his arrival in camp, and he had presumably refreshed himself inwardly,
his outward appearance was still disheveled and dusty. Brier and
milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers. What could be seen of
the skin of his face and hands under its stains and begriming was of
a dull yellow. His light eyes had all the brightness without the
restlessness of the mongrel race. They leisurely took in the whole
cabin, the still open trunk before the major, and then rested
deliberately on the major himself.
“Well,” said Major Overstone abruptly, “what brought you here?”
“Same as brought you, I reckon,” responded the man almost as abruptly.
The major knew something of the half-breed temper, and neither the
retort nor its tone affected him.
“You didn't come here just because you deserted,” said the major coolly.
“You've been up to something else.”
“I have,” said the man with equal coolness.
“I thought so. Now, you understand you can't try anything of that kind
HERE. If you do, up you go on the first tree. That's Rule 1.”
“I see you ain't pertickler about waiting for the sheriff here, you
fellers.”
The major glanced at him quickly. He seemed to be quite unconscious of
any irony in his remark, and continued grimly, “And what's Rule 2?”
“I reckon you needn't trouble yourself beyond No. 1,” returned the major
with dry significance. Nevertheless, he opened a rude cupboard in the
corner and brought out a rich silver-mounted cut-glass drinking-flask,
which he handed to the stranger.
“I say,” said the half-breed, admiringly, “yours?”
“Certainly.”
“Certainly NOW, but BEFORE, eh?”
Rule No. 2 may have indicated that references to the past held no
dishonor. The major, although accustomed to these pleasantries, laughed
a little harshly.
“Mine always,” he said. “But you don't drink?”
The half-breed's face darkened under its grime.
“Wot you're givin' us? I've been filled chock up by Simpson over thar. I
reckon I know when I've got a load on.”
“Were you ever in Sacramento?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“Did you hear anything about me?”
The half-breed glanced through his tangled hair at the major in some
wonder, not only at the question, but at the almost childish eagerness
with which it was asked.
“I didn't hear much of anything else,” he answered grimly.
“And--what did they SAY?”
“Said you'd got to be TOOK anyhow! They allowed the new sheriff would do
it too.”
The major laughed. “Well, you heard HOW the new sheriff did it--skunked
away with his whole posse before one-eighth of my men! You saw how the
rest of this camp held up your nine troopers, and that sap-headed cub
of a lieutenant--didn't you? You wouldn't have been standing here if
you hadn't. No; there isn't the civil process nor the civil power in all
California that can take me out of this camp.”
But neither his previous curiosity nor present bravado seemed to impress
the ragged stranger with much favor. He glanced sulkily around the cabin
and began to shuffle towards the door.
“Stop! Where are you going to? Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
The fugitive hesitated for a moment, and then dropped ungraciously on
the edge of a camp-stool near the door. The major looked at him.
“I may have to remind you that I run this camp, and the boys hereabouts
do pretty much as I say. What's your name?”
“Tom.”
“Tom? Well, look here, Tom! D--n it all! Can't you see that when a man
is stuck here alone, as I am, he wants to know what's going on outside,
and hear a little fresh talk?”
The singular weakness of this blended command and appeal apparently
struck the fugitive curiously. He fixed his lowering eyes on the major
as if in gloomy doubt if he were really the reckless desperado he had
been represented. That this man--twice an assassin and the ruler
of outlaws as reckless as himself--should approach him in this
half-confidential way evidently puzzled him.
“Wot you wanter know?” he asked gruffly.
“Well, what's my party saying or doing about me?” said the major
impatiently. “What's the 'Express' saying about me?”
“I reckon they're throwing off on you all round; they allow you never
represented the party, but worked for yourself,” said the man shortly.
Here the major lashed out. A set of traitors and hirelings! He had
bought and paid for them all! He had sunk two thousand dollars in the
“Express” and saved the editor from being horsewhipped and jailed for
libel! Half the cursed bonds that they were making such a blanked
fuss about were handled by these hypocrites--blank them! They were a
low-lived crew of thieves and deserters! It is presumed that the major
had forgotten himself in this infelicitous selection of epithets, but
the stranger's face only relaxed into a grim smile. More than that, the
major had apparently forgotten his desire to hear his guest talk, for he
himself at once launched into an elaborate exposition of his own affairs
and a specious and equally elaborate defense and justification of
himself and denunciation of his accusers. For nearly half an hour he
reviewed step by step and detail by detail the charges against him--with
plausible explanation and sophistical argument, but always with
a singular prolixity and reiteration that spoke of incessant
self-consciousness and self-abstraction. Of that dashing
self-sufficiency which had dazzled his friends and awed his enemies
there was no trace! At last, even the set smile of the degraded
recipient of these confidences darkened with a dull, bewildered disgust.
Then, to his relief, a step was heard without. The major's manner
instantly changed.
“Well?” he demanded impatiently, as Dawson entered.
“I came to know what you want done with HIM,” said Dawson, indicating
the fugitive with a contemptuous finger.
“Take him to your cabin!”
“My cabin! HIM?” ejaculated Dawson, turning sharply on his chief.
The major's light eyes contracted and his thin lips became a straight
line. “I don't think you understand me, Dawson, and another time you'd
better wait until I'm done. I want you to take him to your cabin--and
then CLEAR OUT OF IT YOURSELF. You understand? I want him NEAR ME AND
ALONE!”
III.
Dawson was not astonished the next morning to see Major Overstone and
the half-breed walking together down the gully road, for he had already
come to the conclusion that the major was planning some extraordinary
reprisals against the invaders, that would ensure the perpetual security
of the camp. That he should use so insignificant and unimportant a tool
now appeared to him to be quite natural, particularly as the service
was probably one in which the man would be sacrificed. “The major,” he
suggested to his companions, “ain't going to risk a white man's skin,
when he can get an Injun's hide handy.”
The reluctant hesitating step of the half-breed as they walked along
seemed to give some color to this hypothesis. He listened sullenly to
the major as he pointed out the strategic position of the Bar. “That
wagon road is the only approach to Wynyard's, and a dozen men along the
rocks could hold it against a hundred. The trail that you came by, over
the ridge, drops straight into this gully, and you saw what that would
mean to any blanked fools who might try it. Of course we could be
shelled from that ridge if the sheriff had a howitzer, or the men who
knew how to work one, but even then we could occupy the ridge before
them.” He paused a moment and then added: “I used to be in the army,
Tom; I saw service in Mexico before that cub you got away from had his
first trousers. I was brought up as a gentleman--blank it all--and HERE
I am!”
The man slouched on by his side, casting his surly, furtive glances
from left to right, as if seeking to escape from these confidences.
Nevertheless, the major kept on through the gully, until reaching the
wagon road they crossed it, and began to ascend the opposite slope, half
hidden by the underbrush and larches. Here the major paused again and
faced about. The cabins of the settlement were already behind the bluff;
the little stream which indicated the “bar”--on which some perfunctory
mining was still continued--now and then rang out quite clearly at their
feet, although the bar itself had disappeared. The sounds of occupation
and labor had at last died away in the distance. They were quite alone.
The major sat down on a boulder, and pointed to another. The man,
however, remained sullenly standing where he was, as if to accent as
strongly as possible the enforced companionship. Either the major
was too self-absorbed to notice it, or accepted it as a satisfactory
characteristic of the half-breed's race. He continued confidently:--
“Now look here, Tom. I want to leave this cursed hole, and get clear out
of the State! Anywhere; over the Oregon line into British Columbia, or
to the coast, where I can get a coasting vessel down to Mexico. It will
cost money, but I've got it. It will cost a lot of risks, but I'll take
them. I want somebody to help me, some one to share risks with me, and
some one to share my luck if I succeed. Help to put me on the other side
of the border line, by sea or land, and I'll give you a thousand dollars
down BEFORE WE START and a thousand dollars when I'm safe.”
The half-breed had changed his slouching attitude. It seemed more
indolent on account of the loosely hanging strap that had once held his
haversack, which was still worn in a slovenly fashion over his shoulder
as a kind of lazy sling for his shiftless hand.
“Well, Tom, is it a go? You can trust ME, for you'll have the thousand
in your pocket before you start. I can trust YOU, for I'll kill you
quicker than lightning if you say a word of this to any one before I go,
or play a single trick on me afterwards.”
Suddenly the two men were rolling over and over in the underbrush. The
half-breed had thrown himself upon the major, bearing him down to the
ground. The haversack strap for an instant whirled like the loop of a
lasso in the air, and descended over the major's shoulders, pinioning
his arms to his side. Then the half-breed, tearing open his ragged
blouse, stripped off his waist-belt, and as dexterously slipped it over
the ankles of the struggling man.
It was all over in a moment. Neither had spoken a word. Only their rapid
panting broke the profound silence. Each probably knew that no outcry
would be overheard.
For the first time the half-breed sat down. But there was no trace of
triumph or satisfaction in his face, which wore the same lowering look
of disgust, as he gazed upon the prostrate man.
“I want to tell you first,” he said, slowly wiping his face, “that I
didn't kalkilate upon doin' this in this yer kind o' way. I expected
more of a stan' up fight from you--more risk in gettin' you out o' that
hole--and a different kind of a man to tackle. I never expected you
to play into my hand like this--and it goes against me to hev to take
advantage of it.”
“Who are you?” said the major, pantingly.
“I'm the new sheriff of Siskyou!”
He drew from beneath his begrimed shirt a paper wrapping, from which
he gingerly extracted with the ends of his dirty fingers a clean,
legal-looking folded paper.
“That's my warrant! I've kept it fresh for you. I reckon you don't care
to read it--you've seen it afore. It's just the same as t'other sheriff
had--what you shot.”
“Then this was a plant of yours, and that whelp's troopers?” said the
major.
“Neither him nor the sojers knows any more about it than you,” returned
the sheriff slowly. “I enlisted as Injin guide or scout ten days ago.
I deserted just as reg'lar and nat'ral like when we passed that ridge
yesterday. I could be took to-morrow by the sojers if they caught sight
o' me and court-martialed--it's as reg'lar as THAT! But I timed to have
my posse, under a deputy, draw you off by an attack just as the escort
reached the ridge. And here I am.”
“And you're no half-breed?”
“There's nothin' Injin about me that water won't wash off. I kalkilated
you wouldn't suspect anything so insignificant as an INJIN, when I fixed
myself up. You saw Dawson didn't hanker after me much. But I didn't
reckon on YOUR tumbling to me so quick. That's what gets me! You must
hev been pretty low down for kempany when you took a man like me inter
your confidence. I don't see it yet.”
He looked inquiringly at his captive--with the same wondering surliness.
Nor could he understand another thing which was evident. After the first
shock of resistance the major had exhibited none of the indignation of
a betrayed man, but actually seemed to accept the situation with a
calmness that his captor lacked. His voice was quite unemotional as he
said:
“And how are you going to get me away from here?”
“That's MY look out, and needn't trouble you, major; but, seein' as how
confidential you've been to me, I don't mind tellin' you. Last night
that posse of mine that you 'skunked,' you know, halted at the cross
roads till them sojers went by. They has only to SEE THEM to know that I
had got away. They'll hang round the cross roads till they see my signal
on top of the ridge, and then they'll make another show against that
pass. Your men will have their hands full, I reckon, without huntin' for
YOU, or noticin' the three men o' mine that will come along this ridge
where the sojers come yesterday--to help me get you down in the same
way. You see, major, your little trap in that gully ain't in this
fight--WE'RE THE OTHER SIDE OF IT. I ain't much of a sojer, but I
reckon I've got you there! And it's all owing to YOU. I ain't,” he added
gloomily, “takin' much pride in it MYSELF.”
“I shouldn't think you would,” said the major, “and look here! I'll
double that offer I made you just now. Set me down just as I am on the
deck of some coasting vessel, and I'll pay you four thousand dollars.
You may have all the glory of having captured me, HERE, and of making
your word good before your posse. But you can arrange afterwards on the
way to let me give you the slip somewhere near Sacramento.”
The sheriff's face actually brightened. “Thanks for that, major. I was
gettin' a little sick of my share in this job, but, by God, you've put
some sand in me. Well, then! there ain't gold enough in all Californy to
make me let you go. You hear me; so drop that. I've TOOK you, and TOOK
ye'll remain until I land you in Sacramento jail. I don't want to kill
you, though your life's forfeit a dozen times over, and I reckon you
don't care for it either way, but if you try any tricks on me I may have
to MAIM ye to make you come along comf'able and easy. I ain't hankerin'
arter THAT either, but come you shall!”
“Give your signal and have an end of this,” said the major curtly.
The sheriff looked at him again curiously. “I never had my hands in
another man's pockets before, major, but I reckon I'll have to take your
derringers from yours.” He slipped his hand into the major's waistcoat
and secured the weapons. “I'll have to trouble you for your sash, too,”
he said, unwinding the knitted silken girdle from the captive's waist.
“You won't want it, for you ain't walking, and it'll come in handy to me
just now.”
He bent over, and, passing it across the major's breast with more
gentleness and solicitude than he had yet shown, secured him in an easy
sitting posture against the tree. Then, after carefully trying the knots
and straps that held his prisoner, he turned and lightly bounded up the
hill.
He was absent scarcely ten minutes, yet when he returned the major's
eyes were half closed. But not his lips. “If you expect to hold me until
your posse comes you had better take me to some less exposed position,”
he said dryly. “There's a man just crossed the gully, coming into the
brush below in the wood.”
“None of your tricks, major!”
“Look for yourself.”
The sheriff glanced quickly below him. A man with an axe on his shoulder
could be seen plainly making his way through the underbrush not a
hundred yards away. The sheriff instantly clapped his hand upon his
captive's mouth, but at a look from his eyes took it away again.
“I see,” he said grimly, “you don't want to lure that man within reach
of my revolver by calling to him.”
“I could have called him while you were away,” returned the major
quietly.
The sheriff with a darkened face loosened the sash that bound his
prisoner to the tree, and then, lifting him in his arms, began to ascend
the hill cautiously, dipping into the heavier shadows. But the ascent
was difficult, the load a heavy one, and the sheriff was agile rather
than muscular. After a few minutes' climbing he was forced to pause and
rest his burden at the foot of a tree. But the valley and the man in the
underbrush were no longer in view.
“Come,” said the major quietly, “unstrap my ankles and I'll WALK up.
We'll never get there at this rate.”
The sheriff paused, wiped his grimy face with his grimier blouse, and
stood looking at his prisoner. Then he said slowly:--
“Look yer! Wot's your little game? Blessed if I kin follow suit.”
For the first time the major burst into a rage. “Blast it all! Don't you
see that if I'm discovered HERE, in this way, there's not a man on the
Bar who would believe that I walked into your trap, not a man, by God,
who wouldn't think it was a trick of yours and mine together?”
“Or,” interrupted the sheriff slowly, fixing his eyes on his prisoner,
“not a man who would ever trust Major Overstone for a leader again?”
“Perhaps,” said the major, unmovedly again, “I don't think EITHER OF US
would ever get a chance of being trusted again by any one.”
The sheriff still kept his eyes fixed on his prisoner, his gloomy face
growing darker under its grime. “THAT ain't the reason, major. Life and
death don't mean much more to you than they do to me in this yer game. I
know that you'd kill me quicker nor lightning if you got the chance; YOU
know that I'm takin' you to the gallows.”
“The reason is that I want to leave Wynyard's Bar,” said the major
coolly; “and even this way out of it will suit me.”
The sheriff took his revolver from his pocket and deliberately cocked
it. Then, leaning down, he unbuckled the strap from the major's ankles.
A wild hope that his incomprehensible captive might seize that moment to
develop his real intent--that he might fly, fight, or in some way act up
to his reckless reputation--sustained him for a moment, but in the next
proved futile. The major only said, “Thank you, Tom,” and stretched his
cramped legs.
“Get up and go on,” said the sheriff roughly.
The major began to slowly ascend the hill, the sheriff close on his
heels, alert, tingling, and watchful of every movement. For a few
moments this strain upon his faculties seemed to invigorate him, and his
gloom relaxed, but presently it became too evident that the prisoner's
pinioned arms made it impossible for him to balance or help himself on
that steep trail, and once or twice he stumbled and reeled dangerously
to one side. With an oath the sheriff caught him, and tore from his arms
the only remaining bonds that fettered him. “There!” he said savagely;
“go on; we're equal!”
Without replying, the major continued his ascent; it became steeper
as they neared the crest, and at last they were both obliged to drag
themselves up by clutching the vines and underbrush. Suddenly the major
stopped with a listening gesture. A strange roaring--as of wind or
water--was distinctly audible.
“How did you signal?” asked the major abruptly.
“Made a smoke,” said the sheriff as abruptly.
“I thought so--well! you've set the woods on fire.”
They both plunged upwards again, now quite abreast, vying with each
other to reach the summit as if with the one thought only. Already the
sting and smart of acrid fumes were in their eyes and nostrils; when
they at last stood on level ground again, it was hidden by a thin film
of grayish blue haze that seemed to be creeping along it. But above
was the clear sky, seen through the interlacing boughs, and to
their surprise--they who had just come from the breathless, stagnant
hillside--a fierce wind was blowing! But the roaring was louder than
before.
“Unless your three men are already here, your game is up,” said the
major calmly. “The wind blows dead along the ridge where they should
come, and they can't get through the smoke and fire.”
It was indeed true! In the scarce twenty minutes that had elapsed since
the sheriff's return the dry and brittle underbrush for half a mile on
either side had been converted into a sheet of flame, which at times
rose to a furnace blast through the tall chimney-like conductors of tree
shafts, from whose shriveled sides bark was crackling, and lighted dead
limbs falling in all directions. The whole valley, the gully, the Bar,
the very hillside they had just left, were blotted out by a creeping,
stifling smoke-fog that scarcely rose breast high, but was beaten down
or cut off cleanly by the violent wind that swept the higher level
of the forest. At times this gale became a sirocco in temperature,
concentrating its heat in withering blasts which they could not face, or
focusing its intensity upon some mass of foliage that seemed to shrink
at its touch and open a scathed and quivering aisle to its approach. The
enormous skeleton of a dead and rotten redwood, not a hundred yards to
their right, broke suddenly like a gigantic firework into sparks and
flame.
The sheriff had grasped the full meaning of their situation. In spite of
his first error--the very carelessness of familiarity--his knowledge
of woodcraft was greater than his companion's, and he saw their danger.
“Come,” he said quickly, “we must make for an opening or we shall be
caught.”
The major smiled in misapprehension.
“Who could catch us here?”
The sheriff pointed to the blazing tree.
“THAT,” he said. “In five minutes IT will have a posse that will wipe us
both out.”
He caught the major by the arm and rushed him into the smoke,
apparently in the direction of the greatest mass of flame. The heat was
suffocating, but it struck the major that the more they approached the
actual scene of conflagration the heat and smoke became less, until he
saw that the fire was retreating before them and the following wind.
In a few moments their haven of safety--the expanse already burnt
over--came in sight. Here and there, seen dimly through the drifting
smoke, the scattered embers that still strewed the forest floor glowed
in weird nebulous spots like will-o'-the-wisps. For an instant the major
hesitated; the sheriff cast a significant glance behind them.
“Go on; it's our only chance,” he said imperatively.
They darted on, skimming the blackened or smouldering surface, which at
times struck out sparks and flame from their heavier footprints as they
passed. Their boots crackled and scorched beneath them; their shreds
of clothing were on fire; their breathing became more difficult, until,
providentially, they fell upon an abrupt, fissure-like depression of the
soil, which the fire had leaped, and into which they blindly plunged and
rolled together. A moment of relief and coolness followed, as they crept
along the fissure, filled with damp and rotting leaves.
“Why not stay here?” said the exhausted prisoner.
“And be roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch,” returned
the sheriff grimly. “No.” Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of
fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before
overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and
indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed
to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed
invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, and again dashed
desperately forward.
Beaten, bruised, blackened, and smoke-grimed--looking less human than
the animals who had long since deserted the crest--they at last limped
into a “wind opening” in the woods that the fire had skirted. The major
sank exhaustedly to the ground; the sheriff threw himself beside him.
Their strange relations to each other seemed to have been forgotten;
they looked and acted as if they no longer thought of anything beyond
the present. And when the sheriff finally arose and, disappearing for
several minutes, brought his hat full of water for his prisoner from a
distant spring that they had passed in their flight, he found him where
he had left him--unchanged and unmoved.
He took the water gratefully, and after a pause fixed his eyes earnestly
upon his captor. “I want you to do a favor to me,” he said slowly. “I'm
not going to offer you a bribe to do it either, nor ask you anything
that isn't in a line with your duty. I think I understand you now, if I
didn't before. Do you know Briggs's restaurant in Sacramento?”
The sheriff nodded.
“Well! over the restaurant are my private rooms, the finest in
Sacramento. Nobody knows it but Briggs, and he has never told. They've
been locked ever since I left; I've got the key still in my pocket. Now
when we get to Sacramento, instead of taking me straight to jail, I want
you to hold me THERE as your prisoner for a day and a night. I don't
want to get away; you can take what precautions you like--surround the
house with policemen, and sleep yourself in the ante-room. I don't want
to destroy any papers or evidence; you can go through the rooms and
examine everything before and after; I only want to stay there a day and
a night; I want to be in my old rooms, have my meals from the restaurant
as I used to, and sleep in my own bed once more. I want to live for one
day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here. That's all!
It isn't much, Tom. You can do it and say you require to do it to get
evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms.”
The expression of wonder which had come into the sheriff's face at
the beginning of this speech deepened into his old look of surly
dissatisfaction. “And that's all ye want?” he said gloomily. “Ye don't
want no friends--no lawyer? For I tell you, straight out, major, there
ain't no hope for ye, when the law once gets hold of ye in Sacramento.”
“That's all. Will you do it?”
The sheriff's face grew still darker. After a pause he said: “I don't
say 'no,' and I don't say 'yes.' But,” he added grimly, “it strikes me
we'd better wait till we get clear o' these woods afore you think o'
your Sacramento lodgings.”
The major did not reply. The day had worn on, but the fire, now
completely encircling them, opposed any passage in or out of that
fateful barrier. The smoke of the burning underbrush hung low around
them in a bank equally impenetrable to vision. They were as alone as
shipwrecked sailors on an island, girded by a horizon of clouds.
“I'm going to try to sleep,” said the major; “if your men come you can
waken me.”
“And if YOUR men come?” said the sheriff dryly.
“Shoot me.”
He lay down, closed his eyes, and to the sheriff's astonishment
presently fell asleep. The sheriff, with his chin in his grimy hands,
sat and watched him as the day slowly darkened around them and the
distant fires came out in more lurid intensity. The face of the captive
and outlawed murderer was singularly peaceful; that of the captor and
man of duty was haggard, wild, and perplexed.
But even this changed soon. The sleeping man stirred restlessly and
uneasily; his face began to work, his lips to move. “Tom,” he gasped
suddenly, “Tom!”
The sheriff bent over him eagerly. The sleeping man's eyes were still
closed; beads of sweat stood upon his forehead. He was dreaming.
“Tom,” he whispered, “take me out of this place--take me out from
these dogs and pimps and beggars! Listen, Tom!--they're Sydney ducks,
ticket-of-leave men, short card sharps, and sneak thieves! There isn't a
gentleman among 'em! There isn't one I don't loathe and hate--and would
grind under my heel, elsewhere. I'm a gentleman, Tom--yes, by God--an
officer and a gentleman! I've served my country in the 9th Cavalry.
That cub of West Point knows it and despises me, seeing me here in such
company. That sergeant knows it--I recommended him for his first stripes
for all he taunts me,--d--n him!”
“Come, wake up!” said the sheriff harshly.
The prisoner did not heed him; the sheriff shook him roughly, so roughly
that the major's waistcoat and shirt dragged open, disclosing his fine
silk undershirt, delicately worked and embroidered with golden thread.
At the sight of this abased and faded magnificence the sheriff's hand
was stayed; his eye wandered over the sleeping form before him. Yes, the
hair was dyed too; near the roots it was quite white and grizzled; the
pomatum was coming off the pointed moustache and imperial; the face in
the light was very haggard; the lines from the angles of the nostril and
mouth were like deep, half-healed gashes. The major was, without doubt,
prematurely worn and played out.
The sheriff's persistent eyes, however, seemed to effect what his ruder
hand could not. The sleeping man stirred, awoke to full consciousness,
and sat up.
“Are they here? I'm ready,” he said calmly.
“No,” said the sheriff deliberately; “I only woke ye to say that I've
been thinkin' over what ye asked me, and if we get to Sacramento all
right, why, I'll do it and give ye that day and night at your old
lodgings.”
“Thank you.”
The major reached out his hand; the sheriff hesitated, and then extended
his own. The hands of the two men clasped for the first, and it would
seem, the last time.
For the “cub of West Point” was, like most cubs, irritable when
thwarted. And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and possibly
chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of Wynyard's Bar, he
had persuaded his commanding officer to give him permission to effect a
recapture. Thus it came about that at dawn, filing along the ridge, on
the outskirts of the fire, his heart was gladdened by the sight of
the half-breed--with his hanging haversack belt and tattered army
tunic--evidently still a fugitive, not a hundred yards away on the other
side of the belt of fire, running down the hill with another ragged
figure at his side. The command to “halt” was enforced by a single rifle
shot over the fugitives' heads--but they still kept on their flight.
Then the boy-officer snatched a carbine from one of his men, a volley
rang out from the little troop--the shots of the privates mercifully
high, those of the officer and sergeant leveled with wounded pride and
full of deliberate purpose. The half-breed fell; so did his companion,
and, rolling over together, both lay still.
But between the hunters and their fallen quarry reared a cheval de
frise of flame and fallen timber impossible to cross. The young officer
hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, wheeled his men about, and left the
fire to correct any irregularity in his action.
It did not, however, change contemporaneous history, for a week later,
when Wynyard's Bar discovered Major Overstone lying beside the man now
recognized by them as the disguised sheriff of Siskyou, they rejoiced at
this unfailing evidence of their lost leader's unequaled prowess. That
he had again killed a sheriff and fought a whole posse, yielding only
with his life, was never once doubted, and kept his memory green in
Sierran chronicles long after Wynyard's Bar had itself become a memory.
A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE.
The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the train at
Whistlecrankie station. For the last twenty minutes his spirits had been
slowly sinking before the drifting procession past the carriage windows
of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in shape, but so cold and
sterile in expression that the swathes of yellow mist which lay in
their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed a gratuitous affectation of
modesty. And when the train moved away, mingling its escaping steam
with the slower mists of the mountain, he found himself alone on the
platform--the only passenger and apparently the sole occupant of the
station. He was gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon
itself a human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway
porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had evidently
been performing a double function, and lounged with exasperating
deliberation towards him. He was a hard-featured man, with a thin fringe
of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin like dirty strings to
tie his cap on with.
“Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?” he said moodily.
The consul said that he was.
“I kenned it. Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there. They'll
be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED.” He glanced half
doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so sure of it.
But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the
certain prospect of a conveyance. The porter meanwhile surveyed him
moodily.
“Ye'll be seein' Mistress MacSpadden there!”
The consul was surprised into a little over-consciousness. Mrs.
MacSpadden was a vivacious acquaintance at St. Kentigern, whom he
certainly--and not without some satisfaction--expected to meet at
Glenbogie House. He raised his eyes inquiringly to the porter's.
“Ye'll no be rememberin' me. I had a machine in St. Kentigern and drove
ye to MacSpadden's ferry often. Far, far too often! She's a strange
flagrantitious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm thinkin',
and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there.”
It was a besetting weakness of the consul's that his sense of the
ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious perceptions. The
absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable desolation before him, and
the sepulchral complacency of his self-elected monitor, quite upset his
gravity.
“Ay, ye'll be laughin' THE NOO,” returned the porter with gloomy
significance.
The consul wiped his eyes. “Still,” he said demurely, “I trust you won't
object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the carriage when
it comes, and let the morality of this transaction devolve entirely
upon me. Unless,” he continued, even more gravely, as a spick and span
brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds, dashed out of the mist up to
the platform, “unless you prefer to state the case to those two
gentlemen”--pointing to the smart coachman and footman on the box--“and
take THEIR opinion as to the propriety of my proceeding any further.
It seems to me that their consciences ought to be consulted as well
as yours. I'm only a stranger here, and am willing to do anything to
conform to the local custom.”
“It's a saxpence ye'll be payin' anyway,” said the porter, grimly
shouldering the trunk, “but I'll be no takin' any other mon's opinion on
matters of my am dooty and conscience.”
“Ah,” said the consul gravely, “then you'll perhaps be allowing ME the
same privilege.”
The porter's face relaxed, and a gleam of approval--purely intellectual,
however,--came into his eyes.
“Ye were always a smooth deevel wi' your tongue, Mr. Consul,” he said,
shouldering the box and walking off to the carriage.
Nevertheless, as soon as he was fairly seated and rattling away from the
station, the consul had a flashing conviction that he had not only
been grievously insulted but also that he had allowed the wife of an
acquaintance to be spoken of disrespectfully in his presence. And he had
done nothing! Yes--it was like him!--he had LAUGHED at the absurdity of
the impertinence without resenting it! Another man would have slapped
the porter's face! For an instant he hung out of the carriage window,
intent upon ordering the coachman to drive back to the station, but the
reflection--again a ludicrous one--that he would now be only bringing
witnesses to a scene which might provoke a scandal more invidious to his
acquaintance, checked him in time. But his spirits, momentarily diverted
by the porter's effrontery, sunk to a lower ebb than before.
The clattering of his horses' hoofs echoed back from the rocky walls
that occasionally hemmed in the road was not enlivening, but was less
depressing than the recurring monotony of the open. The scenery did not
suggest wildness to his alien eyes so much as it affected him with a
vague sense of scorbutic impoverishment. It was not the loneliness of
unfrequented nature, for there was a well-kept carriage road traversing
its dreariness; and even when the hillside was clothed with scanty
verdure, there were “outcrops” of smooth glistening weather-worn rocks
showing like bare brown knees under the all too imperfectly kilted
slopes. And at a little distance, lifting above a black drift of firs,
were the square rigid sky lines of Glenbogie House, standing starkly
against the cold, lingering northern twilight. As the vehicle turned,
and rolled between two square stone gate-posts, the long avenue before
him, though as well kept as the road, was but a slight improvement upon
the outer sterility, and the dark iron-gray rectangular mansion beyond,
guiltless of external decoration, even to the outlines of its small
lustreless windows, opposed the grim inhospitable prospect with an
equally grim inhospitable front. There were a few moments more of rapid
driving, a swift swishing over soft gravel, the opening of a heavy
door into a narrow vestibule, and then--a sudden sense of exquisitely
diffused light and warmth from an arched and galleried central hall, the
sounds of light laughter and subdued voices half lost in the airy space
between the lofty pictured walls; the luxury of color in trophies,
armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed
hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty woman
on the broad, slow staircase. The contrast was sharp, ironical, and
bewildering.
So much so that the consul, when he had followed the servant to his
room, was impelled to draw aside the heavy window-curtains and look out
again upon the bleak prospect it had half obliterated. The wing in which
he was placed overhung a dark ravine or gully choked with shrubs and
brambles that grew in a new luxuriance. As he gazed a large black bird
floated upwards slowly from its depths, circled around the house with a
few quick strokes of its wing, and then sped away--a black bolt--in one
straight undeviating line towards the paling north. He still gazed into
the abyss--half expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional
stir and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of
nightfowl. A long-forgotten fragment of old English verse began to haunt
him--
Hark! the raven flaps hys wing
In the briered dell belowe,
Hark! the dethe owl loude doth synge
To the night maers as thaie goe.
“Now, what put that stuff in my head?” he said as he turned impatiently
from the window. “And why does this house, with all its interior luxury,
hypocritically oppose such a forbidding front to its neighbors?” Then
it occurred to him that perhaps the architect instinctively felt that
a more opulent and elaborate exterior would only bring the poverty of
surrounding nature into greater relief. But he was not in the habit of
troubling himself with abstruse problems. A nearer recollection of the
pretty frock he had seen on the staircase--in whose wearer he had
just recognized his vivacious friend--turned his thoughts to her. He
remembered how at their first meeting he had been interested in her
bright audacity, unconventionality, and high spirits, which did not,
however, amuse him as greatly as his later suspicion that she was
playing a self-elected role, often with difficulty, opposition, and
feverishness, rather than spontaneity. He remembered how he had watched
her in the obtrusive assumption of a new fashion, in some reckless
departure from an old one, or in some ostentatious disregard of certain
hard and set rules of St. Kentigern; but that it never seemed to him
that she was the happier for it. He even fancied that her mirth at such
times had an undue nervousness; that her pluck--which was undoubted--had
something of the defiance of despair, and that her persistence often had
the grimness of duty rather than the thoughtlessness of pure amusement.
What was she trying to do?--what was she trying to UNDO or forget? Her
married life was apparently happy and even congenial. Her young husband
was clever, complaisant, yet honestly devoted to her, even to the
extension of a certain camaraderie to her admirers and a chivalrous
protection by half-participation in her maddest freaks. Nor could he
honestly say that her attitude towards his own sex--although marked by a
freedom that often reached the verge of indiscretion--conveyed the least
suggestion of passion or sentiment. The consul, more perceptive than
analytical, found her a puzzle--who was, perhaps, the least mystifying
to others who were content to sum up her eccentricities under the single
vague epithet, “fast.” Most women disliked her: she had a few associates
among them, but no confidante, and even these were so unlike her,
again, as to puzzle him still more. And yet he believed himself strictly
impartial.
He walked to the window again, and looked down upon the ravine from
which the darkness now seemed to be slowly welling up and obliterating
the landscape, and then, taking a book from his valise, settled himself
in the easy-chair by the fire. He was in no hurry to join the party
below, whom he had duly recognized and greeted as he passed through.
They or their prototypes were familiar friends. There was the recently
created baronet, whose “bloody hand” had apparently wiped out the
stains of his earlier Radicalism, and whose former provincial
self-righteousness had been supplanted by an equally provincial
skepticism; there was his wife, who through all the difficulties of
her changed position had kept the stalwart virtues of the Scotch
bourgeoisie, and was--“decent”; there were the two native lairds that
reminded him of “parts of speech,” one being distinctly alluded to as
a definite article, and the other being “of” something, and apparently
governed always by that possessive case. There were two or three
“workers”--men of power and ability in their several vocations; indeed,
there was the general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of
such Scotch gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities.
There was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness,
and misapprehending adaptability. And there was the solitary
Englishman--perhaps less generously equipped than the others--whom
everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and imitated.
There were the half-dozen smartly frocked women, who, far from being
the females of the foregoing species, were quite indistinctive, with
the single exception of an American wife, who was infinitely more Scotch
than her Scotch husband.
Suddenly he became aware of a faint rustling at his door, and what
seemed to be a slight tap on the panel. He rose and opened it--the long
passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could detect
the quick swish of a skirt in the distance. As he re-entered his room,
his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was thrust through
the keyhole of his door. The consul smiled at this amiable solution of a
mystery. It was undoubtedly the playful mischievousness of the vivacious
MacSpadden. He placed it in water--intending to wear it in his coat at
dinner as a gentle recognition of the fair donor's courtesy.
Night had thickened suddenly as from a passing cloud. He lit the two
candles on his dressing-table, gave a glance into the now scarcely
distinguishable abyss below his window, as he drew the curtains, and by
the more diffused light for the first time surveyed his room critically.
It was a larger apartment than that usually set aside for bachelors;
the heavy four-poster had a conjugal reserve about it, and a tall cheval
glass and certain minor details of the furniture suggested that it had
been used for a married couple. He knew that the guest-rooms in country
houses, as in hotels, carried no suggestion or flavor of the last
tenant, and therefore lacked color and originality, and he was
consequently surprised to find himself impressed with some distinctly
novel atmosphere. He was puzzling himself to discover what it might
be, when he again became aware of cautious footsteps apparently halting
outside his door. This time he was prepared. With a half smile he
stepped softly to the door and opened it suddenly. To his intense
surprise he was face to face with a man.
But his discomfiture was as nothing compared to that of the
stranger--whom he at once recognized as one of his fellow-guests--the
youthful Laird of Whistlecrankie. The young fellow's healthy color at
once paled, then flushed a deep crimson, and a forced smile stiffened
his mouth.
“I--beg your par-r-rdon,” he said with a nervous brusqueness that
brought out his accent. “I couldna find ma room. It'll be changed, and
I--”
“Perhaps I have got it,” interrupted the consul smilingly. “I've only
just come, and they've put me in here.”
“Nae! Nae!” said the young man hurriedly, “it's no' thiss. That is, it's
no' mine noo.”
“Won't you come in?” suggested the consul politely, holding open the
door.
The young man entered the room with the quick strides but the mechanical
purposelessness of embarrassment. Then he stiffened and stood erect. Yet
in spite of all this he was strikingly picturesque and unconventional in
his Highland dress, worn with the freedom of long custom and a
certain lithe, barbaric grace. As the consul continued to gaze at him
encouragingly, the quick resentful pride of a shy man suddenly mantled
his high cheekbones, and with an abrupt “I'll not deesturb ye longer,”
he strode out of the room.
The consul watched the easy swing of his figure down the passage, and
then closed the door. “Delightful creature,” he said musingly, “and not
so very unlike an Apache chief either! But what was he doing outside
my door? And was it HE who left that rose--not as a delicate Highland
attention to an utter stranger, but”--the consul's mouth suddenly
expanded--“to some fair previous occupant? Or was it really HIS room--he
looked as if he were lying--and”--here the consul's mouth expanded even
more wickedly--“and Mrs. MacSpadden had put the flower there for him.”
This implied snub to his vanity was, however, more than compensated by
his wicked anticipation of the pretty perplexity of his fair friend when
HE should appear at dinner with the flower in his own buttonhole. It
would serve her right, the arrant flirt! But here he was interrupted by
the entrance of a tall housemaid with his hot water.
“I am afraid I've dispossessed Mr.--Mr.--Kilcraithie rather
prematurely,” said the consul lightly.
To his infinite surprise the girl answered with grim decision, “Nane too
soon.”
The consul stared. “I mean,” he explained, “that I found him hesitating
here in the passage, looking for his room.”
“Ay, he's always hoaverin' and glowerin' in the passages--but it's no'
for his ROOM! And it's a deesgrace to decent Christian folk his carryin'
on wi' married weemen--mebbee they're nae better than he!”
“That will do,” said the consul curtly. He had no desire to encourage a
repetition of the railway porter's freedom.
“Ye'll no fash yoursel' aboot HIM,” continued the girl, without heeding
the rebuff. “It's no' the meestreess' wish that he's keepit here in the
wing reserved for married folk, and she's no' sorry for the excuse to
pit ye in his place. Ye'll be married yoursel', I'm hearin'. But, I ken
ye's nae mair to be lippened tae for THAT.”
This was too much for the consul's gravity. “I'm afraid,” he said with
diplomatic gayety, “that although I am married, as I haven't my wife
with me, I've no right to this superior accommodation and comfort. But
you can assure your mistress that I'll try to deserve them.”
“Ay,” said the girl, but with no great confidence in her voice as she
grimly quitted the room.
“When our foot's upon our native heath, whether our name's Macgregor or
Kilcraithie, it would seem that we must tread warily,” mused the consul
as he began to dress. “But I'm glad she didn't see that rose, or MY
reputation would have been ruined.” Here another knock at the door
arrested him. He opened it impatiently to a tall gillie, who instantly
strode into the room. There was such another suggestion of Kilcraithie
in the man and his manner that the consul instantly divined that he was
Kilcraithie's servant.
“I'll be takin' some bit things that yon Whistlecrankie left,” said the
gillie gravely, with a stolid glance around the room.
“Certainly,” said the consul; “help yourself.” He continued his dressing
as the man began to rummage in the empty drawers. The consul had his
back towards him, but, looking in the glass of the dressing-table, he
saw that the gillie was stealthily watching him. Suddenly he passed
before the mantelpiece and quickly slipped the rose from its glass into
his hand.
“I'll trouble you to put that back,” said the consul quietly, without
turning round. The gillie slid a quick glance towards the door, but the
consul was before him. “I don't think THAT was left by your master,” he
said in an ostentatiously calm voice, for he was conscious of an absurd
and inexplicable tumult in his blood, “and perhaps you'd better put it
back.”
The man looked at the flower with an attention that might have been
merely ostentatious, and replaced it in the glass.
“A thocht it was hiss.”
“And I think it isn't,” said the consul, opening the door.
Yet when the man had passed out he was by no means certain that the
flower was not Kilcraithie's. He was even conscious that if the young
Laird had approached him with a reasonable explanation or appeal he
would have yielded it up. Yet here he was--looking angrily pale in the
glass, his eyes darker than they should be, and with an unmistakable
instinct to do battle for this idiotic gage! Was there some morbid
disturbance in the air that was affecting him as it had Kilcraithie?
He tried to laugh, but catching sight of its sardonic reflection in
the glass became grave again. He wondered if the gillie had been
really looking for anything his master had left--he had certainly TAKEN
nothing. He opened one or two of the drawers, and found only a woman's
tortoiseshell hairpin--overlooked by the footman when he had emptied
them for the consul's clothes. It had been probably forgotten by some
fair and previous tenant to Kilcraithie. The consul looked at his
watch--it was time to go down. He grimly pinned the fateful flower in
his buttonhole, and half-defiantly descended to the drawing-room.
Here, however, he was inclined to relax when, from a group of pretty
women, the bright gray eyes of Mrs. MacSpadden caught his, were suddenly
diverted to the lapel of his coat, and then leaped up to his again with
a sparkle of mischief. But the guests were already pairing off in dinner
couples, and as they passed out of the room, he saw that she was on the
arm of Kilcraithie. Yet, as she passed him, she audaciously turned her
head, and in a mischievous affectation of jealous reproach, murmured:--
“So soon!”
At dinner she was too far removed for any conversation with him,
although from his seat by his hostess he could plainly see her saucy
profile midway up the table. But, to his surprise, her companion,
Kilcraithie, did not seem to be responding to her gayety. By turns
abstracted and feverish, his glances occasionally wandered towards the
end of the table where the consul was sitting. For a few moments he
believed that the affair of the flower, combined, perhaps, with the
overhearing of Mrs. MacSpadden's mischievous sentence, rankled in the
Laird's barbaric soul. But he became presently aware that Kilcraithie's
eyes eventually rested upon a quiet-looking blonde near the hostess. Yet
the lady not only did not seem to be aware of it, but her face was more
often turned towards the consul, and their eyes had once or twice met.
He had been struck by the fact that they were half-veiled but singularly
unimpassioned eyes, with a certain expression of cold wonderment and
criticism quite inconsistent with their veiling. Nor was he surprised
when, after a preliminary whispering over the plates, his hostess
presented him. The lady was the young wife of the middle-aged dignitary
who, seated further down the table, opposite Mrs. MacSpadden, was
apparently enjoying that lady's wildest levities. The consul bowed, the
lady leaned a little forward.
“We were saying what a lovely rose you had.”
The consul's inward response was “Hang that flower!” His outward
expression was the modest query:--
“Is it SO peculiar?”
“No; but it's very pretty. Would you allow me to see it?”
Disengaging the flower from his buttonhole he handed it to her. Oddly
enough, it seemed to him that half the table was watching and listening
to them. Suddenly the lady uttered a little cry. “Dear me! it's full
of thorns; of course you picked and arranged it yourself, for any lady
would have wrapped something around the stalk!”
But here there was a burlesque outcry and a good-humored protest from
the gentlemen around her against this manifestly leading question. “It's
no fair! Ye'll not answer her--for the dignity of our sex.” Yet in the
midst of it, it suddenly occurred to the consul that there HAD been a
slip of paper wrapped around it, which had come off and remained in the
keyhole. The blue eyes of the lady were meanwhile sounding his, but he
only smiled and said:--
“Then it seems it IS peculiar?”
When the conversation became more general he had time to observe other
features of the lady than her placid eyes. Her light hair was very long,
and grew low down the base of her neck. Her mouth was firm, the upper
lip slightly compressed in a thin red line, but the lower one, although
equally precise at the corners, became fuller in the centre and turned
over like a scarlet leaf, or, as it struck him suddenly, like the
tell-tale drop of blood on the mouth of a vampire. Yet she was
very composed, practical, and decorous, and as the talk grew more
animated--and in the vicinity of Mrs. MacSpadden, more audacious--she
kept a smiling reserve of expression,--which did not, however, prevent
her from following that lively lady, whom she evidently knew, with a
kind of encouraging attention.
“Kate is in full fling to-night,” she said to the hostess. Lady
Macquoich smiled ambiguously--so ambiguously that the consul thought it
necessary to interfere for his friend. “She seems to say what most of
us think, but I am afraid very few of us could voice as innocently,” he
smilingly suggested.
“She is a great friend of yours,” returned the lady, looking at him
through her half-veiled lids. “She has made us quite envy her.”
“And I am afraid made it impossible for ME to either sufficiently thank
her or justify her taste,” he said quietly. Yet he was vexed at an
unaccountable resentment which had taken possession of him--who but a
few hours before had only laughed at the porter's criticism.
After the ladies had risen, the consul with an instinct of sympathy was
moving up towards “Jock” MacSpadden, who sat nearer the host, when he
was stopped midway of the table by the dignitary who had sat opposite
to Mrs. MacSpadden. “Your frien' is maist amusing wi' her audacious
tongue--ay, and her audacious ways,” he said with large official
patronage; “and we've enjoyed her here immensely, but I hae mae doots
if mae Leddy Macquoich taks as kindly to them. You and I--men of the
wurrld, I may say--we understand them for a' their worth; ay!--ma wife
too, with whom I observed ye speakin'--is maist tolerant of her, but
man! it's extraordinar'”--he lowered his voice slightly--“that yon
husband of hers does na' check her freedoms with Kilcraithie. I wadna'
say anythin' was wrong, ye ken, but is he no' over confident and
conceited aboot his wife?”
“I see you don't know him,” said the consul smilingly, “and I'd be
delighted to make you acquainted. Jock,” he continued, raising his
voice as he turned towards MacSpadden, “let me introduce you to Sir
Alan Deeside, who don't know YOU, although he's a great admirer of your
wife;” and unheeding the embarrassed protestations of Sir Alan and the
laughing assertions of Jock that they were already acquainted, he moved
on beside his host. That hospitable knight, who had been airing his
knowledge of London smart society to his English guest with a singular
mixture of assertion and obsequiousness, here stopped short. “Ay, sit
down, laddie, it was so guid of ye to come, but I'm thinkin' at your end
of the table ye lost the bit fun of Mistress MacSpadden. Eh, but she was
unco' lively to-night. 'Twas all Kilcraithie could do to keep her from
proposin' your health with Hieland honors, and offerin' to lead off with
her ain foot on the table! Ay, and she'd ha' done it. And that's a
braw rose she's been givin' ye--and ye got out of it claverly wi' Lady
Deeside.”
When he left the table with the others to join the ladies, the same
unaccountable feeling of mingled shyness and nervous irascibility still
kept possession of him. He felt that in his present mood he could not
listen to any further criticisms of his friend without betraying some
unwonted heat, and as his companions filed into the drawing-room he
slipped aside in the hope of recovering his equanimity by a few moments'
reflection in his own room. He glided quickly up the staircase and
entered the corridor. The passage that led to his apartment was quite
dark, especially before his door, which was in a bay that really ended
the passage. He was consequently surprised and somewhat alarmed at
seeing a shadowy female figure hovering before it. He instinctively
halted; the figure became more distinct from some luminous halo that
seemed to encompass it. It struck him that this was only the light of
his fire thrown through his open door, and that the figure was probably
that of a servant before it, who had been arranging his room. He started
forward again, but at the sound of his advancing footsteps the figure
and the luminous glow vanished, and he arrived blankly face to face with
his own closed door. He looked around the dim bay; it was absolutely
vacant. It was equally impossible for any one to have escaped
without passing him. There was only his room left. A half-nervous,
half-superstitious thrill crept over him as he suddenly grasped the
handle of the door and threw it open. The leaping light of his fire
revealed its emptiness: no one was there! He lit the candle and peered
behind the curtains and furniture and under the bed; the room was as
vacant and undisturbed as when he left it.
Had it been a trick of his senses or a bona-fide apparition? He had
never heard of a ghost at Glenbogie--the house dated back some
fifty years; Sir John Macquoich's tardy knighthood carried no such
impedimenta. He looked down wonderingly on the flower in his buttonhole.
Was there something uncanny in that innocent blossom? But here he was
struck by another recollection, and examined the keyhole of his door.
With the aid of the tortoiseshell hairpin he dislodged the paper he had
forgotten. It was only a thin spiral strip, apparently the white outer
edge of some newspaper, and it certainly seemed to be of little service
as a protection against the thorns of the rose-stalk. He was holding it
over the fire, about to drop it into the blaze, when the flame revealed
some pencil-marks upon it. Taking it to the candle he read, deeply
bitten into the paper by a hard pencil-point: “At half-past one.”
There was nothing else--no signature; but the handwriting was NOT Mrs.
MacSpadden's!
Then whose? Was it that of the mysterious figure whom he had just seen?
Had he been selected as the medium of some spiritual communication, and,
perhaps, a ghostly visitation later on? Or was he the victim of some
clever trick? He had once witnessed such dubious attempts to relieve the
monotony of a country house. He again examined the room carefully, but
without avail. Well! the mystery or trick would be revealed at half-past
one. It was a somewhat inconvenient hour, certainly. He looked down at
the baleful gift in his buttonhole, and for a moment felt inclined
to toss it in the fire. But this was quickly followed by his former
revulsion of resentment and defiance. No! he would wear it, no matter
what happened, until its material or spiritual owner came for it. He
closed the door and returned to the drawing-room.
Midway of the staircase he heard the droning of pipes. There was dancing
in the drawing-room to the music of the gorgeous piper who had marshaled
them to dinner. He was not sorry, as he had no inclination to talk, and
the one confidence he had anticipated with Mrs. MacSpadden was out of
the question now. He had no right to reveal his later discovery. He
lingered a few moments in the hall. The buzzing of the piper's drones
gave him that impression of confused and blindly aggressive intoxication
which he had often before noticed in this barbaric instrument, and had
always seemed to him as the origin of its martial inspiration. From this
he was startled by voices and steps in the gallery he had just
quitted, but which came from the opposite direction to his room. It was
Kilcraithie and Mrs. MacSpadden. As she caught sight of him, he fancied
she turned slightly and aggressively pale, with a certain hardening of
her mischievous eyes. Nevertheless, she descended the staircase
more deliberately than her companion, who brushed past him with an
embarrassed self-consciousness, quite in advance of her. She lingered
for an instant.
“You are not dancing?” she said.
“No.”
“Perhaps you are more agreeably employed?”
“At this exact moment, certainly.”
She cast a disdainful glance at him, crossed the hall, and followed
Kilcraithie.
“Hang me, if I understand it all!” mused the consul, by no means
good-humoredly. “Does she think I have been spying upon her and her
noble chieftain? But it's just as well that I didn't tell her anything.”
He turned to follow them. In the vestibule he came upon a figure which
had halted before a large pier-glass. He recognized M. Delfosse, the
French visitor, complacently twisting the peak of his Henri Quatre
beard. He would have passed without speaking, but the Frenchman glanced
smilingly at the consul and his buttonhole. Again the flower!
“Monsieur is decore,” he said gallantly.
The consul assented, but added, not so gallantly, that though they were
not in France he might still be unworthy of it. The baleful flower had
not improved his temper. Nor did the fact that, as he entered the room,
he thought the people stared at him--until he saw that their attention
was directed to Lady Deeside, who had entered almost behind him. From
his hostess, who had offered him a seat beside her, he gathered that
M. Delfosse and Kilcraithie had each temporarily occupied his room, but
that they had been transferred to the other wing, apart from the married
couples and young ladies, because when they came upstairs from
the billiard and card room late, they sometimes disturbed the fair
occupants. No!--there were no ghosts at Glenbogie. Mysterious footsteps
had sometimes been heard in the ladies' corridor, but--with peculiar
significance--she was AFRAID they could be easily accounted for. Sir
Alan, whose room was next to the MacSpaddens', had been disturbed by
them.
He was glad when it was time to escape to the billiard-room and tobacco.
For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but eventually found
himself listening to a discussion--carried on over steaming tumblers of
toddy--in regard to certain predispositions of the always debatable sex.
“Ye'll not always judge by appearances,” said Sir Alan. “Ye'll mind the
story o' the meenester's wife of Aiblinnoch. It was thocht that she
was ower free wi' one o' the parishioners--ay! it was the claish o' the
whole kirk, while none dare tell the meenester hisself--bein' a bookish,
simple, unsuspectin' creeter. At last one o' the elders bethocht him of
a bit plan of bringing it home to the wife, through the gospel lips
of her ain husband! So he intimated to the meenester his suspicions
of grievous laxity amang the female flock, and of the necessity of a
special sermon on the Seventh Command. The puir man consented--although
he dinna ken why and wherefore--and preached a gran' sermon! Ay, man! it
was crammed wi' denunciation and an emptyin' o' the vials o' wrath! The
congregation sat dumb as huddled sheep--when they were no' starin' and
gowpin' at the meenester's wife settin' bolt upright in her place. And
then, when the air was blue wi' sulphur frae tae pit, the meenester's
wife up rises! Man! Ivry eye was spearin' her--ivry lug was prickt
towards her! And she goes out in the aisle facin' the meenester, and--”
Sir Alan paused.
“And what?” demanded the eager auditory.
“She pickit up the elder's wife, sobbin' and tearin' her hair in strong
hysterics.”
At the end of a relieved pause Sir Alan slowly concluded: “It was said
that the elder removed frae Aiblinnoch wi' his wife, but no' till he had
effected a change of meenesters.”
It was already past midnight, and the party had dropped off one by one,
with the exception of Deeside, Macquoich, the young Englishman, and a
Scotch laird, who were playing poker--an amusement which he understood
they frequently protracted until three in the morning. It was nearly
time for him to expect his mysterious visitant. Before he went upstairs
he thought he would take a breath of the outer evening air, and throwing
a mackintosh over his shoulders, passed out of the garden door of the
billiard-room. To his surprise it gave immediately upon the fringe of
laurel that hung over the chasm.
It was quite dark; the few far-spread stars gave scarcely any light,
and the slight auroral glow towards the north was all that outlined the
fringe of the abyss, which might have proved dangerous to any unfamiliar
wanderer. A damp breath of sodden leaves came from its depths. Beside
him stretched the long dark facade of the wing he inhabited, his own
window the only one that showed a faint light. A few paces beyond, a
singular structure of rustic wood and glass, combining the peculiarities
of a sentry-box, a summer-house, and a shelter, was built against the
blank wall of the wing. He imagined the monotonous prospect from
its windows of the tufted chasm, the coldly profiled northern hills
beyond,--and shivered. A little further on, sunk in the wall like a
postern, was a small door that evidently gave easy egress to seekers
of this stern retreat. In the still air a faint grating sound like the
passage of a foot across gravel came to him as from the distance. He
paused, thinking he had been followed by one of the card-players, but
saw no one, and the sound was not repeated.
It was past one. He re-entered the billiard-room, passed the unchanged
group of card-players, and taking a candlestick from the hall ascended
the dark and silent staircase into the corridor. The light of his candle
cast a flickering halo around him--but did not penetrate the gloomy
distance. He at last halted before his door, gave a scrutinizing glance
around the embayed recess, and opened the door half expectantly. But the
room was empty as he had left it.
It was a quarter past one. He threw himself on the bed without
undressing, and fixed his eyes alternately on the door and his watch.
Perhaps the unwonted seriousness of his attitude struck him, but a
sudden sense of the preposterousness of the whole situation, of his
solemnly ridiculous acceptance of a series of mere coincidences as
a foregone conclusion, overcame him, and he laughed. But in the same
breath he stopped.
There WERE footsteps approaching--cautious footsteps--but not at his
door! They were IN THE ROOM--no! in the WALL just behind him! They were
descending some staircase at the back of his bed--he could hear the
regular tap of a light slipper from step to step and the rustle of
a skirt seemingly in his very ear. They were becoming less and less
distinct--they were gone! He sprang to his feet, but almost at the
same instant he was conscious of a sudden chill--that seemed to him
as physical as it was mental. The room was slowly suffused with a cool
sodden breath and the dank odor of rotten leaves. He looked at the
candle--its flame was actually deflecting in this mysterious blast.
It seemed to come from a recess for hanging clothes topped by a heavy
cornice and curtain. He had examined it before, but he drew the
curtain once more aside. The cold current certainly seemed to be more
perceptible there. He felt the red-clothed backing of the interior,
and his hand suddenly grasped a doorknob. It turned, and the whole
structure--cornice and curtains--swung inwards towards him with THE DOOR
ON WHICH IT WAS HUNG! Behind it was a dark staircase leading from the
floor above to some outer door below, whose opening had given ingress to
the chill humid current from the ravine. This was the staircase where he
had just heard the footsteps--and this was, no doubt, the door through
which the mysterious figure had vanished from his room a few hours
before!
Taking his candle, he cautiously ascended the stairs until he found
himself on the landing of the suites of the married couples and directly
opposite to the rooms of the MacSpaddens and Deesides. He was about to
descend again when he heard a far-off shout, a scuffling sound on the
outer gravel, and the frenzied shaking of the handle of the lower door.
He had hardly time to blow out his candle and flatten himself against
the wall, when the door was flung open and a woman frantically flew up
the staircase. His own door was still open; from within its depths the
light of his fire projected a flickering beam across the steps. As she
rushed past it the light revealed her face; it needed not the peculiar
perfume of her garments as she swept by his concealed figure to make him
recognize--Lady Deeside!
Amazed and confounded, he was about to descend, when he heard the lower
door again open. But here a sudden instinct bade him pause, turn, and
reascend to the upper landing. There he calmly relit his candle, and
made his way down to the corridor that overlooked the central hall. The
sound of suppressed voices--speaking with the exhausted pauses that come
from spent excitement--made him cautious again, and he halted. It was
the card party slowly passing from the billiard-room to the hall.
“Ye owe it yoursel'--to your wife--not to pit up with it a day longer,”
said the subdued voice of Sir Alan. “Man! ye war in an ace o' havin' a
braw scandal.”
“Could ye no' get your wife to speak till her,” responded Macquoich, “to
gie her a hint that she's better awa' out of this? Lady Deeside has some
influence wi' her.”
The consul ostentatiously dropped the extinguisher from his candlestick.
The party looked up quickly. Their faces were still flushed and
agitated, but a new restraint seemed to come upon them on seeing him.
“I thought I heard a row outside,” said the consul explanatorily.
They each looked at their host without speaking.
“Oh, ay,” said Macquoich, with simulated heartiness, “a bit fuss between
the Kilcraithie and yon Frenchman; but they're baith goin' in the
mornin'.”
“I thought I heard MacSpadden's voice,” said the consul quietly.
There was a dead silence. Then Macquoich said hurriedly:--
“Is he no' in his room--in bed--asleep,--man?”
“I really don't know; I didn't inquire,” said the consul with a slight
yawn. “Good night!”
He turned, not without hearing them eagerly whispering again, and
entered the passage leading to his own room. As he opened the door
he was startled to find the subject of his inquiry--Jock
MacSpadden--quietly seated in his armchair by his fire.
“Jock!”
“Don't be alarmed, old man; I came up by that staircase and saw the door
open, and guessed you'd be returning soon. But it seemed you went ROUND
BY THE CORRIDOR,” he said, glancing curiously at the consul's face. “Did
you meet the crowd?”
“Yes, Jock! WHAT does it all mean?”
MacSpadden laughed. “It means that I was just in time to keep
Kilbraithie from chucking Delfosse down that ravine; but they both
scooted when they saw me. By Jove! I don't know which was the most
frightened.”
“But,” said the consul slowly, “what was it all about, Jock?”
“Some gallantry of that d----d Frenchman, who's trying to do some
woman-stalking up here, and jealousy of Kilcraithie's, who's just got
enough of his forbears' blood in him to think nothing of sticking three
inches of his dirk in the wame of the man that crosses him. But I say,”
continued Jock, leaning easily back in his chair, “YOU ought to know
something of all this. This room, old man, was used as a sort of
rendezvous, having two outlets, don't you see, when they couldn't get at
the summer-house below. By Jove! they both had it in turns--Kilcraithie
and the Frenchman--until Lady Macquoich got wind of something, swept
them out, and put YOU in it.”
The consul rose and approached his friend with a grave face. “Jock, I
DO know something about it--more about it than any one thinks. You and I
are old friends. Shall I tell you WHAT I know?”
Jock's handsome face became a trifle paler, but his frank, clear eyes
rested steadily on the consul's.
“Go on!” he said.
“I know that this flower which I am wearing was the signal for the
rendezvous this evening,” said the consul slowly, “and this paper,”
taking it from his pocket, “contained the time of the meeting, written
in the lady's own hand. I know who she was, for I saw her face as
plainly as I see yours now, by the light of the same fire; it was as
pale, but not as frank as yours, old man. That is what I know. But I
know also what people THINK they know, and for that reason I put that
paper in YOUR hand. It is yours--your vindication--your REVENGE, if you
choose. Do with it what you like.”
Jock, with unchanged features and undimmed eyes, took the paper from the
consul's hand, without looking at it.
“I may do with it what I like?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
He was about to drop it into the fire, but the consul stayed his hand.
“Are you not going to LOOK at the handwriting first?”
There was a moment of silence. Jock raised his eyes with a sudden flash
of pride in them and said, “No!”
The friends stood side by side, grasping each other's hands, as the
burning paper leaped up the chimney in a vanishing flame.
“Do you think you have done quite right, Jock, in view of any scandal
you may hear?”
“Quite! You see, old man, I know MY WIFE--but I don't think that Deeside
KNOWS HIS.”
THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA.
Dick Bracy gazed again at the Hacienda de los Osos, and hesitated. There
it lay--its low whitewashed walls looking like a quartz outcrop of the
long lazy hillside--unmistakably hot, treeless, and staring broadly in
the uninterrupted Californian sunlight. Yet he knew that behind those
blistering walls was a reposeful patio, surrounded by low-pitched
verandas; that the casa was full of roomy corridors, nooks, and
recesses, in which lurked the shadows of a century, and that hidden by
the further wall was a lonely old garden, hoary with gnarled pear-trees,
and smothered in the spice and dropping leaves of its baking roses. He
knew that, although the unwinking sun might glitter on its red tiles,
and the unresting trade winds whistle around its angles, it always kept
one unvarying temperature and untroubled calm, as if the dignity of
years had triumphed over the changes of ephemeral seasons. But would
others see it with his eyes? Would his practical, housekeeping aunt, and
his pretty modern cousin--
“Well, what do you say? Speak the word, and you can go into it with your
folks to-morrow. And I reckon you won't want to take anything either,
for you'll find everything there--just as the old Don left it. I don't
want it; the land is good enough for me; I shall have my vaqueros and
rancheros to look after the crops and the cattle, and they won't trouble
you, for their sheds and barns will be two miles away. You can stay
there as long as you like, and go when you choose. You might like to try
it for a spell; it's all the same to me. But I should think it the sort
of thing a man like you would fancy, and it seems the right thing to
have you there. Well,--what shall it be? Is it a go?”
Dick knew that the speaker was sincere. It was an offer perfectly
characteristic of his friend, the Western millionaire, who had halted
by his side. And he knew also that the slow lifting of his bridle-rein,
preparatory to starting forward again, was the business-like gesture of
a man who wasted no time even over his acts of impulsive liberality.
In another moment he would dismiss the unaccepted offer from his
mind--without concern and without resentment.
“Thank you--it is a go,” said Dick gratefully.
Nevertheless, when he reached his own little home in the outskirts of
San Francisco that night, he was a trifle nervous in confiding to the
lady, who was at once his aunt and housekeeper, the fact that he was
now the possessor of a huge mansion in whose patio alone the little
eight-roomed villa where they had lived contentedly might be casually
dropped. “You see, Aunt Viney,” he hurriedly explained, “it would have
been so ungrateful to have refused him--and it really was an offer as
spontaneous as it was liberal. And then, you see, we need occupy only a
part of the casa.”
“And who will look after the other part?” said Aunt Viney grimly. “That
will have to be kept tidy, too; and the servants for such a house, where
in heaven are they to come from? Or do they go with it?”
“No,” said Dick quickly; “the servants left with their old master, when
Ringstone bought the property. But we'll find servants enough in the
neighborhood--Mexican peons and Indians, you know.”
Aunt Viney sniffed. “And you'll have to entertain--if it's a big house.
There are all your Spanish neighbors. They'll be gallivanting in and out
all the time.”
“They won't trouble us,” he returned, with some hesitation. “You
see, they're furious at the old Don for disposing of his lands to an
American, and they won't be likely to look upon the strangers in the new
place as anything but interlopers.”
“Oh, that is it, is it?” ejaculated Aunt Viney, with a slight puckering
of her lips. “I thought there was SOMETHING.”
“My dear aunt,” said Dick, with a sudden illogical heat which he tried
to suppress; “I don't know what you mean by 'it' and 'something.'
Ringstone's offer was perfectly unselfish; he certainly did not suppose
that I would be affected, any more than he would he, by the childish
sentimentality of these people over a legitimate, every-day business
affair. The old Don made a good bargain, and simply sold the land he
could no longer make profitable with his obsolete method of farming, his
gang of idle retainers, and his Noah's Ark machinery, to a man who knew
how to use steam reapers, and hired sensible men to work on shares.”
Nevertheless he was angry with himself for making any explanation, and
still more disturbed that he was conscious of a certain feeling that it
was necessary.
“I was thinking,” said Aunt Viney quietly, “that if we invited anybody
to stay with us--like Cecily, for example--it might be rather dull for
her if we had no neighbors to introduce her to.”
Dick started; he had not thought of this. He had been greatly influenced
by the belief that his pretty cousin, who was to make them a visit,
would like the change and would not miss excitement. “We can always
invite some girls down there and make our own company,” he answered
cheerfully. Nevertheless, he was dimly conscious that he had already
made an airy castle of the old hacienda, in which Cecily and her aunt
moved ALONE. It was to Cecily that he would introduce the old garden, it
was Cecily whom he would accompany through the dark corridors, and
with whom he would lounge under the awnings of the veranda. All this
innocently, and without prejudice or ulterior thought. He was not yet
in love with the pretty cousin whom he had seen but once or twice
during the past few years, but it was a possibility not unpleasant to
occasionally contemplate. Yet it was equally possible that she might
yearn for lighter companionship and accustomed amusement; that the
passion-fringed garden and shadow-haunted corridor might be profaned by
hoydenish romping and laughter, or by that frivolous flirtation which,
in others, he had always regarded as commonplace and vulgar.
Howbeit, at the end of two weeks he found himself regularly installed
in the Hacienda de los Osos. His little household, re-enforced by
his cousin Cecily and three peons picked up at Los Pinos, bore
their transplantation with a singular equanimity that seemed to him
unaccountable. Then occurred one of those revelations of character with
which Nature is always ready to trip up merely human judgment. Aunt
Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm but unshaken Dutch prejudices,
high but narrow in religious belief, merged without a murmur into the
position of chatelaine of this unconventional, half-Latin household.
Accepting the situation without exaltation or criticism, placid but
unresponsive amidst the youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over
each quaint detail, her influence was, nevertheless, felt throughout
the lingering length and shadowy breadth of the strange old house. The
Indian and Mexican servants, at first awed by her practical superiority,
succumbed to her half-humorous toleration of their incapacity, and
became her devoted slaves. Dick was astonished, and even Cecily was
confounded. “Do you know,” she said confidentially to her cousin,
“that when that brown Conchita thought to please Aunty by wearing white
stockings instead of going round as usual with her cinnamon-colored
bare feet in yellow slippers--which I was afraid would be enough to send
Aunty into conniption fits--she actually told her, very quietly, to take
them off, and dress according to her habits and her station? And you
remember that in her big, square bedroom there is a praying-stool and
a ghastly crucifix, at least three feet long, in ivory and black,
quite too human for anything? Well, when I offered to put them in the
corridor, she said I 'needn't trouble'; that really she hadn't noticed
them, and they would do very well where they were. You'd think she had
been accustomed to this sort of thing all her life. It's just too sweet
of her, any way, even if she's shamming. And if she is, she just does
it to the life too, and could give those Spanish women points. Why, she
rode en pillion on Manuel's mule, behind him, holding on by his
sash, across to the corral yesterday; and you should have seen Manuel
absolutely scrape the ground before her with his sombrero when he let
her down.” Indeed, her tall, erect figure in black lustreless silk,
appearing in a heavily shadowed doorway, or seated in a recessed window,
gave a new and patrician dignity to the melancholy of the hacienda. It
was pleasant to follow this quietly ceremonious shadow gliding along
the rose garden at twilight, halting at times to bend stiffly over the
bushes, garden-shears in hand, and carrying a little basket filled with
withered but still odorous petals, as if she were grimly gathering the
faded roses of her youth.
It was also probable that the lively Cecily's appreciation of her aunt
might have been based upon another virtue of that lady--namely, her
exquisite tact in dealing with the delicate situation evolved from the
always possible relations of the two cousins. It was not to be supposed
that the servants would fail to invest the young people with Southern
romance, and even believe that the situation was prearranged by the
aunt with a view to their eventual engagement. To deal with the problem
openly, yet without startling the consciousness of either Dick or
Cecily; to allow them the privileges of children subject to the
occasional restraints of childhood; to find certain household duties
for the young girl that kept them naturally apart until certain hours
of general relaxation; to calmly ignore the meaning of her retainers'
smiles and glances, and yet to good-humoredly accept their interest as a
kind of feudal loyalty, was part of Aunt Viney's deep diplomacy. Cecily
enjoyed her freedom and companionship with Dick, as she enjoyed the
novel experiences of the old house, the quaint, faded civilization that
it represented, and the change and diversion always acceptable to youth.
She did not feel the absence of other girls of her own age; neither was
she aware that through this omission she was spared the necessity of
a confidante or a rival--both equally revealing to her thoughtless
enjoyment. They took their rides together openly and without
concealment, relating their adventures afterwards to Aunt Viney with
a naivete and frankness that dreamed of no suppression. The city-bred
Cecily, accustomed to horse exercise solely as an ornamental and
artificial recreation, felt for the first time the fearful joy of a dash
across a league-long plain, with no onlookers but the scattered wild
horses she might startle up to scurry before her, or race at her side.
Small wonder that, mounted on her fiery little mustang, untrammeled by
her short gray riding-habit, free as the wind itself that blew through
the folds of her flannel blouse, with her brown hair half-loosed beneath
her slouched felt hat, she seemed to Dick a more beautiful and womanly
figure than the stiff buckramed simulation of man's angularity and
precision he had seen in the parks. Perhaps one day she detected this
consciousness too plainly in his persistent eyes. Up to that moment
she had only watched the glittering stretches of yellow grain, in which
occasional wind-shorn evergreen oaks stood mid-leg deep like cattle in
water, the distant silhouette of the Sierras against the steely blue, or
perhaps the frankly happy face of the good-looking young fellow at her
side. But it seemed to her now that an intruder had entered the field--a
stranger before whom she was impelled to suddenly fly--half-laughingly,
half-affrightedly--the anxious Dick following wonderingly at her
mustang's heels, until she reached the gates of the hacienda, where she
fell into a gravity and seriousness that made him wonder still more. He
did not dream that his guileless cousin had discovered, with a woman's
instinct, a mysterious invader who sought to share their guileless
companionship, only to absorb it entirely, and that its name was--love!
The next day she was so greatly preoccupied with her household duties
that she could not ride with him. Dick felt unaccountably lost. Perhaps
this check to their daily intercourse was no less accelerating to his
feelings than the vague motive that induced Cecily to withhold herself.
He moped in the corridor; he rode out alone, bullying his mustang in
proportion as he missed his cousin's gentle companionship, and circling
aimlessly, but still unconsciously, around the hacienda as a centre of
attraction. The sun at last was sinking to the accompaniment of a
rising wind, which seemed to blow and scatter its broad rays over the
shimmering plain until every slight protuberance was burnished
into startling brightness; the shadows of the short green oaks grew
disproportionally long, and all seemed to point to the white-walled
casa. Suddenly he started and instantly reined up.
The figure of a young girl, which he had not before noticed, was slowly
moving down the half-shadowed lane made by the two walls of the garden
and the corral. Cecily! Perhaps she had come out to meet him. He spurred
forward; but, as he came nearer, he saw that the figure and its attire
were surely not hers. He reined up again abruptly, mortified at his
disappointment, and a little ashamed lest he should have seemed to have
been following an evident stranger. He vaguely remembered, too, that
there was a trail to the high road, through a little swale clothed
with myrtle and thorn bush which he had just passed, and that she was
probably one of his reserved and secluded neighbors--indeed, her dress,
in that uncertain light, looked half Spanish. This was more confusing,
since his rashness might have been taken for an attempt to force an
acquaintance. He wheeled and galloped towards the front of the casa as
the figure disappeared at the angle of the wall.
“I don't suppose you ever see any of our neighbors?” said Dick to his
aunt casually.
“I really can't say,” returned the lady with quiet equanimity. “There
were some extraordinary-looking foreigners on the road to San Gregorio
yesterday. Manuel, who was driving me, may have known who they were--he
is a kind of Indian Papist himself, you know--but I didn't. They might
have been relations of his, for all I know.”
At any other time Dick would have been amused at this serene relegation
of the lofty Estudillos and Peraltas to the caste of the Indian convert,
but he was worried to think that perhaps Cecily was really being bored
by the absence of neighbors. After dinner, when they sought the rose
garden, he dropped upon the little lichen-scarred stone bench by her
side. It was still warm from the sun; the hot musk of the roses filled
the air; the whole garden, shielded from the cool evening trade winds by
its high walls, still kept the glowing memory of the afternoon sunshine.
Aunt Viney, with her garden basket on her arm, moved ghost-like among
the distant bushes.
“I hope you are not getting bored here?” he said, after a slight
inconsequent pause.
“Does that mean that YOU are?” she returned, raising her mischievous
eyes to his.
“No; but I thought you might find it lonely, without neighbors.”
“I stayed in to-day,” she said, femininely replying to the unasked
question, “because I fancied Aunt Viney might think it selfish of me to
leave her alone so much.”
“But YOU are not lonely?”
Certainly not! The young lady was delighted with the whole place, with
the quaint old garden, the mysterious corridors, the restful quiet of
everything, the picture of dear Aunt Viney--who was just the sweetest
soul in the world--moving about like the genius of the casa. It was
such a change to all her ideas, she would never forget it. It was so
thoughtful of him, Dick, to have given them all that pleasure.
“And the rides,” continued Dick, with the untactful pertinacity of the
average man at such moments--“you are not tired of THEM?”
No; she thought them lovely. Such freedom and freshness in the exercise;
so different from riding in the city or at watering-places, where it was
one-half show, and one was always thinking of one's habit or one's self.
One quite forgot one's self on that lovely plain--with everything so far
away, and only the mountains to look at in the distance. Nevertheless
she did not lift her eyes from the point of the little slipper which had
strayed beyond her skirt.
Dick was relieved, but not voluble; he could only admiringly follow the
curves of her pretty arms and hands, clasped lightly in her lap, down to
the point of the little slipper. But even that charming vanishing point
was presently withdrawn--possibly through some instinct--for the young
lady had apparently not raised her eyes.
“I'm so glad you like it,” said Dick earnestly, yet with a nervous
hesitation that made his speech seem artificial to his own ears. “You
see I--that is--I had an idea that you might like an occasional change
of company. It's a great pity we're not on speaking terms with one
of these Spanish families. Some of the men, you know, are really fine
fellows, with an old-world courtesy that is very charming.”
He was surprised to see that she had lifted her head suddenly, with a
quick look that however changed to an amused and half coquettish smile.
“I am finding no fault with my present company,” she said demurely,
dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to
follow the falling lashes over her cheek. “I don't think YOU ought to
undervalue it.”
If he had only spoken then! The hot scent of the roses hung suspended in
the air, which seemed to be hushed around them in mute expectancy; the
shadows which were hiding Aunt Viney from view were also closing round
the bench where they sat. He was very near her; he had only to reach
out his hand to clasp hers, which lay idly in her lap. He felt himself
glowing with a strange emanation; he even fancied that she was turning
mechanically towards him, as a flower might turn towards the fervent
sunlight. But he could not speak; he could scarcely collect his
thoughts, conscious though he was of the absurdity of his silence. What
was he waiting for? what did he expect? He was not usually bashful, he
was no coward; there was nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to
give expression to what he believed was his first real passion. But he
could do nothing. He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers,
was stiffening into a vacant smile.
The young girl rose. “I think I heard Aunt Viney call me,” she said
constrainedly, and made a hesitating step forward. The spell which had
held Dick seemed to be broken suddenly; he stretched forth his arm
to detain her. But the next step appeared to carry her beyond his
influence; and it was even with a half movement of rejection that
she quickened her pace and disappeared down the path. Dick fell back
dejectedly into his seat, yet conscious of a feeling of RELIEF that
bewildered him.
But only for a moment. A recollection of the chance that he had
impotently and unaccountably thrown away returned to him. He tried to
laugh, albeit with a glowing cheek, over the momentary bashfulness which
he thought had overtaken him, and which must have made him ridiculous
in her eyes. He even took a few hesitating steps in the direction of the
path where she had disappeared. The sound of voices came to his ear, and
the light ring of Cecily's laughter. The color deepened a little on his
cheek; he re-entered the house and went to his room.
The red sunset, still faintly showing through the heavily recessed
windows to the opposite wall, made two luminous aisles through the
darkness of the long low apartment. From his easy-chair he watched the
color drop out of the sky, the yellow plain grow pallid and seem to
stretch itself to infinite rest; then a black line began to deepen and
creep towards him from the horizon edge; the day was done. It seemed to
him a day lost. He had no doubt now but that he loved his cousin, and
the opportunity of telling her so--of profiting by her predisposition of
the moment--had passed. She would remember herself, she would remember
his weak hesitancy, she would despise him. He rose and walked uneasily
up and down. And yet--and it disgusted him with himself still more--he
was again conscious of the feeling of relief he had before experienced.
A vague formula, “It's better as it is,” “Who knows what might have
come of it?” he found himself repeating, without reason and without
resignation.
Ashamed even of his seclusion, he rose to join the little family circle,
which now habitually gathered around a table on the veranda of the
patio under the rays of a swinging lamp to take their chocolate. To his
surprise the veranda was empty and dark; a light shining from the inner
drawing-room showed him his aunt in her armchair reading, alone. A
slight thrill ran over him: Cecily might be still in the garden! He
noiselessly passed the drawing-room door, turned into a long corridor,
and slipped through a grating in the wall into the lane that separated
it from the garden. The gate was still open; a few paces brought him
into the long alley of roses. Their strong perfume--confined in the
high, hot walls--at first made him giddy. This was followed by an
inexplicable languor; he turned instinctively towards the stone bench
and sank upon it. The long rows of calla lilies against the opposite
wall looked ghostlike in the darkness, and seemed to have turned their
white faces towards him. Then he fancied that ONE had detached itself
from the rank and was moving away. He looked again: surely there was
something gliding along the wall! A quick tremor of anticipation passed
over him. It was Cecily, who had lingered in the garden--perhaps to
give him one more opportunity! He rose quickly, and stepped towards the
apparition, which had now plainly resolved itself into a slight girlish
figure; it slipped on beneath the trees; he followed quickly--his
nervous hesitancy had vanished before what now seemed to be a half-coy,
half-coquettish evasion of him. He called softly, “Cecily!” but she did
not heed him; he quickened his pace--she increased hers. They were both
running. She reached the angle of the wall where the gate opened upon
the road. Suddenly she stopped, as if intentionally, in the clear open
space before it. He could see her distinctly. The lace mantle slipped
from her head and shoulders. It was NOT Cecily!
But it was a face so singularly beautiful and winsome that he was as
quickly arrested. It was a woman's deep, passionate eyes and heavy hair,
joined to a childish oval of cheek and chin, an infantine mouth, and a
little nose whose faintly curved outline redeemed the lower face from
weakness and brought it into charming harmony with the rest. A yellow
rose was pinned in the lustrous black hair above the little ear; a
yellow silk shawl or mantle, which had looked white in the shadows, was
thrown over one shoulder and twisted twice or thrice around the plump
but petite bust. The large black velvety eyes were fixed on his in
half wonderment, half amusement; the lovely lips were parted in half
astonishment and half a smile. And yet she was like a picture, a
dream,--a materialization of one's most fanciful imaginings,--like
anything, in fact, but the palpable flesh and blood she evidently was,
standing only a few feet before him, whose hurried breath he could see
even now heaving her youthful breast.
His own breath appeared suspended, although his heart beat rapidly as
he stammered out: “I beg your pardon--I thought--” He stopped at the
recollection that this was the SECOND time he had followed her.
She did not speak, although her parted lips still curved with their
faint coy smile. Then she suddenly lifted her right hand, which had
been hanging at her side, clasping some long black object like a stick.
Without any apparent impulse from her fingers, the stick slowly seemed
to broaden in her little hand into the segment of an opening disk, that,
lifting to her face and shoulders, gradually eclipsed the upper part of
her figure, until, mounting higher, the beautiful eyes and the yellow
rose of her hair alone remained above--a large unfurled fan! Then
the long eyelashes drooped, as if in a mute farewell, and they too
disappeared as the fan was lifted higher. The half-hidden figure
appeared to glide to the gateway, lingered for an instant, and vanished.
The astounded Dick stepped quickly into the road, but fan and figure
were swallowed up in the darkness.
Amazed and bewildered, he stood for a moment, breathless and irresolute.
It was no doubt the same stranger that he had seen before. But WHO was
she, and what was she doing there? If she were one of their Spanish
neighbors, drawn simply by curiosity to become a trespasser, why had she
lingered to invite a scrutiny that would clearly identify her? It was
not the escapade of that giddy girl which the lower part of her face had
suggested, for such a one would have giggled and instantly flown; it was
not the deliberate act of a grave woman of the world, for its sequel
was so purposeless. Why had she revealed herself to HIM alone? Dick
felt himself glowing with a half-shamed, half-secret pleasure. Then he
remembered Cecily, and his own purpose in coming into the garden. He
hurriedly made a tour of the walks and shrubbery, ostentatiously calling
her, yet seeing, as in a dream, only the beautiful eyes of the stranger
still before him, and conscious of an ill-defined remorse and disloyalty
he had never known before. But Cecily was not there; and again he
experienced the old sensation of relief!
He shut the garden gate, crossed the road, and found the grille just
closing behind a slim white figure. He started, for it was Cecily; but
even in his surprise he was conscious of wondering how he could have
ever mistaken the stranger for her. She appeared startled too; she
looked pale and abstracted. Could she have been a witness of his strange
interview?
Her first sentence dispelled the idea.
“I suppose you were in the garden?” she said, with a certain timidity.
“I didn't go there--it seemed so close and stuffy--but walked a little
down the lane.”
A moment before he would have eagerly told her his adventure; but in the
presence of her manifest embarrassment his own increased. He concluded
to tell her another time. He murmured vaguely that he had been looking
for her in the garden, yet he had a flushing sense of falsehood in his
reserve; and they passed silently along the corridor and entered the
patio together. She lit the hanging lamp mechanically. She certainly
WAS pale; her slim hand trembled slightly. Suddenly her eyes met his,
a faint color came into her cheek, and she smiled. She put up her hand
with a girlish gesture towards the back of her head.
“What are you looking at? Is my hair coming down?”
“No,” hesitated Dick, “but--I--thought--you were looking just a LITTLE
pale.”
An aggressive ray slipped into her blue eyes.
“Strange! I thought YOU were. Just now at the grille you looked as if
the roses hadn't agreed with you.”
They both laughed, a little nervously, and Conchita brought the
chocolate. When Aunt Viney came from the drawing-room she found the two
young people together, and Cecily in a gale of high spirits.