The first three months of Ralph's sojourn in America were spent in vain
attempts to obtain a situation. Day after day he walked down Broadway,
calling at various places of business, and night after night he
returned to his cheerless room with a faint heart and declining
spirits. It was, after all, a more serious thing than he had imagined,
to cut the cable which binds one to the land of one's birth. There a
hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects
until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight
path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's
life had been all in society; the opinion of his fellow-men had been
the one force to which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience by
which he had been wont to test his actions had been nothing but the
aggregate judgment of his friends. To such a man the isolation and the
utter irresponsibility of a life among strangers was tenfold more
dangerous; and Ralph found, to his horror, that his character contained
innumerable latent possibilities which the easy-going life in his home
probably never would have revealed to him. It often cut him to the
quick, when, on entering an office in his daily search for employment,
he was met by hostile or suspicious glances, or when, as it
occasionally happened, the door was slammed in his face, as if he were
a vagabond or an impostor. Then the wolf was often roused within him,
and he felt a momentary wild desire to become what the people here
evidently believed him to be. Many a night he sauntered irresolutely
about the gambling places in obscure streets, and the glare of light,
the rude shouts and clamors in the same moment repelled and attracted
him. If he went to the devil, who would care? His father had himself
pointed out the way to him; and nobody could blame him if he followed
the advice. But then again a memory emerged from that chamber of his
soul which still he held sacred; and Bertha's deep-blue eyes gazed upon
him with their earnest look of tender warning and regret. When the
summer was half gone, Ralph had gained many a hard victory over
himself, and learned many a useful lesson; and at length he swallowed
his pride, divested himself of his fine clothes, and accepted a
position as assistant gardener at a villa on the Hudson. And as he
stood perspiring with a spade in his hand, and a cheap broad-brimmed
straw hat on his head, he often took a grim pleasure in picturing to
himself how his aristocratic friends at home would receive him if he
should introduce himself to them in this new costume.
"After all, it was only my position they cared for," he reflected,
bitterly; "without my father's name what would I be to them?"
Then, again, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that, for his
present situation, humble as it was, he was indebted to nobody but
himself; and the thought that Bertha's eyes, if they could have seen
him now, would have dwelt upon him with pleasure and approbation, went
far to console him for his aching back, his sunburned face, and his
swollen and blistered hands.
One day, as Ralph was raking the gravel-walks in the garden, his
employer's daughter, a young lady of seventeen, came out and spoke to
him. His culture and refinement of manner struck her with wonder, and
she asked him to tell her his history; but then he suddenly grew very
grave, and she forbore pressing him. From that time she attached a kind
of romantic interest to him, and finally induced her father to obtain
him a situation that would be more to his taste. And, before winter
came, Ralph saw the dawn of a new future glimmering before him. He had
wrestled bravely with fate, and had once more gained a victory. He
began the career in which success and distinction awaited him as
proofreader on a newspaper in the city. He had fortunately been
familiar with the English language before he left home, and by the
strength of his will he conquered all difficulties. At the end of two
years he became attached to the editorial staff; new ambitious hopes,
hitherto foreign to his mind, awoke within him; and with joyous tumult
of heart he saw life opening its wide vistas before him, and he labored
on manfully to repair the losses of the past, and to prepare himself
for greater usefulness in times to come. He felt in himself a stronger
and fuller manhood, as if the great arteries of the vast universal
world-life pulsed in his own being. The drowsy, indolent existence at
home appeared like a dull remote dream from which he had awaked, and he
blessed the destiny which, by its very sternness, had mercifully saved
him; he blessed her, too, who, from the very want of love for him, had,
perhaps, made him worthier of love.
The years flew rapidly. Society had flung its doors open to him, and
what was more, he had found some warm friends, in whose houses he could
come and go at pleasure. He enjoyed keenly the privilege of daily
association with high-minded and refined women; their eager activity of
intellect stimulated him, their exquisite ethereal grace and their
delicately chiseled beauty satisfied his aesthetic cravings, and the
responsive vivacity of their nature prepared him ever new surprises. He
felt a strange fascination in the presence of these women, and the
conviction grew upon him that their type of womanhood was superior to
any he had hitherto known. And by way of refuting his own argument, he
would draw from his pocketbook the photograph of Bertha, which had a
secret compartment there all to itself, and, gazing tenderly at it,
would eagerly defend her against the disparaging reflections which the
involuntary comparison had provoked. And still, how could he help
seeing that her features, though well molded, lacked animation; that
her eye, with its deep, trustful glance, was not brilliant, and that
the calm earnestness of her face, when compared with the bright,
intellectual beauty of his present friends, appeared pale and simple,
like a violet in a bouquet of vividly colored roses? It gave him a
quick pang, when, at times, he was forced to admit this; nevertheless,
it was the truth.
After six years of residence in America, Ralph had gained a very high
reputation as a journalist of rare culture and ability, and in 1867 he
was sent to the World's Exhibition in Paris, as correspondent of the
paper on which he had during all these years been employed. What
wonder, then, that he started for Europe a few weeks before his
presence was needed in the imperial city, and that he steered his
course directly toward the fjord valley where Bertha had her home? It
was she who had bidden him Godspeed when he fled from the land of his
birth, and she, too, should receive his first greeting on his return.
V
The sun had fortified itself behind a citadel of flaming clouds, and
the upper forest region shone with a strange ethereal glow, while the
lower plains were wrapped in shadow; but the shadow itself had a strong
suffusion of color. The mountain peaks rose cold and blue in the
distance.
Ralph, having inquired his way of the boatman who had landed him at the
pier, walked rapidly along the beach, with a small valise in his hand,
and a light summer overcoat flung over his shoulder. Many half-thoughts
grazed his mind, and ere the first had taken shape, the second and the
third came and chased it away. And still they all in some fashion had
reference to Bertha; for in a misty, abstract way, she filled his whole
mind; but for some indefinable reason, he was afraid to give free rein
to the sentiment which lurked in the remoter corners of his soul.
Onward he hastened, while his heart throbbed with the quickening tempo
of mingled expectation and fear. Now and then one of those chill gusts
of air, which seem to be careering about aimlessly in the atmosphere
during early summer, would strike into his face, and recall him to a
keener self-consciousness.
Ralph concluded, from his increasing agitation, that he must be very
near Bertha's home. He stopped and looked around him. He saw a large
maple at the roadside, some thirty steps from where he was standing,
and the girl who was sitting under it, resting her head in her hand and
gazing out over the sea, he recognized in an instant to be Bertha. He
sprang up on the road, not crossing, however, her line of vision, and
approached her noiselessly from behind.
"Bertha," he whispered.
She gave a little joyous cry, sprang up, and made a gesture as if to
throw herself in his arms; then suddenly checked herself, blushed
crimson, and moved a step backward.
"You came so suddenly," she murmured.
"But, Bertha," cried he (and the full bass of his voice rang through
her very soul), "have I gone into exile and waited these many years for
so cold a welcome?"
"You have changed so much, Ralph," she answered, with that old grave
smile which he knew so well, and stretched out both her hands toward
him. "And I have thought of you so much since you went away, and blamed
myself because I had judged you so harshly, and wondered that you could
listen to me so patiently, and never bear me any malice for what I
said."
"If you had said a word less," declared Ralph, seating himself at her
side on the greensward, "or if you had varnished it over with
politeness, then you would probably have failed to produce any effect
and I should not have been burdened with that heavy debt of gratitude
which I now owe you. I was a pretty thick-skinned animal in those days,
Bertha. You said the right word at the right moment; you gave me a bold
and a good piece of advice, which my own ingenuity would never have
suggested to me. I will not thank you, because, in so grave a case as
this, spoken thanks sound like a mere mockery. Whatever I am, Bertha,
and whatever I may hope to be, I owe it all to that hour."
She listened with rapture to the manly assurance of his voice; her eyes
dwelt with unspeakable joy upon his strong, bronzed features, his full
thick blond beard, and the vigorous proportions of his frame. Many and
many a time during his absence had she wondered how he would look if he
ever came back, and with that minute conscientiousness which, as it
were, pervaded her whole character, she had held herself responsible
before God for his fate, prayed for him, and trembled lest evil powers
should gain the ascendency over his soul.
On their way to the house they talked together of many things, but in a
guarded, cautious fashion, and without the cheerful abandonment of
former years. They both, as it were, groped their way carefully in each
other's minds, and each vaguely felt that there was something in the
other's thought which it was not well to touch unbidden. Bertha saw
that all her fears for him had been groundless, and his very appearance
lifted the whole weight of responsibility from her breast; and still,
did she rejoice at her deliverance from her burden? Ah, no; in this
moment she knew that that which she had foolishly cherished as the best
and noblest part of herself had been but a selfish need of her own
heart. She feared that she had only taken that interest in him which
one feels in a thing of one's own making, and now, when she saw that he
had risen quite above her; that he was free and strong, and could have
no more need of her, she had, instead of generous pleasure at his
success, but a painful sense of emptiness, as if something very dear
had been taken from her.
Ralph, too, was loth to analyze the impression his old love made upon
him. His feelings were of so complex a nature, he was anxious to keep
his more magnanimous impulses active, and he strove hard to convince
himself that she was still the same to him as she had been before they
had ever parted. But, alas! though the heart be warm and generous, the
eye is a merciless critic. And the man who had moved on the wide arena
of the world, whose mind had housed the large thoughts of this century,
and expanded with its invigorating breath--was he to blame because he
had unconsciously outgrown his old provincial self, and could no more
judge by its standards?
Bertha's father was a peasant, but he had, by his lumber trade,
acquired what in Norway was called a very handsome fortune. He received
his guest with dignified reserve, and Ralph thought he detected in his
eyes a lurking look of distrust. "I know your errand," that look seemed
to say, "but you had better give it up at once. It will be of no use
for you to try."
And after supper, as Ralph and Bertha sat talking confidingly with each
other at the window, he sent his daughter a quick, sharp glance, and
then, without ceremony, commanded her to go to bed. Ralph's heart gave
a great thump within him; not because he feared the old man, but
because his words, as well as his glances, revealed to him the sad
history of these long, patient years. He doubted no longer that the
love which he had once so ardently desired was his at last: and he made
a silent vow that, come what might, he would remain faithful.
As he came down to breakfast the next morning, he found Bertha sitting
at the window, engaged in hemming what appeared to be a rough kitchen
towel. She bent eagerly over her work, and only a vivid flush upon her
cheek told him that she had noticed his coming. He took a chair, seated
himself opposite her, and bade her "good-morning." She raised her head,
and showed him a sweet, troubled countenance, which the early sunlight
illumined with a high spiritual beauty. It reminded him forcibly of
those pale, sweet-faced saints of Fra Angelico, with whom the frail
flesh seems ever on the point of yielding to the ardent aspirations of
the spirit. And still even in this moment he could not prevent his eyes
from observing that one side of her forefinger was rough from sewing,
and that the whiteness of her arm, which the loose sleeves displayed,
contrasted strongly with the browned and sunburned complexion of her
hands.
After breakfast they again walked together on the beach, and Ralph,
having once formed his resolution, now talked freely of the New World--
of his sphere of activity there; of his friends and of his plans for
the future; and she listened to him with a mild, perplexed look in her
eyes, as if trying vainly to follow the flight of his thoughts. And he
wondered, with secret dismay, whether she was still the same strong,
brave-hearted girl whom he had once accounted almost bold; whether the
life in this narrow valley, amid a hundred petty and depressing cares,
had not cramped her spiritual growth, and narrowed the sphere of her
thought. Or was she still the same, and was it only he who had changed?
At last he gave utterance to his wonder, and she answered him in those
grave, earnest tones which seemed in themselves to be half a refutation
of his doubts.
"It was easy for me to give you daring advice then, Ralph," she said.
"Like most school-girls, I thought that life was a great and glorious
thing, and that happiness was a fruit which hung within reach of every
hand. Now I have lived for six years trying single-handed to relieve
the want and suffering of the needy people with whom I come in contact,
and their squalor and wretchedness have sickened me, and, what is still
worse, I feel that all I can do is as a drop in the ocean, and, after
all, amounts to nothing. I know I am no longer the same reckless girl
who, with the very best intention, sent you wandering through the wide
world; and I thank God that it proved to be for your good, although the
whole now appears quite incredible to me. My thoughts have moved so
long within the narrow circle of these mountains that they have lost
their youthful elasticity, and can no more rise above them."
Ralph detected, in the midst of her despondency, a spark of her former
fire, and grew eloquent in his endeavors to persuade her that she was
unjust to herself, and that there was but a wider sphere of life needed
to develop all the latent powers of her rich nature.
At the dinner-table, her father again sat eying his guest with that
same cold look of distrust and suspicion. And when the meal was at an
end, he rose abruptly and called his daughter into another room.
Presently Ralph heard his angry voice resounding through the house,
interrupted now and then by a woman's sobs, and a subdued, passionate
pleading. When Bertha again entered the room, her eyes were very red,
and he saw that she had been weeping. She threw a shawl over her
shoulders, beckoned to him with her hand, and he arose and followed
her. She led the way silently until they reached a thick copse of birch
and alder near the strand. She dropped down upon a bench between two
trees, and he took his seat at her side.
"Ralph," began she, with a visible effort, "I hardly know what to say
to you; but there is something which I must tell you--my father wishes
you to leave us at once."
"And _you_, Bertha?"
"Well--yes--I wish it too."
She saw the painful shock which her words gave him, and she strove hard
to speak. Her lips trembled, her eyes became suffused with tears, which
grew and grew, but never fell; she could not utter a word.
"Well, Bertha," answered he, with a little quiver in his voice, "if
you, too, wish me to go, I shall not tarry. Good-by."
He rose quickly, and, with averted face, held out his hand to her; but
as she made no motion to grasp the hand, he began distractedly to
button his coat, and moved slowly away.
"Ralph."
He turned sharply, and, before he knew it, she lay sobbing upon his
breast.
"Ralph," she murmured, while the tears almost choked her words, "I
could not have you leave me thus. It is hard enough--it is hard
enough--"
"What is hard, beloved?"
She raised her head abruptly, and turned upon him a gaze full of hope
and doubt, and sweet perplexity.
"Ah, no, you do not love me," she whispered, sadly.
"Why should I come to seek you, after these many years, dearest, if I
did not wish to make you my wife before God and men? Why should I--"
"Ah, yes, I know," she interrupted him with a fresh fit of weeping,
"you are too good and honest to wish to throw me away, now when you
have seen how my soul has hungered for the sight of you these many
years, how even now I cling to you with a despairing clutch. But you
can not disguise yourself, Ralph, and I saw from the first moment that
you loved me no more.
"Do not be such an unreasonable child," he remonstrated, feebly. "I do
not love you with the wild, irrational passion of former years; but I
have the tenderest regard for you, and my heart warms at the sight of
your sweet face, and I shall do all in my power to make you as happy as
any man can make you who--"
"Who does not love me," she finished.
A sudden shudder seemed to shake her whole frame, and she drew herself
more tightly up to him.
"Ah, no," she continued, after a while, sinking back upon her seat. "It
is a hopeless thing to compel a reluctant heart. I will accept no
sacrifice from you. You owe me nothing, for you have acted toward me
honestly and uprightly, and I shall be a stronger or--at least--a
better woman for what you gave me--and--for what you could not give me,
even though you would."
"But, Bertha," exclaimed he, looking mournfully at her, "it is not true
when you say that I owe you nothing. Six years ago, when first I wooed
you, you could not return my love, and you sent me out into the world,
and even refused to accept any pledge or promise for the future."
"And you returned," she responded, "a man, such as my hope had pictured
you; but, while I had almost been standing still, you had outgrown me,
and outgrown your old self, and, with your old self, outgrown its love
for me, for your love was not of your new self, but of the old. Alas!
it is a sad tale, but it is true."
She spoke gravely now, and with a steadier voice, but her eyes hung
upon his face with an eager look of expectation, as if yearning to
detect there some gleam of hope, some contradiction of the dismal
truth. He read that look aright and it pierced him like a sharp sword.
He made a brave effort to respond to its appeal, but his features
seemed hard as stone, and he could only cry out against his destiny,
and bewail his misfortune and hers.
Toward evening, Ralph was sitting in an open boat, listening to the
measured oar-strokes of the boatmen who were rowing him out to the
nearest stopping-place of the steamer. The mountains lifted their great
placid heads up among the sun-bathed clouds, and the fjord opened its
cool depths as if to make room for their vast reflections. Ralph felt
as if he were floating in the midst of the blue infinite space, and,
with the strength which this feeling inspired, he tried to face boldly
the thought from which he had but a moment ago shrunk as from something
hopelessly sad and perplexing.
And in that hour he looked fearlessly into the gulf which separates the
New World from the Old. He had hoped to bridge it; but, alas! it can
not be bridged.
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
---------------------
BY BRET HARTE
_Francis Bret Harte (born at Albany, N. Y., August 25, 1839; died in
1902) wrought a revolution in the art of story-writing by his
California tale, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" which appeared in 1868 in
the second number of "The Overland Monthly," of which Harte was editor.
This was followed by a number of stories of the same original quality,
such as "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Idyl of Red Gulch,"
concerning which Parke Godwin wrote in "Putnam's Magazine," 1870: "Bret
Harte has deepened and broadened our literary and moral sympathies; he
has broken the sway of the artificial and conventional; he has
substituted actualities for idealities--but actualities that manifest
the grandeur of self-sacrifice, the beauty of love, the power of
childhood, and the ascendency of nature."_
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
BY BRET HARTE
[Footnote: Copyright, 1899, by Bret Harte. Published by special
arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of Mr.
Harte's works.]
Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea-bush, in pretty much
the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long he
had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long he
should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered. A
tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and
saturated his moral being.
The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular,
was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to attract
attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a
temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, "Effects
of McCorkle's whiskey--kills at forty rods," with a hand pointing to
McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire,
personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process
rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this
facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,
released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and
sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep
sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty
boots and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one
eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was
ingenious and dog-like in its implied flattery of the unconscious man
beside him.
Meanwhile the shadows of the pine-trees had slowly swung around until
they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with
gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust,
lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy
shower upon the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower, and still
Sandy stirred not. And then the repose of this philosopher was
disturbed, as other philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an
unphilosophical sex.
"Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock that she had just
dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
azalea-bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it, picking her way
through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of
disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon
Sandy!
Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she
had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold and
halted for a moment--at least six feet from this prostrate
monster--with her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight.
But neither sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot
she then overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered "Beasts!"--an
epithet which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her
mind the entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being
possessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps,
properly appreciated the demonstrative gallantry for which the
Californian has been so justly celebrated by his brother Californians,
and had, as a new-comer, perhaps fairly earned the reputation of being
"stuck up."
As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature,
and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to
place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly
as his eyes were open. Yet she did it and made good her retreat. But
she was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was
removed, and that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.
The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied
that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from
childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but
condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right to
dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the
statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward
expression was vague, being limited to a repetition of the following
formula: "Su'shine all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?"
Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of
distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
"Wass up? Wasser maar?" continued Sandy, in a very high key.
"Get up, you horrid man!" said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; "get
up and go home."
Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
"Wass I go home for?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with
great disfavor.
To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest,
threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly
forward, darted headlong over the hill in the direction of the river.
"Goodness heavens! the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and then,
with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked
herself in.
That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's
wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got
drunk. "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger reflectively--"let's see! Abner
hasn't been tight since last 'lection." Miss Mary would have liked to
ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold
bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation,
which she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with
opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger--a fine
specimen of Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject
altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend in Boston: "I
think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least
objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
anything that could make the women tolerable."
In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that
her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another
direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of
azalea, blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not
strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers,
and invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and
lupines; but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance
of the azaleas. A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was
nearest to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently
gratuitous laughter, that threatened the discipline of the school. All
that Miss Mary could get from him was, that some one had been "looking
in the winder." Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do
battle with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse
she came plump upon the quondam drunkard, now perfectly sober, and
inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-looking.
These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in
her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that
the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was
amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson, whose corn-colored
silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor
or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her
ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with
receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the
gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom,
her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; and then
she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all
unconsciously very happy.
It was a hot day, and not long after this, that two short-legged boys
came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,
which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary
compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At
the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm
dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both
embarrassed and angry. "If you carried more of that for yourself," she
said spitefully to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes
to its owner, "you'd do better." In the submissive silence that
followed she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the
door that he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a
laugh in which Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her
pale cheek. The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the
door, and as mysteriously filled with fresh spring-water every morning.
Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box-seat to
the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
that he had a habit of "cussin' on up grades," and gave her half the
coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden
with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a
confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The over-dressed
mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near
this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred
precincts, but content to worship the priestess from afar.
With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue
skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed
over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper
woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors
of the firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was
less frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the
unending lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to
heedful or listless ears. And so one day she planned a picnic on
Buckeye Hill, and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road,
the straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless
engines, the cheap finery of shop-windows, the deeper glitter of paint
and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon
itself in such localities, what infinite relief was theirs! The last
heap of ragged rock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed--
how the waiting woods opened their long files to receive them! How the
children--perhaps because they had not yet grown quite away from the
breast of the bounteous Mother--threw themselves face downward on her
brown bosom with uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter;
and how Miss Mary herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she
was in the purity of spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all,
and ran like a crested quail at the head of her brood, until, romping,
laughing, and panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat
hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and
violently, in the heart of the forest, upon the luckless Sandy!
The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensued
need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had
already established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough
that he was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with
that quick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized
a friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and
took other liberties--as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had
built a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of
woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such
foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the
schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face as she sat upon the sloping
hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same
attitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the similitude
greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature, that had
found a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding
ah equal intoxication in love.
I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he
longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage, or
sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,
gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in an heroic
attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being
only withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction
that it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my
fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some
uninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who
rescues, will forgive the omission.
So they sat there undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead and
the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.
What they said matters little. What they thought--which might have been
interesting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how Miss
Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house to come to
California for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an
orphan too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived
a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which,
from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and
a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and
when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the
outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her
weary life.
As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of Red
Gulch--to use a local euphuism--"dried up" also. In another day Miss
Mary would be free, and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know
her no more. She was seated alone in the school-house, her cheek
resting on her hand, her eyes half closed in one of those day-dreams in
which Miss Mary, I fear, to the danger of school discipline, was lately
in the habit of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other
woodland memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own
thoughts that a gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or
translated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at
last it asserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed
cheek and opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman, the
self-assertion and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast to
her timid, irresolute bearing.
Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;
but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half unconsciously settled
her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.
It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a
moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the
dust beside the door, and then sat down at the further end of a long
bench. Her voice was husky as she began:
"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay to-morrow, and I
couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my
Tommy."
Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
attention she could give him.
"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war paint,"
and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
schoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that; and if I am his mother,
there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I
ain't much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher
lives than he's got."
Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know," she
went on hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,
but for the darling boy."
Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her
lilac-gloved hands together, the ringers downward, between her knees,
she went on, in a low voice:
"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I
ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of
sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing
a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And, oh! miss, he loves
you so much; and if you could hear him talk about you in his pretty
way, and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse
him.
"It is natural," she went on rapidly, in a voice that trembled
strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should take
to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a gentleman--
and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I ain't a-goin' to
cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy--God bless him
for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--to--take him with you."
She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
fallen on her knees beside her.
"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some good
school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to forget
his mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be
kindness to what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this
wicked life, this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will!
I know you will--won't you? You will--you must not, you can not say no!
You will make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown
up, you will tell him his father's name--the name that hasn't passed my
lips for years--the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here
Sandy! Miss Mary!--do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me!
You will take my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not
to look on such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving
me!"
Miss Mary had risen, and in the gathering twilight had felt her way to
the open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, her
eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western
sky. There was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on
her white collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly
away. The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside
her.
"I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but I
can not go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see it in
your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in
your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!"
The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with
something of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had
set on Red Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded
pleasantly.
"I will take the boy. Send him to me to-night."
The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. She
would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not.
She rose to her feet.
"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary suddenly.
"No, nor cares. He has never seen the child to know it."
"Go to him at once--to-night--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell
him I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the
child again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take
it, he must not follow! There, go now, please--I'm weary, and--have
much yet to do!"
They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.
"Good-night!"
She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the
young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own
pure breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.
It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill
took the reins of the Slumgullion stage the next morning, for the
schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad,
in obedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he suddenly reined
up his horses and respectfully waited, as Tommy hopped out at the
command of Miss Mary.
"Not that bush, Tommy--the next."
Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife, and cutting a branch from a
tall azalea-bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.
"All right now?"
"All right!"
And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
CRUTCH, THE PAGE
-------------------
BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND
_George Alfred Townsend (born at Georgetown, Del., January 30, 1841)
has written over his signature of "Gath" more newspaper correspondence
than any other living writer. In addition he has found time to write a
number of books, one of which, "Tales of the Chesapeake" published in
1880, ranks among the notable collections of American short stories. It
contains tales in the manner of Hawthorne, Poe, and Bret Harte, which
critics have complimented as being equal to the work of these masters.
Of the present selection, a story in which a famous Washington
character, "Beau Hickman" is introduced, E. C. Stedman said: "It is
good enough for Bret Harte or anybody."_
CRUTCH, THE PAGE
BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND ("OATH")
[Footnote: From "Tales of the Chesapeake." Copyright, 1880, by George
Alfred Townsend]