THE VANISHING OF ARCHIE
“In my opinion,” said Aunt Rebecca, critically eying her new
drawing-room on the train to San Francisco; “the object of our legal
methods seems to be to defend the criminal. And a very efficient means
to this end is to make it so uncomfortable and costly and inconvenient
for any witness of a crime that he runs away rather than endure it.
Here we have had to stay over so long in Salt Lake we nearly lost our
drawing-room. But never mind, you got your man committed. Did you find
out anything about his gang?”
The colonel shook his head. “No, he’s a tough country boy; he has
the rural distrust of lawyers and of sweat-boxes. He does absolutely
nothing but groan and swear, pretending his wound hurts him. But I’ve a
notion there are bigger people back of him. It’s most awfully good of
you, Aunt Rebecca, to stick to me this way.”
“Of course, I stick to you; I’m too old to be fickle. Did you ever
know a Winter who wouldn’t stand by his friends? I belong to the old
régime, Bertie; we had our faults--glaring ones, I dare say--but if
we condoned sin too readily, we never condoned meanness; such a trick
as that upstart Keatcham is doing would have been impossible to my
contemporaries. You saw the morning papers; you know he means to eat up
the Midland?”
“Yes, I know,” mused the colonel; “and turn Tracy, the president,
down--the one who gave him his start on his bucaneering career. Tracy
declines to be his tool, being, I understand, a very decent sort of
man, who has always run his road for his stock-holders and not for the
stock-market. A capital crime, that, in these days. So Keatcham has,
somehow, by one trick or another, got enough directors since Baneleigh
died to give him the control; though he couldn’t get enough of the
stock; and now he means to grab the road to use for himself. Poor
Tracy, who loves the road as a child, they say, will have to stand by
and see it turned into a Wall Street foot-ball; and the equipment run
down as fast as its reputation. I think I’m sorry for Tracy. Besides,
it’s a bad lookout, the power of such fellows; men who are not captains
of industry, not a little bit; only inspired gamblers. Yet they are
running the country. I wonder where is the class that will save us.”
“I don’t know. I don’t admire the present century, Bertie. We had
people of quality in my day; we have only people of culture in this. I
confess I prefer the quality. They had robuster nerves and really asked
less of people, although they may have appeared to ask more. _We_ used
to be contented with respect from our inferiors and courtesy from our
equals--”
“And what from your betters, Aunt Rebecca?” drawled the colonel.
“We had no betters, Rupert; we were the best. I think partly it was our
assurance of our position, which nobody else doubted any more than we,
that kept us so mannerly. Nowadays, nobody has a real position. He may
have wealth and a servile following, who expect to make something out
of him, but he hasn’t position. The newspapers can make fun of him.
The common people watch him drive by and never think of removing their
caps. Nobody takes him seriously except his toadies and himself. And
as for the sentiments of reverence and loyalty, very useful sentiments
in running a world, they seem to have clean disappeared, except”--she
smiled a half-reluctant smile--“except with youngsters like Archie,
who would find it agreeable to be chopped into bits for _you_, and the
women who have not lived in the world, like Janet, who makes a heroine
out of _me_--upon my word, Bertie, _je t’ai fait rougir_!”
“Not at all,” said the colonel; “an illusion of the sunset; but what do
you mean when you say people of quality required less than people of
culture?”
“Oh, simply this; all _we_ demanded was deference; but your cultivated
gang wants admiration and submission, and will not let us possess our
secret souls, even, in peace. And, then, the quality despised no one,
but the cultivated despise every one. Ah, well--
‘Those good old times are past and gone,
I sigh for them in vain,--’
Janet, I wish Archie would fish his mandolin out and you would sing to
me; I like to hear the songs of my youth. Not rag-time, or coon-songs,
but dear old Foster’s melodies; _Old Kentucky Home_, and _Massa’s in
the Col’, Col’ Ground_, and _Nellie Was a Lady_--what makes that so
sad, I wonder?--‘Nellie was a lady, las’ night she died;’ it’s all
in that single line; I think it is because it represents the pathetic
idealization of love; Nellie was that black lover’s ideal of all that
was lovely, and she was dead. Is the orchestra ready--and the choir?
Yes, shut the door; we are for art’s sake only, not for the applause of
the cold world in the car.”
Afterward, when he was angry over his own folly, his own blind,
dogged, trustfulness against all the odds of evidence, Rupert Winter
laid his weakness to that hour; to a woman’s sweet, untrained, tender
voice singing the simple melodies of his youth. They sang one song
after another while the sun sank lower and stained the western sky.
Through the snow-sheds they could catch glimpses of a wild and strange
nature; austere, yet not repelling; vistas of foot-hills bathed in
the evening glow; rank on rank of firs, tall, straight, beautiful,
not wind-tortured and maimed, like the woeful dwarfs of Colorado; and
wonderful snow-capped mountain peaks, with violet shadows and glinting
streaks of silver. Snow everywhere: on the hillsides; on the close
thatch of the firs; on the ice-locked rivers; snow freshly fallen,
softly tinted, infinitely, awesomely pure.
Presently they came out into a lumber country where the mills huddled
in the hollows, over the streams. Huge fires were blazing on the
river-banks. Their tawny red glare dyed the snow for a long distance,
making entrancing tints of rose and yellow; and the dark green of the
pines, against this background, looked strangely fresh. And then,
without warning, they plunged into the dimness of another long wooden
tunnel and emerged into lovely spring. The trees were in leaf, and not
alone the trees; the undulating swells of pasture land and roadside
by the mountains were covered with a tender verdure; and there were
innumerable vines and low glossy shrubs with faintly colored flowers.
“This is like the South,” said Miss Smith.
Archie was devouring the scene. “Doesn’t it just somehow make you feel
as if you couldn’t breathe, Miss Janet?” said he.
“Are you troubled with the high altitude?” asked Millicent anxiously;
“I have prepared a little vial of spirits of ammonia; I’ll fetch it for
you.”
The colonel had some ado to rescue Archie; but he was aided by the
porter, who was now passing through the car proclaiming: “You all have
seen Dutch Flat Mr. Bret Hahte wrote ’bout; nex’ station is Shady Run;
and eve’ybody look and see the greates’ scenic ’traction of dis or any
odder railroad, Cape Hohn!”
Instantly, Mrs. Melville fished her guide-book and began to read:
“‘There are few mountain passes more famous than that known to the
world as Cape Horn. The approach to it is picturesque, the north fork
of the American River raging and foaming in its rocky bed, fifteen
hundred feet below and parallel with the track--’”
“Do you mind, Millicent, if we look instead of listen?” Aunt Rebecca
interrupted, and Mrs. Melville lapsed into an injured muteness.
Truly, Cape Horn has a poignant grandeur that strikes speech from the
lips. One can not look down that sheer height to the luminous ghost
of a river below, without a thrill. If to pass along the cliff is a
shivering experience, what must the actual execution of that stupendous
bit of engineering have been to the workmen who hewed the road out of
the rock, suspended over the abyss! Their dangling black figures seem
to sway still as one swings around the curve.
Our travelers sat in silence, until the “Cape” was passed and again
they could see their road-bed on the side. Then Mrs. Melville made a
polite excuse for departure; she had promised a “Daughter” whom she
had met at various “biennials” that she would have a little talk with
her. Thus she escaped. They did not miss her. Hardly speaking, the
four sat in the dimly lighted, tiny room, while mountains and fields
and star-sown skies drifted by. Unconsciously, Archie drew closer to
his uncle, and the older man threw an arm about the young shoulders.
He looked up to meet Janet’s eyes shining and sweet, in the flash of a
passing station light. Mrs. Winter smiled, her wise old smile.
With the next morning came another shift of scene; they were in the
fertile valleys of California. At every turn the landscape became more
softly tinted, more gracious. Aunt Rebecca was in the best of humor
and announced herself as having the journey of her life. The golden
green of the grain fields, the towering palms, the pepper-trees with
their fascinating grace, the round tops of the live-oaks, the gloss
of the orange groves, the calla-lily hedges and the heliotrope and
geranium trees which climbed to the second story of the stucco houses,
filled her with the enthusiasm of a child. She drank in the cries
of the enterprising young liar who cried “Fresh figs,” months out of
season, and she ate fruit, withered in cold storage, with a trustful
zest. No less than three books about the flora of California came out
of her bag. A certain vine called the Bougainvillea, she was trying
to find, if only the cars would not go so fast; as for poinsettias,
she certainly should raise her own for Christmas. She was learned in
gardens and she discoursed with Miss Smith on the different kinds of
trumpet-vine, and whether the white jasmine trailing among the gaudy
clusters was of the same family as that jasmine which they knew in the
pine forests. But she disparaged the roses; they looked shop-worn. The
colonel watched her in amazement.
“Bertie, I make you think of that little dwarf of Dickens’, don’t
I?” she cried. “Miss Muffins, Muggins? what _was_ her name? You are
expecting me to exclaim, ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ Thank Heaven, I am. I
could always take an interest in trifles. It has been my salvation to
cultivate an interest in trifles, Bertie; there are a great many more
trifles than crises in life. Where has Janet gone? Oh, to give the
porter the collodion for his cut thumb. People with troubles, big or
little, are always making straight for Janet. Bertie, have you made
your mind up about her?”
“Only that she is charming,” replied the colonel. He did not change
color, but he was uneasily conscious that he winced, and that the
shrewd old critic of life and manners perceived it. But she was
mercifully blind to all appearance; she went on with the little frown
of the solver of a psychological enigma. “Yes, Janet is charming; and
why? She is the stillest creature. Have you noticed? Yet you never have
the sense that she hasn’t answered you. She’s the best listener in the
world; and there’s one thing about her unusual in most listeners--her
eyes never grow vacant.”
Rupert had noticed; he called himself a doddering old donkey silently,
because he had assumed that there was anything personal in the interest
of those eyes when he had spoken. Of course not; it was her way with
every one, even Millicent, no doubt. His aunt’s next words were lost,
but a sentence caught his ear directly: “For all she’s so gentle, she
has plenty of spirit. Bertie, did I ever tell you about the time our
precious cousin threw our great-great-grandfather’s gold snuff-box at
her? No? It was funny. She flew into one of her towering rages, and
shrieking, ‘Take _that_!’ hurled the snuff-box at Janet. Janet wasn’t
used to having things thrown at her. She caught the box, then she rang
the bell. ‘Thank you very much,’ says Janet; and when old Aunt Phrosie
came, she handed the snuff-box to her, saying it had just been given to
her as a present. But she sent it that same day to one of the sisters.
There was never anything else thrown at her, I can tell you.”
They found a wonderful sunset on the bay when San Francisco was
reached. Still in her golden humor, as they rattled over the
cobblestones of the picturesque streets to the Palace Hotel, Mrs.
Winter told anecdotes of Robert Louis Stevenson, obtained from a
friend who had known his mother. Mrs. Winter had chosen the Palace in
preference to the St. Francis, to Mrs. Melville’s high disgust.
“She thinks it more typical,” sneered Millicent; “myself, I prefer
cleanliness and comfort to types.”
Their rooms were waiting for them and two bell-boys ushered Mrs.
Winter into her suite. Randall was lodged on the same floor, and Mrs.
Melville, who was to spend a few days with her aunt on the latter’s
invitation, was on a lower floor. The colonel had begged to have Archie
next to him; and he examined the quarters with approbation. His own
room was the last of the suite; to the right hand, between his room and
Archie’s, was their bath; then the parlor of Mrs. Winter’s suite next
her room and bath, and last, to the right, Miss Smith’s room.
Archie was sitting by the window looking out on the street; only the
oval of his soft boyish cheek showed. The colonel went by him to the
parlor beyond, where he encountered his aunt, her hands full of gay
postal cards.
“_Souvenirs de voyage_,” she answered his glance; “I am going to post
them.”
“Can’t I take them for you?”
“No, thanks, I want the exercise.”
“May I go with you?”
“Indeed, no. My dear Bertie, I’m only aged, I’m not infirm.”
“You will _never_ be aged,” responded the colonel gallantly. He turned
away and walked along the arcade which looked down into the great court
of the hotel. Millicent was approaching him; Millicent in something of
a temper. Her room was hideously draughty and she could not get any
one, although she had rung and telephoned to the office and tried
every device which was effectual in a well-conducted hotel; but this,
she concluded bitterly, was not well-conducted; it was only typical.
“There’s a lovely fire in Aunt Rebecca’s parlor,” soothed the colonel;
“come in there.”
Afterward it seemed to him that this whole interview with Millicent
could not have occupied more than four minutes; that it was not more
than seven minutes since he had seen Archie’s shapely curly head
against the curtain fall of the window.
But when he opened the door, Miss Smith came toward them. “Is Archie
with Aunt Rebecca?” said she.
The colonel answered that he had left him in the parlor; perhaps he had
stepped into his own room.
But neither in Archie’s nor the colonel’s nor in any room of the party
could they find the boy.