HAVE YOU COME AT LAST
“Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare.”
--OMAR KHAYYAM.
At ten o’clock Barron returned to the Garcia house. His search for
Mariposa in such accustomed haunts as the Mercantile Library, the shops
on Kearney Street, and Mrs. Willers’, had been fruitless. Mrs. Willers
was again at _The Trumpet_ office, where another and more important
portion of the Woman’s Page was going to press, but Edna was at home,
and told Barron that neither she nor her mother had seen Mariposa since
the lesson of the day before.
In returning to the house he had hopes of finding her there. From the
first his anxiety had been keen. Now, as he put his key in the lock, it
clutched his heart with a suffocating force. The house was silent as he
entered, and then the sound of his step in the hall called the head of
young Mrs. Garcia to the opened door of the kitchen. The first glimpse
of her face told him Mariposa had not returned.
“Have you got her?” cried the young woman eagerly.
“No,” he answered, his voice sounding colorless and flat. “I thought
she might be back here.”
Mrs. Garcia shook her head and withdrew it. He followed her into the
kitchen, where she and the señora were sitting by the stove. A large
fire was burning, the room was warm and bright--the trim, finically
neat kitchen of a clean Chinaman. To the señora’s quick phrase of
inquiry, the younger woman answered with a sentence in Spanish. For a
moment the silence of sick anxiety held the trio.
“Did you go to Mrs. Willers’?” said young Mrs. Garcia, trying to speak
with some lightness of tone.
“Yes; she’s not been there since yesterday. I’ve been everywhere I
could think of where it was likely she would be. I couldn’t find a
trace of her.”
“Then’s she’s gone to Europe, or is going to-morrow, as she told
Pierpont. She took her money. We looked after you’d gone, and it wasn’t
there.”
“It’ll be too late to find out to-night if she’s gone. The ticket
offices are closed. I can’t think she’s done that--without a word to
any one. It’s not like her.”
The señora here asked what they said. Barron, who spoke Spanish
indifferently, signaled to the young woman to answer for him. She did
so, the señora listening intently. At the end of her daughter-in-law’s
speech she shook her head.
“No, she has not gone,” she said slowly in Spanish. “She could not take
that journey. She was not able--she was sick.”
“Sick, and out on such a night with all that money!” moaned her
daughter-in-law.
Barron got up with a smothered ejaculation. He knew more than either of
the women. The attempt at robbery the night before had failed. To-night
the girl herself had disappeared. What might it all mean? He was
afraid to think.
“I’m going out again,” he said. “I’ll be in probably in four or five
hours to see if, by any chance, she’s come back. You have everything
ready--fires and warm clothes and things to eat in case I bring her
with me. The rain’s worse than ever. Ching says she had no umbrella.”
Without more conversation he left, the two women bestirring themselves
to make ready the supper he had ordered. At three o’clock he returned
again to find the señora sitting alone, by the ruddy stove, Mrs.
Garcia, the younger, being asleep on a sofa in the boys’ room. The old
lady persuaded him to drink a cup of coffee she had kept warm, and, as
she gave it him, looked with silent compassion into his haggard face.
When day broke he had not again appeared. By this time the household
was in a ferment of open alarm. The boys were retained from school,
as it was felt they might be needed for messages. Pierpont undertook
to visit all Mariposa’s pupils, in the dim hope of finding through
them some clue to her movements, though it was well known she was on
intimate terms with none of them. Soon after breakfast Mrs. Willers
appeared, uneasy, and by the time the now weeping Mrs. Garcia had told
her all, pale and deeply disturbed.
She repaired to _The Trumpet_ office without loss of time, and there
acquainted her chief with the story of Miss Moreau’s disappearance, not
neglecting to mention the burglary of the night before, which even to
the women, having no knowledge of its real import, seemed to indicate a
sinister connection with subsequent events. Winslow did not disappoint
Mrs. Willers by pooh-poohing the matter, as she had half imagined
he would; a young lady’s disappearance for twelve hours not being a
subject for such tragic consternation. He seemed extremely worried--in
fact, showed an anxiety that struck the head of the Woman’s Page as
almost odd. He assured her that if Miss Moreau was not heard from that
day by midday he would offer secretly to the police department the
largest reward ever given in San Francisco, for any trace or tidings of
her.
Meantime Barron, having assured himself by visits to all the ticket
offices that she had not left the city on any train, had finally taken
his case to the police. It had been in their hands only an hour or two,
when young Shackleton’s offer of what, in even those extravagant days
seemed an enormous reward, was communicated to the department. It put
life into the somewhat dormant energies of the officers detailed on the
case. Mariposa had not been missing twenty-four hours when the search
for her was spreading over the face of the city, where she had been so
insignificant a unit, in a thorough and secret network of investigation.
The day wore away with maddening slowness to the women in the house,
whose duty it was to sit and wait. To Barron, whose anxiety had been
intensified by the torture of his deeper knowledge of the girl’s
strange circumstances, existence seemed only bearable as it was
directed to finding her. He did not dare now to pause or think.
Without stopping to eat or rest he continued his search, now with
the detectives, now alone. Several times in the course of the day he
reappeared at the Garcia house, drawn thither by the hope that she
might have returned. The señora, with the curious tranquillity of the
very old which seems not to need the repairing processes of sleep or
food, was always to be found sitting by the kitchen stove, upon which
some dish or drink simmered for him. He rarely stopped to take either.
But returning in the early dusk, he was grateful to find that she had
a dry overcoat hanging before the fire for him. The rain still fell in
torrents, and the long day spent at its mercy had soaked him.
It was between ten and eleven at night that the old lady and her
daughter-in-law, sitting before the stove as they had done the evening
before, again heard his step and his key. This time there was no
pretense at expectation on either side. His first glance inside the
room showed him the heavy dejection of the two faces turned toward him.
They, on their part, saw him pale and drawn, as by a month’s illness.
They had heard nothing. No investigation of which they were aware had
brought in a crumb of comfort. He had heard worse than nothing. There
had been talk at the police station that evening of the finding of
George Harney, suffering from concussion of the brain, and the sudden
departure of Barry Essex, believed to be his assailant.
This information added the last straw to Barron’s agony of
apprehension. It seemed as if a plot had culminated in those two days,
a plot dark and inexplicable, in which the woman he loved was in some
mysterious way involved.
He was standing by the stove responding to the somber queries of the
women, when the sound of feet on the porch steps suddenly transfixed
them all. Young Mrs. Garcia screamed, while the old lady sat with head
bent sidewise listening. Before Barron could get to the door a soft
ring at the bell had drawn another scream from the younger woman, who,
nevertheless, followed him and stood peeping into the hall, clinging to
the door-post.
The opened door sent a flood of light over three figures huddled in
the glass porch--two men, a detective and policeman, Barron already
knew, and a third, a stranger to him, whose face against the shadowy
background looked fresh and boyish.
“Ah, Mr. Barron, we’re lucky to strike you this way at the first shot,”
said the detective. “We think we’ve found the lady.”
“Found her? Where? Have you got her there?”
“No; we’re not certain yet if it’s the right one.”
The man, as he spoke, entered the hall, the policeman and the stranger
following him. Under the flare of the two gas-jets they looked big,
ungainly figures in their smoking rubber capes that ran rillets of
water on the floor. The third, revealed in the full light, was a boy
of some fourteen or fifteen years, well dressed and with the air of a
gentleman.
“This gentleman came to the station a half-hour ago,” said the
policeman, indicating the stranger, “with a story of finding a lady on
his own grounds, and we thought from his description it was the one
you’re looking for.”
Barron directed on the youth a glance that would have pried open the
lips of the Sphinx.
“What does she look like? Where is she?”
“She’s in our garden,” said the boy, “under some trees. She looks tall
and has on black clothes, and has dark red hair and a very white face.”
Mrs. Garcia gave a loud cry from the background.
“It’s Mariposa sure,” she screamed. “Is she alive?”
“Alive!” echoed the youth. “Oh, yes, she’s quite alive, but I don’t
know whether she’s exactly in her right mind. She’s sort of queer.”
Barron had brushed past him into the streaming night.
“Come on,” he shouted back. “Good Lord, come quick!”
At the foot of the zigzag stairs he saw the two gleaming lights of a
hack. With the other men clattering at his heels, he dashed down the
steps, and was in it, chafing and swearing, while they were fumbling
for the latch of the gate.
As the boy, after giving the coachman an address, scrambled in beside
him, he said peremptorily:
“When did you find her? Tell me everything.”
“About two hours ago. My dog found her. I live, I and my mother, on
the slope of Russian Hill. It’s quite a big place with a lot of trees.
I went down to get Jack (that’s my dog) at the vet’s, where he’s been
for a week, and I was bringing him home. When we got to the top of the
steps he began sniffing round and barking, and then he ran to a place
where there’s a little sort of bunch of fir-trees and barked and
jumped round, and went in among the trees. I followed him to see what
was up, and all of a sudden I heard some one say from under the trees:
‘Oh, it’s only a dog.’ I was scared and ran into the house and got a
lamp, and when I came out with my mother, and we went in among the
trees, there was a woman in there, who was lying on the ground. When
she saw us she sort of sat up, as if she’d been asleep, and said: ‘Is
it Sunday yet?’ We saw her distinctly; she was staring right at us. She
didn’t look as if she was crazy, but we both thought she was. She was
terribly white. We knew she couldn’t be drunk, because she was like a
lady--she spoke that way.”
“And then--and then,” said Barron, “what did she do?”
“She said again, ‘It isn’t Sunday yet?’ and mother said, ‘No, not yet,’
and we went away. I ran to the police office, but we left one of the
Chinamen to watch so she wouldn’t get away, ’cause we didn’t know what
was the matter with her. We’ll be there in a minute now. It isn’t far.”
The hack, which had been rattling round corners at top speed, now began
to ascend. Barron could see the gaunt flank of Russian Hill looming
above them, with here and there a house hanging to a ridge or balanced
on a slope. The lights of the town dropped away on their right in a
series of sparkling terraces.
“Do you guess it’s the lady you’re hunting?” said the policeman
politely.
“I’m almost certain it is,” answered Barron. “Can’t you make this man
go faster?”
“The hill’s pretty steep here,” said the guardian of the city’s peace.
“I don’t seem to think he could do it.”
“We’re almost there,” said the boy; “it’s just that house where the
aloe is--there on the top of that high wall.”
Barron looked in the direction, and saw high above them, on the top of
a wall like the rampart of a fortress, the faint outline of a house and
the black masses of trees etched against the only slightly paler sky.
“I don’t see any aloe,” he growled; “is that the house you mean?”
“That’s it,” said the boy. “I guess it’s too dark for the aloe
to-night.”
With a scrambling and jolting the horses began what appeared an even
steeper climb than that of the block before. The beasts seemed to
dig their hoofs into the crevices between the cobbles and to clamber
perilously up. With an oath Barron kicked open the door and sprang out.
“Come on, boy,” he shouted. “I can’t stand this snail of a carriage any
longer.” And he set out running up the hill.
The boy, who was light of foot and young, kept up with him, but the two
heavier men, who had followed, were left behind, puffing and blowing in
the darkness.
Suddenly the great wall, at the base of which they ran, was crossed by
a flight of stairs that made two oblique stripes across its face.
“Up the stairs,” said the boy.
And Barron, without reply, turned and began the ascent at the same
breakneck speed.
“You may as well let me go first,” gasped his conductor from behind
him. “You don’t know the way, and you might scare the Chinaman. He said
he had a gun.”
Barron stood aside for him to pass and then followed the nimble figure
as it darted up the second flight. The boy was evidently nearing the
top, when he sang out:
“Ah, there, Lee! It’s me coming back.”
There was an unmistakable Chinese guttural from somewhere, and then
Barron himself rose above the stair-top. A black mass of garden lay
before him, with the bulk of a large house a short distance back. Many
windows were lit, and in one he saw a woman standing. Their light
fell out over the garden, barring it with long rectangular stripes
of brilliance. The wild bark of the dog rose from the house and on
the unseen walk the Chinaman’s footsteps could be heard crunching the
pebbles.
“Is she there yet, Lee?” said the boy in a hissing whisper.
The Chinaman’s affirmative grunt rose from the darkness of massed
trees, into which his footsteps continued to retreat.
“This way,” said his conductor to Barron. “But hang it all, it’s so
dark we can’t see.”
“Where is she?” said Barron. “Never mind the light. Show me where she
is. Mariposa!” he said suddenly, in a voice which, though low, had a
quality so thrilling it might have penetrated the ear of death.
The garden, rain-swept and rustling, grew quiet. The sound of the
Chinaman’s footsteps ceased, even the panting breath of the boy was
suddenly suspended.
In this moment of pause, when nature seemed to quell her riot to
listen, a woman’s voice, sweet and soft, rose out of impenetrable
darkness:
“Who called me?”
The sound broke the agony that had congealed Barron’s heart. With a
shout he answered:
“It’s I, dearest. Where are you? Come to me.”
The voice rose again, faint, but with joy in it.
“Oh, have you come--have you come, at last!”
He made a rush forward into the blackness before him. At the same
moment the two men rose, spent and breathless, from the stairs. The boy
was behind Barron, and they behind the boy.
“Where are you? Where are you?” they heard him cry, as he crashed
forward through shrubs and flower beds.
Then suddenly the policeman drew the small lantern he had carried from
beneath his cape and shot the slide. A cube of clear, steady light cut
through the inky wall in front of them. For a second they all stopped,
the man sending the cylinder of radiance over the shrubs and trees in
swift sweeps. In one of these it crossed a white face, quivered and
rested on it. Barron gave a wild cry and rushed forward.
She was, as the boy described, crouched under a clump of small
fir-trees, the lower limbs of which had been removed. The place was
sheltered from observation from the house and the intrusion of the
elements. As the light fell on her she was kneeling, evidently having
been drawn to that posture by Barron’s voice. The light revealed her as
hatless, with loosened hair, her face pinched, her eyes large and wild.
As she saw Barron she shrieked and tried to move forward, but was
unable to and held out her arms. He was at her side in a moment, his
arms about her, straining her to him, his lips, between frantic kisses,
saying words only for him and for her.
The policeman, with a soft ejaculation, turned the lantern, and its
cube of light fell into the heart of a bed of petunias; then the two
men and the boy stood looking at it silently for a space.
Presently they heard Barron say: “Come, we must go. I must take you
home at once. Turn the light this way, please.”
The light came back upon her. She was on her feet, holding to him.
“Is it Sunday yet?” she said, looking at them with an affrighted air.
“That’s what she keeps asking all the time,” said the boy in a whisper.
“No,” said Barron, “it’s Friday. What do you expect on Sunday?”
“Only Friday,” she said, hanging back. “I thought I’d hide here till
Sunday was over.”
Without answering, he put his arm about her and drew her forward. At
the steps she hesitated again, and he lifted her and carried her down,
the policeman preceding with the lantern. The men helped him into the
carriage, not saying much, while the boy stood with his now liberated
dog at the top of the steps and shouted, “Good night.” Barron hardly
spoke to any of them. A vague thought crossed his mind that he would go
to see the boy some day and thank him.
She lay with her head on his shoulder, and as the carriage passed the
first lamp of the route he leaned forward eagerly to scan her face. It
was haggard, white and thin, as by a long illness. He could not speak
for a moment, could only hold her in his arms as if thus to wind her
round with the symbol of his love.
Presently she groaned, and he said:
“Are you suffering?”
“Yes,” she murmured; “always now. I am sick. I don’t breathe well any
more. It hurts in my chest all the time.”
“Why did you hide under those trees?” he asked.
“I was too sick to go any farther. I wanted to hide somewhere, to get
away from it all, and anyway, till Sunday was over. It was all to be
published on Sunday, you know. Everything was ruined. My voice was
gone, too. I saw those steps in the dark and climbed up and crept under
the trees. I was terribly tired, and it was very quiet up there. I
don’t remember much more.”
As the light of another lamp flashed through the window he could not
bear to look at her, but tightened his arms about her and bowed his
face on her wet head.
“Oh God, dearest,” he whispered, “there can’t be any hell worse than
what I’ve been in for the last two days.”
She made no response, but lay passively against him. When the carriage
stopped at the Garcia gate, and he told her they were home, she made no
attempt to move, and he saw she was unconscious.
He lifted her out and carried her up the steps. The door opened as he
ascended and revealed the Garcia family in the aperture.
“Is she dead?” screamed young Mrs. Garcia, as she saw the limp figure
in his arms.
“No, but sick. You must get a doctor at once.”
“Oh, how awful she looks!” cried the young woman as she caught sight
of the white face against his shoulder. “What are you going to do with
her?”
“Take her upstairs now, and then get a doctor and get her cured, and
when she’s well, marry her.”
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER I
THE PRIMA DONNA
“And thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness.”
--OMAR KHAYYAM.
The plant of the Silver Star Mine lay scattered along the edge of a
mountain river on the site of one of the camps of forty-nine. Where the
pioneers had scratched the surface with their picks, their successors
had torn wounds in the Sierra’s mighty flank. Where once the miners’
shouts had broken the quiet harmonies of stirred pine boughs, and
singing river, the throb of engines now beat on the air, thick with the
dust, noisy with the strife of toiling men.
It was a morning in the end of May. The mountain wall was dark against
the rising sun; tall fir and giant pine stood along its crest in inky
silhouette thrown out by a background of gold leaf. Here and there,
far and aërial in the clear, cool dawn, a white peak of the high
Sierra floated above the shadows, a rosy pinnacle. The air was chill
and faintly touched with woodland odors. The expectant hush of Nature
awaiting the miracle of sunrise, held this world of huge, primordial
forms, grouped in colossal indifference round the swarm of men who
delved in its rock-ribbed breast.
In the stillness the camp’s awakening movements rose upon the morning
air with curious distinctness. Through the blue shadows in which it
swam the tall chimneys soared aloft, sending their feathers of smoke up
to the new day. It lay in its hollow like a picture, all transparent
washes of amethyst and gray, overlaid by clear mountain shadows. The
world was in this waiting stage of flushed sky and shaded earth when
the superintendent’s wife pushed open the door of her house and with
the cautious tread of one who fears to wake a sleeper, stepped out on
the balcony.
With her hand on the rail she stood, deeply inhaling the freshness of
the hour. The superintendent’s house, a one-story cottage, painted
white, and skirted by a broad balcony, stood on an eminence above the
camp. From its front steps she looked down on the slant of many roofs,
the car tracks, and the red wagon roads that wound along the slopes.
Raising her eyes, they swept the ramparts of the everlasting hills, and
looking higher still, her face met the radiance of the dawn.
She stepped off the balcony with the same cautious tread, and along
the beaten footpath that led through the patch of garden in front of
the house. Beyond this the path wound through a growth of chaparral
to where the pines ascended the slopes in climbing files. As she
approached she saw the sky barred with their trunks, arrow-straight and
bare of branches to a great height. Farther on she could see the long
dim aisles, held in the cloistral silence of the California forest,
shot through with the golden glimmer of sunrise.
The joy of the morning was in her heart, and she walked forward with a
light step, humming to herself. Two months before she had come here,
a bride from San Francisco, weak from illness, pale, hollow-eyed, a
shadow of her former self. She had only crept about at first, swung for
hours on the balcony in her hammock, or sat under the trees looking
down on the hive of men, where her husband worked among his laborers.
As her mother had grown back to the fullness of life in the healing
breath of the mountains, so Mariposa slowly regained her old beauty,
with an added touch of subtlety, and found her old beliefs returned to
her with a new significance.
To-day she had awakened with the first glimmer of dawn, and stirred
by a sudden desire for the air of the morning on her face and in her
lungs, had stolen up and out. Breathing in the resinous atmosphere a
new influx of life seemed to run like sap along her limbs, and lend
her step the buoyancy of a wood-nymph’s. Her eye lingered with a look
that was a caress on flower and tree and shrub. The song she had been
humming passed from tune to words, and she sang softly as she brushed
through the chaparral, snipping off a leaf, bending to pluck a wild
flower, pausing to admire the glossy green of a manzanita bush. Under
the shadow of the pines she halted by a rugged trunk, a point of
vantage she had early discovered, and leaning her hand on the bark,
surveyed the wild prospect.
The sense of expectancy in the air seemed intensified. The quivering
radiance of pink and gold pulsed up the sky from a point of
concentration which every moment brightened. The blue shadows in the
camp grew thinner, the little wisps of mist that hung over the river
more threadlike and phantasmal. A throwback to unremembered days came
suddenly upon her with a mysterious sense of familiarity. She seemed to
be repeating a dear, long dead experience. The vision and the dream of
days of exquisite well-being, carefree, cherished, were with her again.
Faint recurring glimpses of such mornings, strong of balsam of pine and
fir, musical with the sleepy murmur of a river, serene and sweet with
an enfolding passion of love in which she rested secure, rose out of
the dim places of memory. The perfect content of her childhood spoke to
her across the gulf of years, finding itself repeated in her womanhood.
The old joy in living, the old thrill of wonder and mystery, the old
sense of safety in a surrounding, watchful love, were hers once more.
The song on her lips passed from its absent undertone to notes
gradually full and fuller. It was the aria from “Mignon,” and, as she
stood, her hand on the tree trunk, looking down into the swimming
shadows of the camp, it swelled outward in tones strong and rich,
vibrating with their lost force.
Pervaded by a sense of dreamy happiness, she at first failed to notice
the unexpected volume of sound. Then, as note rose upon note, welling
from her chest with the old-time, vibrant facility, as she felt once
again the uplifting sense of triumph possess her, she realized what it
meant. Dropping her hand from the tree trunk she stood upright, and
facing the dawn, with squared shoulders and raised chin, let her voice
roll out into the void before her.
The song swelled triumphant like a hymn of some pagan goddess to the
rising sun. In the stillness of the dawn-hush, with the columns of the
monumental pines behind her, the mountain wall and the glowing sky in
front, she might have been the spirit of youth and love chanting her
joy in a primeval world.
When the last note had died away she stood for a moment staring before
her. Then suddenly she wheeled, and, catching up her skirts with one
hand, ran back toward the house, brushing between the tree-trunks and
through the chaparral with breathless haste. As she emerged from the
thicket, she saw her husband, in his rough mining clothes, standing on
the top step of the balcony.
“Gam,” she cried, “Gam!”
He started, saw her, and then waited smiling as she came running up
the garden path toward him, the blaze of the sky behind her, her face
alight with life and color.
“Why, dearest, I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he cried.
“Where did you go?”
Her unslackened speed carried her up the stairs and into his arms.
Standing on the step below him she flung hers round his shoulders, and
holding him tight, said breathlessly:
“What do you think has happened?”
“You met a bear in the wood.”
“My voice has come back.”
The two pairs of eyes, the woman’s looking up, the man’s down, gazed
deeply into each other. There was a moment of silence, the silence of
people who are still unused to and a little overawed by their happiness.
“I heard you,” he said.
“You did? From here?”
“Yes. I heard some one singing and stood here listening, watching the
light coming up.”
“Was it good?” she asked, anxiously.
“Very. I had never heard you sing before. You’re a prima donna.”
“That’s what I was going to be. You remember hearing us talking about
it at the Garcias’?”
He nodded, looking down at the face where health was coming back in
delicate degrees of coral to lips and cheeks.
“And it really did sound good?” she queried again.
“Lovely.”
“Quite soft and full, not harsh and with all the sound of music gone
out of it?”
“Not a bit. It was fine.”
She continued to hold him around the shoulders, but her eyes dropped
away from his, which regarded her with immovable earnestness, touched
by a slight, tender humor. She appeared to become suddenly thoughtful.
“You can be a prima donna still,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered, nodding slightly. “I suppose I can.”
“And it’s a great career.”
“Yes, a splendid career.”
“You travel everywhere and make a fortune.”
“If you’re a success.”
“Oh, you’d be a success all right.”
She drew away from him, letting one hand rest on his shoulder. Her face
had grown serious. She looked disappointed.
“Well, do you _want_ me to be a prima donna?” she asked, looking at her
hand.
He continued to regard her without answering, the gleam of amusement
dying out of his eyes.
“Of course,” she added in a small voice, “if you’ve set your heart on
it, I will.”
“What do you think about it yourself?” he asked.
She gave him a swift, side look, just a raising and dropping of the
lashes.
“Say what you think first,” she coaxed.
“Well, then, I will.”
He put his two hands suddenly on her shoulders, big, bronzed hands,
hard and muscular, that seemed to seize upon her delicate flesh with a
master’s grip.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She obeyed. The gray eyes held hers like a magnet.
“I think no. You don’t belong to the public, you belong to me.”
The color ran up into her face to the edge of her hair.
“Oh, Gam,” she whispered on a rising breath, “I’m so relieved.”
He dropped his hands from her shoulders and drew her close to him. With
his cheek against hers he said softly:
“You didn’t think I was that kind of a fool, did you?”
The sun had risen as they talked, at first slowly peering with a
radiant eye over the mountain’s shoulder, then shaking itself free of
tree-top and rock-point, and swimming up into the blue. The top of
the range stood all glowing and golden, with here and there a white
peak, snowily enameled. The rows of pines were overlaid with a rosy
brilliance, their long shadows slanting down the slopes as if scurrying
away from the flood of heat and light. The clear blues and amethysts
that veiled the hollow of the camp were dispersed; the films of mist
melted; a quivering silvery sparkle played over the river shallows.
In the clearing beams the life of the hive below seemed to swarm and
fill the air with the clamor of its awakening. The man and woman,
looking down, saw the toiling world turning to its day’s work--the red
dust rising beneath grinding hoof and wheel, the cars sliding swiftly
on their narrow tracks, heard the shouts of men, the hum of machinery,
and through all and over all, the regular throb of the engines like the
heart which animated this isolated world of labor.
Barron looked at his domain for an attentive moment.
“There,” he said, pointing down, “is where I belong. That’s my
life,--to work in wild places with men. And yours is with me, my prima
donna. We go together, side by side, I working and you singing by the
way.”
A LIST _of_ IMPORTANT FICTION
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
DIFFERENT AND DELIGHTFUL
UNDER THE ROSE
A Story of the Loves of a Duke and a Jester
By FREDERIC S. ISHAM
Author of The Strollers
In “Under the Rose” Mr. Isham has written a most entertaining
book--the plot is unique; the style is graceful and clever; the whole
story is pervaded by a spirit of sunshine and good humor, and the
ending is a happy one. Mr. Christy’s pictures mark a distinct step
forward in illustrative art. There is only one way, and it is an
entertaining one, to find out what is “Under the Rose”--read it.
* * * * *
“No one will take up ‘Under the Rose’ and lay it down before
completion; many will even return to it for a repeated
reading.”--_Book News._
“Mr. Isham tells all of his fanciful, romantic tale delightfully. The
reader who loves romance, intrigue and adventure, love-seasoned, will
find it here.”--_The Lamp._
With Illustrations in Six Colors by Howard Chandler Christy
12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.50
A GOOD DETECTIVE STORY
THE FILIGREE BALL
By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN
Author of “The Leavenworth Case”
This is something more than a mere detective story; it is a thrilling
romance--a romance of mystery and crime where a shrewd detective helps
to solve the mystery. The plot is a novel and intricate one, carefully
worked out. There are constant accessions to the main mystery, so
that the reader can not possibly imagine the conclusion. The story is
clean-cut and wholesome, with a quality that might be called manly. The
characters are depicted so as to make a living impression. Cora Tuttle
is a fine creation, and the flash of love which she gives the hero is
wonderfully well done. Unlike many mystery stories The Filigree Ball
is not disappointing at the end. The characters most liked but longest
suspected are proved not only guiltless, but above suspicion. It is a
story to be read with a rush and at a sitting, for no one can put it
down until the mystery is solved.
Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.
12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.50
_It is fresh and spontaneous, having nothing of that wooden quality
which is becoming associated with the term “historical novel.”_
HEARTS COURAGEOUS
By HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
“Hearts Courageous” is made of new material, a picturesque yet delicate
style, good plot and very dramatic situations. The best in the book are
the defence of George Washington by the Marquis; the duel between the
English officer and the Marquis; and Patrick Henry flinging the brand
of war into the assembly of the burgesses of Virginia.
Williamsburg, Virginia, the country round about, and the life led in
that locality just before the Revolution, form an attractive setting
for the action of the story.
With six illustrations by A. B. Wenzell
12mo. Price, $1.50
THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE YEAR
THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE
_How the star of good fortune rose and set and rose again, by a
woman’s grace, for one John Law, of Lauriston_
A novel by EMERSON HOUGH
Emerson Hough has written one of the best novels that has come out of
America in many a day. It is an exciting story, with the literary touch
on every page.--JEANNETTE L. GILDER, of _The Critic_.
In “The Mississippi Bubble” Emerson Hough has taken John Law and
certain known events in his career, and about them he has woven a web
of romance full of brilliant coloring and cunning work. It proves
conclusively that Mr. Hough is a novelist of no ordinary quality.--_The
Brooklyn Eagle._
As a novel embodying a wonderful period in the growth of America “The
Mississippi Bubble” is of intense interest. As a love story it is
rarely and beautifully told. John Law, as drawn in this novel, is a
great character, cool, debonair, audacious, he is an Admirable Crichton
in his personality, and a Napoleon in his far-reaching wisdom.--_The
Chicago American._
The Illustrations by Henry Hutt
12mo, 452 pages, $1.50
A SPLENDIDLY VITAL NARRATION
THE MASTER OF APPLEBY
_A romance of the Carolinas_
By FRANCIS LYNDE
Viewed either as a delightful entertainment or as a skilful and
finished piece of literary art, this is easily one of the most
important of recent novels. One can not read a dozen pages without
realizing that the author has mastered the magic of the storyteller’s
art. After the dozen pages the author is forgotten in his creations.
It is rare, indeed, that characters in fiction live and love, suffer
and fight, grasp and renounce in so human a fashion as in this
splendidly vital narration.
With pictures by T. de Thulstrup
12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50
A VIVACIOUS ROMANCE OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS
ALICE _of_ OLD VINCENNES
By MAURICE THOMPSON
_The Atlanta Constitution says_:
“Mr. Thompson, whose delightful writings in prose and verse have made
his reputation national, has achieved his master stroke of genius in
this historical novel of revolutionary days in the West.”
_The Denver Daily News says_:
“There are three great chapters of fiction: Scott’s tournament
on Ashby field, General Wallace’s chariot race, and now Maurice
Thompson’s duel scene and the raising of Alice’s flag over old Fort
Vincennes.”
_The Chicago Record-Herald says_:
“More original than ‘Richard Carvel,’ more cohesive than ‘To Have
and To Hold,’ more vital than ‘Janice Meredith,’ such is Maurice
Thompson’s superb American romance, ‘Alice of Old Vincennes.’ It is,
in addition, more artistic and spontaneous than any of its rivals.”
VIRGINIA HARNED EDITION
12mo, with six Illustrations by F. C. Yohn, and a Frontispiece in
Color by Howard Chandler Christy. Price, $1.50
“NOTHING BUT PRAISE”
LAZARRE
By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
Glorified by a beautiful love story.--_Chicago Tribune._
We feel quite justified in predicting a wide-spread and prolonged
popularity for this latest comer into the ranks of historical
fiction.--_The N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._
After all the material for the story had been collected a year was
required for the writing of it. It is an historical romance of the
better sort, with stirring situations, good bits of character drawing
and a satisfactory knowledge of the tone and atmosphere of the period
involved.--_N. Y. Herald_.
Lazarre, is no less a person than the Dauphin, Louis XVII. of France,
and a right royal hero he makes. A prince who, for the sake of his
lady, scorns perils in two hemispheres, facing the wrath of kings in
Europe and the bullets of savages in America; who at the last spurns
a kingdom that he may wed her freely--here is one to redeem the sins
of even those who “never learn and never forget.”--_Philadelphia North
American._
With six Illustrations by André Castaigne
12 mo. Price, $1.50
YOUTH, SPLENDOR AND TRAGEDY
FRANCEZKA
By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
There is no character in fiction more lovable and appealing than is
Francezka. Miss Seawell has told a story of youth, splendor and tragedy
with an art which links it with summer dreams, which drowns the somber
in the picturesque, which makes pain and vice a stage wonder.
The book is marked by the same sparkle and cleverness of the author’s
earlier work, to which is added a dignity and force which makes it most
noteworthy.
“Here is a novel that not only provides the reader with a succession
of sprightly adventures, but furnishes a narrative brilliant, witty
and clever. The period is the first half of that most fascinating,
picturesque and epoch-making century, the eighteenth. Francezka
is a winsome heroine. The story has light and shadow and high
spirits, tempered with the gay, mocking, debonair philosophy of the
time.”--_Brooklyn Times._
Charmingly illustrated by Harrison Fisher
Bound in green and white and gold 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50
WHAT BOOK BY A NEW AUTHOR HAS RECEIVED SUCH PRAISE?
WHAT MANNER OF MAN
By EDNA KENTON
The novel, “What Manner of Man,” is a study of what is commonly known
as the “artistic temperament,” and a novel so far above the average
level of merit as to cause even tired reviewers to sit up and take hope
once more.--_New York Times._
It will certainly stand out as one of the most notable novels of the
year.--_Philadelphia Press._
It does not need a trained critical faculty to recognize that this book
is something more than clever.--_N. Y. Commercial._
Note should be made of the literary charm and value of the work, and
likewise of its eminently readable quality, considered purely as a
romance.--_Philadelphia Record._
Literary distinction is stamped on every page, and the author’s insight
into the human heart gives promise of a brilliant future.--_Chicago
Record-Herald._
The whole book is full of dramatic force. The author is an
unusual thinker and observer, and has a rare gift for creative
literature.--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
“What Manner of Man” is a study and a creation.--_N. Y. World._
12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1.50
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.