No further particulars of the invalid's second attack were known than
those furnished by Don Caesar's brief statement, that he had found him
lying insensible on the boulder. This seemed perfectly consistent with
the theory of Dr. Duchesne; and as the young Spaniard left Los Gatos
the next day, he escaped not only the active reporter of the "Record,"
but the perusal of a grateful paragraph in the next day's paper
recording his prompt kindness and courtesy. Dr. Duchesne's prognosis,
however, seemed at fault; the elder Slinn did not succumb to this
second stroke, nor did he recover his reason. He apparently only
relapsed into his former physical weakness, losing the little ground he
had gained during the last month, and exhibiting no change in his
mental condition, unless the fact that he remembered nothing of his
seizure and the presence of Don Caesar could be considered as
favorable. Dr. Duchesne's gravity seemed to give that significance to
this symptom, and his cross-questioning of the patient was
characterized by more than his usual curtness.
"You are sure you don't remember walking in the garden before you were
ill?" he said. "Come, think again. You must remember that." The old
man's eyes wandered restlessly around the room, but he answered by a
negative shake of his head. "And you don't remember sitting down on a
stone by the road?"
The old man kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the bedclothes before
him. "No!" he said, with a certain sharp decision that was new to him.
The doctor's eye brightened. "All right, old man; then don't."
On his way out he took the eldest Miss Slinn aside. "He'll do," he
said, grimly: "he's beginning to lie."
"Why, he only said he didn't remember," responded Esther.
"That was because he didn't want to remember," said the doctor,
authoritatively. "The brain is acting on some impression that is
either painful and unpleasant, or so vague that he can't formulate it;
he is conscious of it, and won't attempt it yet. It's a heap better
than his old self-satisfied incoherency."
A few days later, when the fact of Slinn's identification with the
paralytic of three years ago by the stage-driver became generally
known, the doctor came in quite jubilant.
"It's all plain now," he said, decidedly. "That second stroke was
caused by the nervous shock of his coming suddenly upon the very spot
where he had the first one. It proved that his brain still retained
old impressions, but as this first act of his memory was a painful one,
the strain was too great. It was mighty unlucky; but it was a good
sign."
"And you think, then--" hesitated Harry Slinn.
"I think," said Dr. Duchesne, "that this activity still exists, and the
proof of it, as I said before, is that he is trying now to forget it,
and avoid thinking of it. You will find that he will fight shy of any
allusion to it, and will be cunning enough to dodge it every time."
He certainly did. Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based or
not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive with his
watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the boulder--which
still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical
explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly refused to talk
about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more
perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of
his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his
attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their
care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an
invalid. His daughters sometimes found him regarding them with an
attention little short of suspicion, and even his son detected a
half-suppressed aversion in his interviews with him.
Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his
children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very little
attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The two girls
succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the society of the
neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-and-Ready. The young
editor of the "Record" had really achieved, through his supposed
intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune he had jestingly
prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was regarded as a virtual
abandonment of the field to his rival: and the general opinion was that
he was engaged to the millionaire's daughter on a certain probation of
work and influence in his prospective father-in-law's interests. He
became successful in one or two speculations, the magic of the lucky
Mulrady's name befriending him. In the superstition of the mining
community, much of this luck was due to his having secured the old
cabin.
"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a
polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where
the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old
man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the
alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up
between the elder Slinn and the millionaire, after the latter's return
from San Francisco.
It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the
man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength had
never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and who was still
able to set his workmen an example of hard labor; it was sustained by a
singular and superstitious reverence for his mental condition, which,
to the paternal Mulrady, seemed to possess that spiritual quality with
which popular ignorance invests demented people.
"Then you mean to say that during these three years the vein o' your
mind, so to speak, was a lost lead, and sorter dropped out o' sight or
follerin'?" queried Mulrady, with infinite seriousness.
"Yes," returned Slinn, with less impatience than he usually showed to
questions.
"And durin' that time, when you was dried up and waitin' for rain, I
reckon you kinder had visions?"
A cloud passed over Slinn's face.
"Of course, of course!" said Mulrady, a little frightened at his
tenacity in questioning the oracle. "Nat'rally, this was private, and
not to be talked about. I meant, you had plenty of room for 'em
without crowdin'; you kin tell me some day when you're better, and kin
sorter select what's points and what ain't."
"Perhaps I may some day," said the invalid, gloomily, glancing in the
direction of his preoccupied daughters; "when we're alone."
When his physical strength had improved, and his left arm and side had
regained a feeble but slowly gathering vitality, Alvin Mulrady one day
surprised the family by bringing the convalescent a pile of letters and
accounts, and spreading them on a board before Slinn's invalid chair,
with the suggestion that he should look over, arrange, and docket them.
The idea seemed preposterous, until it was found that the old man was
actually able to perform this service, and exhibited a degree of
intellectual activity and capacity for this kind of work that was
unsuspected. Dr. Duchesne was delighted, and divided with admiration
between his patient's progress and the millionaire's sagacity. "And
there are envious people," said the enthusiastic doctor, "who believe
that a man like him, who could conceive of such a plan for occupying a
weak intellect without taxing its memory or judgment, is merely a lucky
fool! Look here. May be it didn't require much brains to stumble on a
gold mine, and it is a gift of Providence. But, in my experience,
Providence don't go round buyin' up d--d fools, or investin' in dead
beats."
When Mr. Slinn, finally, with the aid of crutches, was able to hobble
every day to the imposing counting-house and the office of Mr. Mulrady,
which now occupied the lower part of the new house, and contained some
of its gorgeous furniture, he was installed at a rosewood desk behind
Mr. Mulrady's chair, as his confidential clerk and private secretary.
The astonishment of Red Dog and Rough-and-Ready at this singular
innovation knew no bounds; but the boldness and novelty of the idea
carried everything before it. Judge Butts, the oracle of
Rough-and-Ready, delivered its decision: "He's got a man who's
physically incapable of running off with his money, and has no memory
to run off with his ideas. How could he do better?" Even his own son,
Harry, coming upon his father thus installed, was for a moment struck
with a certain filial respect, and for a day or two patronized him.
In this capacity Slinn became the confidant not only of Mulrady's
business secrets, but of his domestic affairs. He knew that young
Mulrady, from a freckle-faced slow country boy, had developed into a
freckle-faced fast city man, with coarse habits of drink and gambling.
It was through the old man's hands that extravagant bills and shameful
claims passed on their way to be cashed by Mulrady; it was he that at
last laid before the father one day his signature perfectly forged by
the son.
"Your eyes are not ez good ez mine, you know, Slinn," said Mulrady,
gravely. "It's all right. I sometimes make my Y's like that. I'd
clean forgot to cash that check. You must not think you've got the
monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh.
Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish
expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the
chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs. As Mulrady had
already noticed that Slinn had no confidence with his own family, he
did not try to withhold from them these domestic details, possibly as
an offset to the dreary catalogue of his son's misdeeds, but more often
in the hope of gaining from the taciturn old man some comment that
might satisfy his innocent vanity as father and husband, and perhaps
dissipate some doubts that were haunting him.
"Twelve hundred dollars looks to be a good figger for a dress, ain't
it? But Malviny knows, I reckon, what ought to be worn at the
Tooilleries, and she don't want our Mamie to take a back seat before
them furrin' princesses and gran' dukes. It's a slap-up affair, I
kalkilate. Let's see. I disremember whether it's an emperor or a king
that's rulin' over thar now. It must be suthin' first class and A1,
for Malviny ain't the woman to throw away twelve hundred dollars on any
of them small-potato despots! She says Mamie speaks French already
like them French Petes. I don't quite make out what she means here.
She met Don Caesar in Paris, and she says, 'I think Mamie is nearly off
with Don Caesar, who has followed her here. I don't care about her
dropping him TOO suddenly; the reason I'll tell you hereafter. I think
the man might be a dangerous enemy.' Now, what do you make of this? I
allus thought Mamie rather cottoned to him, and it was the old woman
who fought shy, thinkin' Mamie would do better. Now, I am agreeable
that my gal should marry any one she likes, whether it's a dook or a
poor man, as long as he's on the square. I was ready to take Don
Caesar; but now things seem to have shifted round. As to Don Caesar's
being a dangerous enemy if Mamie won't have him, that's a little too
high and mighty for me, and I wonder the old woman don't make him climb
down. What do you think?"
"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn.
"The man what picked you up that day. I mean," continued Mulrady,
seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I mean a
sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a
circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to your
gals."
But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently unfeigned.
Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time of his attack,
the incident that caused it had no part in his recollection. With the
exception of these rare intervals of domestic confidences with his
crippled private secretary, Mulrady gave himself up to money-getting.
Without any especial faculty for it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous
financiers--his unfailing luck, however, carried him safely through,
until his very mistakes seemed to be simply insignificant means to a
large significant end and a part of his original plan. He sank another
shaft, at a great expense, with a view to following the lead he had
formerly found, against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and
struck the artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume
of water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to furnish
supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit. A league of
tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for which he had paid
Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the presumption that it was
auriferous, furnished the most accessible timber to build the town, at
prices which amply remunerated him. The practical schemes of
experienced men, the wildest visions of daring dreams delayed or
abortive for want of capital, eventually fell into his hands. Men
sneered at his methods, but bought his shares. Some who affected to
regard him simply as a man of money were content to get only his name
to any enterprise. Courted by his superiors, quoted by his equals, and
admired by his inferiors, he bore his elevation equally without
ostentation or dignity. Bidden to banquets, and forced by his position
as director or president into the usual gastronomic feats of that
civilization and period, he partook of simple food, and continued his
old habit of taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner.
Without professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where
alcoholic stimulation was a custom. With neither refinement nor an
extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate. With
nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be
as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues. That
such a man should offer little to and receive little from the
companionship of women of any kind was a foregone conclusion. Without
the dignity of solitude, he was pathetically alone.
Meantime, the days passed; the first six months of his opulence were
drawing to a close, and in that interval he had more than doubled the
amount of his discovered fortune. The rainy season set in early.
Although it dissipated the clouds of dust under which Nature and Art
seemed to be slowly disappearing, it brought little beauty to the
landscape at first, and only appeared to lay bare the crudenesses of
civilization. The unpainted wooden buildings of Rough-and-Ready,
soaked and dripping with rain, took upon themselves a sleek and shining
ugliness, as of second-hand garments; the absence of cornices or
projections to break the monotony of the long straight lines of
downpour made the town appear as if it had been recently submerged,
every vestige of ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines
left. Mud was everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and
invaded the houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged
Nature was trying to revenge herself. Mud was brought into the saloons
and barrooms and express offices, on boots, on clothes, on baggage, and
sometimes appeared mysteriously in splashes of red color on the walls,
without visible conveyance. The dust of six months, closely packed in
cornice and carving, yielded under the steady rain a thin yellow paint,
that dropped on wayfarers or unexpectedly oozed out of ceilings and
walls on the wretched inhabitants within. The outskirts of
Rough-and-Ready and the dried hills round Los Gatos did not appear to
fare much better; the new vegetation had not yet made much headway
against the dead grasses of the summer; the pines in the hollow wept
lugubriously into a small rivulet that had sprung suddenly into life
near the old trail; everywhere was the sound of dropping, splashing,
gurgling, or rushing waters.
More hideous than ever, the new Mulrady house lifted itself against the
leaden sky, and stared with all its large-framed, shutterless windows
blankly on the prospect, until they seemed to the wayfarer to become
mere mirrors set in the walls, reflecting only the watery landscape,
and unable to give the least indication of light or heat within.
Nevertheless, there was a fire in Mulrady's private office that
December afternoon, of a smoky, intermittent variety, that sufficed
more to record the defects of hasty architecture than to comfort the
millionaire and his private secretary, who had lingered after the early
withdrawal of the clerks. For the next day was Christmas, and, out of
deference to the near approach of this festivity, a half-holiday had
been given to the employees. "They'll want, some of them, to spend
their money before to-morrow; and others would like to be able to rise
up comfortably drunk Christmas morning," the superintendent had
suggested. Mr. Mulrady had just signed a number of checks indicating
his largess to those devoted adherents with the same unostentatious,
undemonstrative, matter-of-fact manner that distinguished his ordinary
business. The men had received it with something of the same manner. A
half-humorous "Thank you, sir"--as if to show that, with their patron,
they tolerated this deference to a popular custom, but were a little
ashamed of giving way to it--expressed their gratitude and their
independence.
"I reckon that the old lady and Mamie are having a high old time in
some of them gilded pallises in St. Petersburg or Berlin about this
time. Them diamonds that I ordered at Tiffany ought to have reached
'em about now, so that Mamie could cut a swell at Christmas with her
war-paint. I suppose it's the style to give presents in furrin'
countries ez it is here, and I allowed to the old lady that whatever
she orders in that way she is to do in Californy style--no
dollar-jewelry and galvanized-watches business. If she wants to make a
present to any of them nobles ez has been purlite to her, it's got to
be something that Rough-and-Ready ain't ashamed of. I showed you that
pin Mamie bought me in Paris, didn't I? It's just come for my
Christmas present. No! I reckon I put it in the safe, for them kind
o' things don't suit my style: but s'pose I orter sport it to-morrow.
It was mighty thoughtful in Mamie, and it must cost a lump; it's got no
slouch of a pearl in it. I wonder what Mamie gave for it?"
"You can easily tell; the bill is here. You paid it yesterday," said
Slinn. There was no satire in the man's voice, nor was there the least
perception of irony in Mulrady's manner, as he returned quietly,--
"That's so; it was suthin' like a thousand francs; but French money,
when you pan it out as dollars and cents, don't make so much, after
all." There was a few moments' silence, when he continued, in the same
tone of voice, "Talkin' o' them things, Slinn, I've got suthin' for
you." He stopped suddenly. Ever watchful of any undue excitement in
the invalid, he had noticed a slight flush of disturbance pass over his
face, and continued carelessly, "But we'll talk it over to-morrow; a
day or two don't make much difference to you and me in such things, you
know. P'raps I'll drop in and see you. We'll be shut up here."
"Then you're going out somewhere?" asked Slinn, mechanically.
"No," said Mulrady, hesitatingly. It had suddenly occurred to him that
he had nowhere to go if he wanted to, and he continued, half in
explanation, "I ain't reckoned much on Christmas, myself. Abner's at
the Springs; it wouldn't pay him to come here for a day--even if there
was anybody here he cared to see. I reckon I'll hang round the shanty,
and look after things generally. I haven't been over the house
upstairs to put things to rights since the folks left. But YOU needn't
come here, you know."
He helped the old man to rise, assisted him in putting on his overcoat,
and than handed him the cane which had lately replaced his crutches.
"Good-by, old man! You musn't trouble yourself to say 'Merry
Christmas' now, but wait until you see me again. Take care of
yourself."
He slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and went back into his private
office. He worked for some time at his desk, and then laid his pen
aside, put away his papers methodically, placing a large envelope on
his private secretary's vacant table. He then opened the office door
and ascended the staircase. He stopped on the first landing to listen
to the sound of rain on the glass skylight, that seemed to echo through
the empty hall like the gloomy roll of a drum. It was evident that the
searching water had found out the secret sins of the house's
construction, for there were great fissures of discoloration in the
white and gold paper in the corners of the wall. There was a strange
odor of the dank forest in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain
had brought out the sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and
white satin furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre
tables had taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones. Mr.
Mulrady, who had always retained his old farmer-like habit of taking
off his coat with his hat on entering his own house, and appearing in
his shirt-sleeves, to indicate domestic ease and security, was obliged
to replace it, on account of the chill. He had never felt at home in
this room. Its strangeness had lately been heightened by Mrs.
Mulrady's purchase of a family portrait of some one she didn't know,
but who, she had alleged, resembled her "Uncle Bob," which hung on the
wall beside some paintings in massive frames. Mr. Mulrady cast a
hurried glance at the portrait that, on the strength of a high
coat-collar and high top curl--both rolled with equal precision and
singular sameness of color--had always glared at Mulrady as if HE was
the intruder; and, passing through his wife's gorgeous bedroom, entered
the little dressing-room, where he still slept on the smallest of cots,
with hastily improvised surroundings, as if he was a bailiff in
"possession." He didn't linger here long, but, taking a key from a
drawer, continued up the staircase, to the ominous funeral marches of
the beating rain on the skylight, and paused on the landing to glance
into his son's and daughter's bedrooms, duplicates of the bizarre
extravagance below. If he were seeking some characteristic traces of
his absent family, they certainly were not here in the painted and
still damp blazoning of their later successes. He ascended another
staircase, and, passing to the wing of the house, paused before a small
door, which was locked. Already the ostentatious decorations of wall
and passages were left behind, and the plain lath-and-plaster partition
of the attic lay before him. He unlocked the door, and threw it open.