing and intolerable; the tule and marsh
grasses were lush and long; the bloom of cottonwood and sycamore
whitened the outskirts of the city, and as Cyrus Hopkins and his
daughter Phoebe looked from the veranda of the Placer Hotel, accustomed
as they were to the cool trade winds of the coast valleys, they felt
homesick from the memory of eastern heats.
Later, when they were surveying the long dinner tables at the table
d'hote with something of the uncomfortable and shamefaced loneliness of
the provincial, Phoebe uttered a slight cry and clutched her father's
arm. Mr. Hopkins stayed the play of his squared elbows and glanced
inquiringly at his daughter's face. There was a pretty animation in it,
as she pointed to a figure that had just entered. It was that of a young
man attired in the extravagance rather than the taste of the prevailing
fashion, which did not, however, in the least conceal a decided
rusticity of limb and movement. A long mustache, which looked unkempt,
even in its pomatumed stiffness, and lank, dark hair that had bent but
never curled under the barber's iron, made him notable even in that
heterogeneous assembly.
“That's he,” whispered Phoebe.
“Who?” said her father.
Alas for the inconsistencies of love! The blush came with the name and
not the vision.
“Mr. Hooker,” she stammered.
It was, indeed, Jim Hooker. But the role of his exaggeration was no
longer the same; the remorseful gloom in which he had been habitually
steeped had changed into a fatigued, yet haughty, fastidiousness more
in keeping with his fashionable garments. He was more peaceful, yet not
entirely placable, and, as he sat down at a side table and pulled down
his striped cuffs with his clasped fingers, he cast a glance of critical
disapproval on the general company. Nevertheless, he seemed to be
furtively watchful of his effect upon them, and as one or two whispered
and looked towards him, his consciousness became darkly manifest.
All of which might have intimidated the gentle Phoebe, but did not
discompose her father. He rose, and crossing over to Hooker's table,
clapped him heartily on the back.
“How do, Hooker? I didn't recognize you in them fine clothes, but Phoebe
guessed as how it was you.”
Flushed, disconcerted, irritated, but always in wholesome awe of Mr.
Hopkins, Jim returned his greeting awkwardly and half hysterically. How
he would have received the more timid Phoebe is another question. But
Mr. Hopkins, without apparently noticing these symptoms, went on:--
“We're only just down, Phoebe and me, and as I guess we'll want to talk
over old times, we'll come alongside o' you. Hold on, and I'll fetch
her.”
The interval gave the unhappy Jim a chance to recover himself, to regain
his vanished cuffs, display his heavy watch-chain, curl his mustache,
and otherwise reassume his air of blase fastidiousness. But the transfer
made, Phoebe, after shaking hands, became speechless under these
perfections. Not so her father.
“If there's anything in looks, you seem to be prospering,” he said
grimly; “unless you're in the tailorin' line, and you're only showin'
off stock. What mout ye be doing?”
“Ye ain't bin long in Sacramento, I reckon?” suggested Jim, with
patronizing pity.
“No, we only came this morning,” returned Hopkins.
“And you ain't bin to the theatre?” continued Jim.
“No.”
“Nor moved much in--in--gin'ral fash'nable sassiety?”
“Not yet,” interposed Phoebe, with an air of faint apology.
“Nor seen any of them large posters on the fences, of 'The Prairie
Flower; or, Red-handed Dick,'--three-act play with five tableaux,--just
the biggest sensation out,--runnin' for forty nights,--money turned
away every night,--standin' room only?” continued Jim, with prolonged
toleration.
“No.”
“Well, I play Red-handed Dick. I thought you might have seen it and
recognized me. All those people over there,” darkly indicating the long
table, “know me. A fellow can't stand it, you know, being stared at by
such a vulgar, low-bred lot. It's gettin' too fresh here. I'll have to
give the landlord notice and cut the whole hotel. They don't seem to
have ever seen a gentleman and a professional before.”
“Then you're a play-actor now?” said the farmer, in a tone which did
not, however, exhibit the exact degree of admiration which shone in
Phoebe's eyes.
“For the present,” said Jim, with lofty indifference. “You see I was
in--in partnership with McClosky, the manager, and I didn't like the
style of the chump that was doin' Red-handed Dick, so I offered to take
his place one night to show him how. And by Jinks! the audience, after
that night, wouldn't let anybody else play it,--wouldn't stand even the
biggest, highest-priced stars in it! I reckon,” he added gloomily, “I'll
have to run the darned thing in all the big towns in Californy,--if I
don't have to go East with it after all, just for the business. But it's
an awful grind on a man,--leaves him no time, along of the invitations
he gets, and what with being run after in the streets and stared at in
the hotels he don't get no privacy. There's men, and women, too, over
at that table, that just lie in wait for me here till I come, and don't
lift their eyes off me. I wonder they don't bring their opery-glasses
with them.”
Concerned, sympathizing, and indignant, poor Phoebe turned her brown
head and honest eyes in that direction. But because they were honest,
they could not help observing that the other table did not seem to be
paying the slightest attention to the distinguished impersonator of
Red-handed Dick. Perhaps he had been overheard.
“Then that was the reason ye didn't come back to your location. I always
guessed it was because you'd got wind of the smash-up down there, afore
we did,” said Hopkins grimly.
“What smash-up?” asked Jim, with slightly resentful quickness.
“Why, the smash-up of the Sisters' title,--didn't you hear that?”
There was a slight movement of relief and a return of gloomy hauteur in
Jim's manner.
“No, we don't know much of what goes on in the cow counties, up here.”
“Ye mout, considerin' it concerns some o' your friends,” returned
Hopkins dryly. “For the Sisters' title went smash as soon as it was
known that Pedro Valdez--the man as started it--had his neck broken
outside the walls o' Robles Rancho; and they do say as this yer Brant,
YOUR friend, had suthin' to do with the breaking of it, though it was
laid to the ghost of old Peyton. Anyhow, there was such a big skeer
that one of the Greaser gang, who thought he'd seen the ghost, being a
Papist, to save his everlasting soul went to the priest and confessed.
But the priest wouldn't give him absolution until he'd blown the
hull thing, and made it public. And then it turned out that all the
dockyments for the title, and even the custom-house paper, were FORGED
by Pedro Valdez, and put on the market by his confederates. And that's
just where YOUR friend, Clarence Brant, comes in, for HE had bought up
the whole title from them fellers. Now, either, as some say, he was in
the fraud from the beginnin', and never paid anything, or else he was an
all-fired fool, and had parted with his money like one. Some allow
that the reason was that he was awfully sweet on Mrs. Peyton's adopted
daughter, and ez the parents didn't approve of him, he did THIS so as
to get a holt over them by the property. But he's a ruined man, anyway,
now; for they say he's such a darned fool that he's goin' to pay for all
the improvements that the folks who bought under him put into the land,
and that'll take his last cent. I thought I'd tell you that, for I
suppose YOU'VE lost a heap in your improvements, and will put in your
claim?”
“I reckon I put nearly as much into it as Clar Brant did,” said Jim
gloomily, “but I ain't goin' to take a cent from him, or go back on him
now.”
The rascal could not resist this last mendacious opportunity, although
he was perfectly sincere in his renunciation, touched in his sympathy,
and there was even a film of moisture in his shifting eyes.
Phoebe was thrilled with the generosity of this noble being, who could
be unselfish even in his superior condition. She added softly:--
“And they say that the girl did not care for him at all, but was
actually going to run off with Pedro, when he stopped her and sent for
Mrs. Peyton.”
To her surprise, Jim's face flushed violently.
“It's all a dod-blasted lie,” he said, in a thick stage whisper. “It's
only the hogwash them Greasers and Pike County galoots ladle out to
each other around the stove in a county grocery. But,” recalling himself
loftily, and with a tolerant wave of his be-diamonded hand, “wot kin
you expect from one of them cow counties? They ain't satisfied till they
drive every gentleman out of the darned gopher-holes they call their
'kentry.'”
In her admiration of what she believed to be a loyal outburst for his
friend, Phoebe overlooked the implied sneer at her provincial home. But
her father went on with a perfunctory, exasperating, dusty aridity:--
“That mebbee ez mebbee, Mr. Hooker, but the story down in our precinct
goes that she gave Mrs. Peyton the slip,--chucked up her situation as
adopted darter, and went off with a queer sort of a cirkiss woman,--one
of her own KIN, and I reckon one of her own KIND.”
To this Mr. Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of
the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He
pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to
have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised
them to come early. They would see him after the performance and sup
together. He must leave them now, as he had to be punctually at the
theatre, and if he lingered he should be pestered by interviewers. He
withdrew under a dazzling display of cuff and white handkerchief,
and with that inward swing of the arm and slight bowiness of the leg
generally recognized in his profession as the lounging exit of high
comedy.
The mingling of awe and an uneasy sense of changed relations which that
meeting with Jim had brought to Phoebe was not lessened when she entered
the theatre with her father that evening, and even Mr. Hopkins seemed to
share her feelings. The theatre was large, and brilliant in decoration,
the seats were well filled with the same heterogeneous mingling she had
seen in the dining-room at the Placer Hotel, but in the parquet were
some fashionable costumes and cultivated faces. Mr. Hopkins was not
altogether so sure that Jim had been “only gassing.” But the gorgeous
drop curtain, representing an allegory of Californian prosperity and
abundance, presently uprolled upon a scene of Western life almost as
striking in its glaring unreality. From a rose-clad English cottage in
a subtropical landscape skipped “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.” The
briefest of skirts, the most unsullied of stockings, the tiniest of
slippers, and the few diamonds that glittered on her fair neck and
fingers, revealed at once the simple and unpretending daughter of the
American backwoodsman. A tumult of delighted greeting broke from the
audience. The bright color came to the pink, girlish cheeks, gratified
vanity danced in her violet eyes, and as she piquantly bowed her
acknowledgments, this great breath of praise seemed to transfigure and
possess her. A very young actor who represented the giddy world in
a straw hat and with an effeminate manner was alternately petted and
girded at by her during the opening exposition of the plot, until the
statement that a “dark destiny” obliged her to follow her uncle in an
emigrant train across the plains closed the act, apparently extinguished
him, and left HER the central figure. So far, she evidently was the
favorite. A singular aversion to her crept into the heart of Phoebe.
But the second act brought an Indian attack upon the emigrant train, and
here “Rosalie” displayed the archest heroism and the pinkest and most
distracting self-possession, in marked contrast to the giddy worldling
who, having accompanied her apparently for comic purposes best known to
himself, cowered abjectly under wagons, and was pulled ignominiously out
of straw, until Red Dick swept out of the wings with a chosen band and
a burst of revolvers and turned the tide of victory. Attired as a
picturesque combination of the Neapolitan smuggler, river-bar miner,
and Mexican vacquero, Jim Hooker instantly began to justify the plaudits
that greeted him and the most sanguinary hopes of the audience. A gloomy
but fascinating cloud of gunpowder and dark intrigue from that moment
hung about the stage.
Yet in this sombre obscuration Rosalie had passed a happy six months,
coming out with her character and stockings equally unchanged and
unblemished, to be rewarded with the hand of Red Dick and the discovery
of her father, the governor of New Mexico, as a white-haired, but
objectionable vacquero, at the fall of the curtain.
Through this exciting performance Phoebe sat with a vague and increasing
sense of loneliness and distrust. She did not know that Hooker had added
to his ordinary inventive exaggeration the form of dramatic composition.
But she had early detected the singular fact that such shadowy outlines
of plot as the piece possessed were evidently based on his previous
narrative of his OWN experiences, and the saving of Susy Peyton--by
himself! There was the episode of their being lost on the plains, as
he had already related it to her, with the addition of a few years to
Susy's age and some vivid picturesqueness to himself as Red Dick. She
was not, of course, aware that the part of the giddy worldling was
Jim's own conception of the character of Clarence. But what, even to
her provincial taste, seemed the extravagance of the piece, she felt, in
some way, reflected upon the truthfulness of the story she had heard. It
seemed to be a parody on himself, and in the laughter which some of the
most thrilling points produced in certain of the audience, she heard
an echo of her own doubts. But even this she could have borne if Jim's
confidence had not been given to the general public; it was no longer
HERS alone, she shared it with them. And this strange, bold girl, who
acted with him,--the “Blanche Belville” of the bills,--how often he must
have told HER the story, and yet how badly she had learned it! It was
not her own idea of it, nor of HIM. In the last extravagant scene she
turned her weary and half-shamed eyes from the stage and looked around
the theatre. Among a group of loungers by the wall a face that
seemed familiar was turned towards her own with a look of kindly and
sympathetic recognition. It was the face of Clarence Brant. When the
curtain fell, and she and her father rose to go, he was at their side.
He seemed older and more superior looking than she had ever thought him
before, and there was a gentle yet sad wisdom in his eyes and voice that
comforted her even while it made her feel like crying.
“You are satisfied that no harm has come to our friend,” he said
pleasantly. “Of course you recognized him?”
“Oh, yes; we met him to-day,” said Phoebe. Her provincial pride impelled
her to keep up a show of security and indifference. “We are going to
supper with him.”
Clarence slightly lifted his brows.
“You are more fortunate than I am,” he said smilingly. “I only arrived
here at seven, and I must leave at midnight.”
Phoebe hesitated a moment, then said with affected carelessness:--
“What do you think of the young girl who plays with him? Do you know
her? Who is she?”
He looked at her quickly, and then said, with some surprise:--
“Did he not tell you?”
“She WAS the adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton,--Miss Susan Silsbee,” he
said gravely.
“Then she DID run away from home as they said,” said Phoebe impulsively.
“Not EXACTLY as they said,” said Clarence gently. “She elected to make
her home with her aunt, Mrs. McClosky, who is the wife of the manager
of this theatre, and she adopted the profession a month ago. As it
now appears that there was some informality in the old articles of
guardianship, Mrs. Peyton would have been powerless to prevent her from
doing either, even if she had wished to.”
The infelicity of questioning Clarence regarding Susy suddenly flashed
upon the forgetful Phoebe, and she colored. Yet, although sad, he did
not look like a rejected lover.
“Of course, if she is here with her own relatives, that makes all the
difference,” she said gently. “It is protection.”
“Certainly,” said Clarence.
“And,” continued Phoebe hesitatingly, “she is playing with--with--an old
friend--Mr. Hooker!”
“That is quite proper, too, considering their relations,” said Clarence
tolerantly.
“I--don't--understand,” stammered Phoebe.
The slightly cynical smile on Clarence's face changed as he looked into
Phoebe's eyes.
“I've just heard that they are married,” he returned gently.