When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally
made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history
of the country. Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied
upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until their circling camp
fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful
pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by assault. Unfortunately
for them, they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned
with notices of "preemption" for mining purposes in the name of the
various members of the Alvarado family. This stroke of business was due
to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of
her husband and of placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote
contingency. It is but fair to say that this degradation of his
father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't
work them yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way
to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"
argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to the
business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of
Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres
that exceeded the last ten years' income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.
Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the
discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company, hastily
formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him
still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy,
however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to
include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company
had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with
it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain
Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the
retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green
blot upon their social escutcheon.
"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But
Mulrady was adamant.
"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with
my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end
of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day,
and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."
By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a
portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by
a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part.
Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to
mitigate the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to
utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their
family name, and privately had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on
her visiting card. "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband.
"Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted, and how do you
know that yours ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his
ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to
refute the assertion. But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish,
American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once.
When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter,
as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter
rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel. But
she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her
husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as
"Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure, his
orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even
that dominant woman withheld his title. It was currently reported at
Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady
with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino
Mulrady?" "You kin bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned
that simple hidalgo.
Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain at
Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to "the
States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to astonish
Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe, and unfold in
the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with which she was to
fly from them forever. "I don't want them to remember me afterwards in
those spotted prints, ma, and like as not say I never had a decent
frock until I went away." There was something so like the daughter of
her mother in this delicate foresight that the touched and gratified
parent kissed her, and assented. The result was gratifying beyond her
expectation. In that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl
seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of
fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and
taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to
supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace and
manner peculiar to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education, or
precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being
possible, which made them so often probable. Mr. Mulrady looked at his
daughter with mingled sentiments of pride and awe. Was it possible that
this delicate creature, so superior to him that he seemed like a
degenerate scion of her remoter race, was his own flesh and blood? Was
she the daughter of her mother, who even in her remembered youth was
never equipped like this? If the thought brought no pleasure to his
simple, loving nature, it at least spared him the pain of what might
have seemed ingratitude in one more akin to himself. "The fact is, we
ain't quite up to her style," was his explanation and apology. A vague
belief that in another and a better world than this he might
approximate and understand this perfection somewhat soothed and
sustained him.
It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered cambric dress
which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside at Los
Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic and
expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or to
herself in the eyes of a general audience. It certainly did not seem
so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her from time to
time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-twenty, walked at her
side. He was the new editor of the "Rough-and-Ready Record," and,
having been her fellow-passenger from Sacramento, had already once or
twice availed himself of her father's invitation to call upon them.
Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation. Whether she
wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether,
like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the
unheroic, unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine
humor, did not appear.
"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady," said
the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my unselfishness, since
I frankly admit your departure would be a positive relief to me as an
editor and a man. The pressure in the Poet's Corner of the 'Record'
since it was mistakingly discovered that a person of your name might be
induced to seek the 'glade' and 'shade' without being 'afraid,'
'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been something enormous, and,
unfortunately, I am debarred from rejecting anything, on the just
ground that I am myself an interested admirer."
"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full
name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much horror
in her face.
"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he
responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men,
with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory
versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about
as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as
terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the
resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo.
But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more
seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but
you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more
honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red
Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write
poetry?"
"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.
"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously; "it must be a
pallid substitute for other opportunities."
"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.
"To see you."
"Nonsense! You know what I mean. Why did you ever leave Sacramento to
come here? I should think it would suit you so much better than this
place."
"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find a
gold mine."
"Men like you never do," she said, simply.
"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"
"I don't know. But I think that you think that it is."
He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a
sympathetic intelligence. "Do I? This is interesting. Let's sit
down." In their desultory rambling they had reached, quite
unconsciously, the large boulder at the roadside. Mamie hesitated a
moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already opulent
indifference to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat herself upon
it, with her furled parasol held by her two little hands thrown over
her half-drawn-up knee. The young editor, half sitting, half leaning,
against the stone, began to draw figures in the sand with his cane.
"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here. You are
leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich. We are coming to it
because we are poor."
"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.
"Yes. My father and two sisters."
"I am sorry. I might have known them if I hadn't been going away." At
the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were like the
man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent and critical.
"Is your father in business?" she asked.
He shook his head. After a pause, he said, punctuating his sentences
with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is paralyzed, and out
of his mind, Miss Mulrady. I came to California to seek him, as all
news of him ceased three years since; and I found him only two weeks
ago, alone, friendless--an unrecognized pauper in the county hospital."
"Two weeks ago? That was when I went to Sacramento."
"Very probably."
"It must have been very shocking to you?"
"It was."
"I should think you'd feel real bad?"
"I do, at times." He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone. "You now
see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good fortune that you
don't think me worthy of. Meantime I must try to make a home for them
at Rough-and-Ready."
Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol. "We mustn't stay here
much longer, you know."
"Why?"
"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."
"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"
"Of course they will."
"Miss Mulrady, I implore you to stay."
He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and
gesture that the color came into her cheek. For a moment she scarcely
dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so, she suddenly
glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was laughing.
"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay
a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will report us
all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be in your
father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the
new companies. The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will
drop out of its columns, advertising rush to fill its place, and I
shall receive five dollars a week more salary, if not seven and a half.
Never mind the consequences to yourself at such a moment. I assure you
there will be none. You can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay,
more, the 'Record' itself will deny it in an extra edition of one
thousand copies, at ten cents each. Linger a moment longer, Miss
Mulrady. Fly, oh fly not yet. They're coming--hark! oh! By Jove,
it's only Don Caesar!"
It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado,
blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them on
a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness seemed
to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of his rider.
Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the "Record" did not
withhold his admiration of this perfect horsemanship. Mamie, who, in
her wounded amour propre, would like to have made much of it to annoy
her companion, was thus estopped any ostentatious compliment.
Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with
grave courtesy to the gentleman. While the lower half of this Centaur
was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground in his
evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with natural
dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave the privilege
of an explanation with them. But Mamie was too wise, and her companion
too indifferent, to offer one. A slight shade passed over Don Caesar's
face. To complicate the situation at that moment, the expected
stagecoach came rattling by. With quick feminine intuition, Mamie
caught in the faces of the driver and the expressman, and reflected in
the mischievous eyes of her companion, a peculiar interpretation of
their meeting, that was not removed by the whispered assurance of the
editor that the passengers were anxiously looking back "to see the
shooting."
The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity, remained
impassive.
"You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?"
Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn. He was under the
impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the "Record."
"Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn. "I'm taking his place."
"Bueno! To be shot too? I trust not."
Slinn looked quickly and sharply into Don Caesar's grave face. He
seemed to be incapable of any double meaning. However, as he had no
serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very little
desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation, and
possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take his leave of
her. From a sudden feminine revulsion of sympathy, or from some
unintelligible instinct of diplomacy, Mamie said, as she extended her
hand, "I hope you'll find a home for your family near here. Mamma
wants pa to let our old house. Perhaps it might suit you, if not too
far from your work. You might speak to ma about it."
"Thank you; I will," responded the young man, pressing her hand with
unaffected cordiality.
Don Caesar watched him until he had disappeared behind the wayside
buckeyes.
"He is a man of family--this one--your countryman?"
It seemed strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her
countryman"--not the first time nor the last time in her career. As
there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner,
she answered briefly but vaguely:
"Yes; it's a shocking story. His father disappeared some years ago,
and he has just found him--a helpless paralytic--in the Sacramento
Hospital. He'll have to support him--and they're very poor."
"So, then, they are not independent of each other always--these fathers
and children of Americans!"
"No," said Mamie, shortly. Without knowing why, she felt inclined to
resent Don Caesar's manner. His serious gravity--gentle and high-bred
as it was, undoubtedly--was somewhat trying to her at times, and seemed
even more so after Slinn's irreverent humor. She picked up her
parasol, a little impatiently, as if to go.
But Don Caesar had already dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree
with a strong lariat that hung at his saddle-bow.
"Let us walk through the woods towards your home. I can return alone
for the horse when you shall dismiss me."
They turned in among the pines that, overcrowding the hollow, crept
partly up the side of the hill of Mulrady's shaft. A disused trail,
almost hidden by the waxen-hued yerba buena, led from the highway, and
finally lost itself in the undergrowth. It was a lovers' walk; they
were lovers, evidently, and yet the man was too self-poised in his
gravity, the young woman too conscious and critical, to suggest an
absorbing or oblivious passion.
"I should not have made myself so obtrusive to-day before your friend,"
said Don Caesar, with proud humility, "but I could not understand from
your mother whether you were alone or whether my company was desirable.
It is of this I have now to speak, Mamie. Lately your mother has seemed
strange to me; avoiding any reference to our affection; treating it
lightly, and even as to-day, I fancy, putting obstacles in the way of
our meeting alone. She was disappointed at your return from Sacramento
where, I have been told, she intended you to remain until you left the
country; and since your return I have seen you but twice. I may be
wrong. Perhaps I do not comprehend the American mother; I have--who
knows?--perhaps offended in some point of etiquette, omitted some
ceremony that was her due. But when you told me, Mamie, that it was
not necessary to speak to HER first, that it was not the American
fashion--"
Mamie started, and blushed slightly.
"Yes," she said hurriedly, "certainly; but ma has been quite queer of
late, and she may think--you know--that since--since there has been so
much property to dispose of, she ought to have been consulted."
"Then let us consult her at once, dear child! And as to the property,
in Heaven's name, let her dispose of it as she will. Saints forbid that
an Alvarado should ever interfere. And what is it to us, my little
one? Enough that Dona Mameta Alvarado will never have less state than
the richest bride that ever came to Los Gatos."
Mamie had not forgotten that, scarcely a month ago, even had she loved
the man before her no more than she did at present, she would still
have been thrilled with delight at these words! Even now she was
moved--conscious as she had become that the "state" of a bride of the
Alvarados was not all she had imagined, and that the bare adobe court
of Los Gatos was open to the sky and the free criticism of Sacramento
capitalists!
"Yes, dear," she murmured with a half childlike pleasure, that lit up
her face and eyes so innocently that it stopped any minute
investigation into its origin and real meaning. "Yes, dear; but we
need not have a fuss made about it at present, and perhaps put ma
against us. She wouldn't hear of our marrying now; and she might
forbid our engagement."
"But you are going away."
"I should have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she
answered, naively, "even if it were all settled. I should have to get
things! One couldn't be decent here."
With the recollection of the pink cotton gown, in which she had first
pledged her troth to him, before his eyes, he said, "But you are
charming now. You cannot be more so to me. If I am satisfied, little
one, with you as you are, let us go together, and then you can get
dresses to please others."
She had not expected this importunity. Really, if it came to this, she
might have engaged herself to some one like Slinn; he at least would
have understood her. He was much cleverer, and certainly more of a man
of the world. When Slinn had treated her like a child, it was with the
humorous tolerance of an admiring superior, and not the didactic
impulse of a guardian. She did not say this, nor did her pretty eyes
indicate it, as in the instance of her brief anger with Slinn. She
only said gently,--
"I should have thought you, of all men, would have been particular
about your wife doing the proper thing. But never mind! Don't let us
talk any more about it. Perhaps as it seems such a great thing to you,
and so much trouble, there may be no necessity for it at all."
I do not think that the young lady deliberately planned this charmingly
illogical deduction from Don Caesar's speech, or that she calculated
its effect upon him; but it was part of her nature to say it, and
profit by it. Under the unjust lash of it, his pride gave way.
"Ah, do you not see why I wish to go with you?" he said, with sudden
and unexpected passion. "You are beautiful; you are good; it has
pleased Heaven to make you rich also; but you are a child in
experience, and know not your own heart. With your beauty, your
goodness, and your wealth, you will attract all to you--as you do
here--because you cannot help it. But you will be equally helpless,
little one, if THEY should attract YOU, and you had no tie to fall back
upon."
It was an unfortunate speech. The words were Don Caesar's; but the
thought she had heard before from her mother, although the deduction
had been of a very different kind. Mamie followed the speaker with
bright but visionary eyes. There must be some truth in all this. Her
mother had said it; Mr. Slinn had laughingly admitted it. She HAD a
brilliant future before her! Was she right in making it impossible by
a rash and foolish tie? He himself had said she was inexperienced.
She knew it; and yet, what was he doing now but taking advantage of
that inexperience? If he really loved her, he would be willing to
submit to the test. She did not ask a similar one from him; and was
willing, if she came out of it free, to marry him just the same. There
was something so noble in this thought that she felt for a moment
carried away by an impulse of compassionate unselfishness, and smiled
tenderly as she looked up in his face.
"Then you consent, Mamie?" he said, eagerly, passing his arm around her
waist.
"Not now, Caesar," she said, gently disengaging herself. "I must think
it over; we are both too young to act upon it rashly; it would be
unfair to you, who are so quiet and have seen so few girls--I mean
Americans--to tie yourself to the first one you have known. When I am
gone you will go more into the world. There are Mr. Slinn's two
sisters coming here--I shouldn't wonder if they were far cleverer and
talked far better than I do--and think how I should feel if I knew that
only a wretched pledge to me kept you from loving them!" She stopped,
and cast down her eyes.
It was her first attempt at coquetry, for, in her usual charming
selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not have
been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not prepared
for a recoil of her own argument.
"If you admit that it is possible--that it is possible to you!" he
said, quickly.
She saw her mistake. "We may not have many opportunities to meet
alone," she answered, quietly; "and I am sure we would be happier when
we meet not to accuse each other of impossibilities. Let us rather see
how we can communicate together, if anything should prevent our
meeting. Remember, it was only by chance that you were able to see me
now. If ma has believed that she ought to have been consulted, our
meeting together in this secret way will only make matters worse. She
is even now wondering where I am, and may be suspicious. I must go
back at once. At any moment some one may come here looking for me."
"But I have so much to say," he pleaded. "Our time has been so short."
"You can write."
"But what will your mother think of that?" he said, in grave
astonishment.
She colored again as she returned, quickly, "Of course, you must not
write to the house. You can leave a letter somewhere for me--say,
somewhere about here. Stop!" she added, with a sudden girlish gayety,
"see, here's the very place. Look there!"
She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet from
the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton leaves and
pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's hoard, but for
some reason had been deserted.
"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on
tip-toe to peep into its recesses. Don Caesar looked at her
admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-making
in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage rows in her
brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in the woods. He
recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a lover already seeking
to restore in past recollections something that was wanting in the
present. She received it with the impatience of youth, to whom the
present is all sufficient.
"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland apron,"
she said, looking down upon her new dress.
"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her
waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.
"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free herself.
"There's not time. Write it, and put it in the box. There," she added,
hastily, "listen!--what's that?"
"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.
"No; it's somebody coming! I must go! Please! Caesar, dear! There,
then--"
She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement of
her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into the
woods, and was gone.
Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a
look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then slowly
retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang.
He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that
interruption. A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from the
bough of an adjacent tree. It was a squirrel, who, having had serious
and prior intentions of making use of the cavity they had discovered,
had only withheld examination by an apparent courteous discretion
towards the intruding pair. Now that they were gone he slipped down
the tree and ran towards the decayed stump.