*THE HEART LINE*
*PROLOGUE*
In the year 1877 the Siskiyou House, originally a third-class hotel
patronized chiefly by mining men, had fallen into such disrepute that it
was scarcely more than a cheap tenement. Its office was now frankly a
bar-room; beside it, a narrow hallway plunged into the shabby, shadowy
interior; here a steep stairway rose. Above were disconsolate rooms
known to the police of San Francisco as the occasional resort of
counterfeiters, confidence workers and lesser knaves; to the
neighborhood the Siskiyou Hotel had a local reputation as being the home
of Madam Grant, who occupied two rooms on the second floor.
Her rooms were slovenly and squalid--almost barbarous in the extremity
of their neglect. Upon the floor was a matted carpet of dirt and
rubbish inches deep, piled higher at the corners, uneven with lumps of
refuse, bizarre with scraps of paper, cloth and tangled strings.
In the rear room an unclean length of burlap was stretched across a
string, half concealing a disordered, ramshackle cot, whose coverings
were ragged, soiled and moth-eaten. A broken chair or two leaned
crazily against the wall. The dusty windows looked point-blank upon the
damp wall of an abutting wooden house. There had once been paper upon
the walls; it was now torn, scratched and rubbed by grimy shoulders into
a harlequin pattern of dun and greasy tones.
The front room, through the open rolling doors, was, if possible, in a
still worse state of decay, and here wooden and paper boxes, tin cans,
sacks of rags (doing service for cushions), a three-legged table and a
smoked, rusty oil-stove, with its complement of unclean pots and dishes,
showed the place, abominable as was its aspect, to be a human abode. A
print or two, torn from some newspaper or magazine, was pinned to the
wall in protest against the sordidness of the interior. The place gave
forth a fetid and moldy smell. The air was damp, though the sun
struggled in through cracked panes, half lighting the apartment.
There was, however, one piece of furniture, glossily, splendidly new,
incongruously set amidst the disorder--an oak bookcase, its shelves well
filled with volumes. Seated upon a cracker box in front of its open
doors, this afternoon, a boy of eight years sat reading with rapt
excitement the story of _Gulliver's Travels_.
He, too, seemed strangely set in that environment, for he was clean and
sweet in person and dress. His hair was black and waving, his eyes deep
blue, clear and shrewd. His cheeks were pink and gently dimpled, his
mouth ample, firm and well-cut, over a square, deeply cleft chin. He
was patently a handsome child, virile, graceful, determined in his pose.
His natural charm was made more picturesque by a blue flannel suit, with
white collar, cuffs and stockings. Oblivious to his extraordinary
surroundings, he read on until he had finished the book.
He rose then, yawned and walked to the window in the front room to look
out upon the street. Opposite was a row of low buildings--a stable, a
Chinese laundry, two dreary rooming-houses and a saloon. The roof-line
of the block, where the false wooden fronts, met the sky, held his gaze
for a few moments. A horse-car lumbered lazily past, and his eyes fell
to the cobble-paved thoroughfare and its passers-by. To the left,
Market Street roared bustling a block away and the throngs swept up and
down. To the right, a little passage starting from two saloons, one on
each corner of the street, penetrated the slums. The warm, mellow
California sunlight bathed the whole scene, picking out, here and there,
high lights on window-glass that shot forth blinding sparks and flashes.
The boy yawned again, his hands in his pockets, then turned to the sooty
oil stove and peered rather disgustedly amongst the frying-pans, tins
and pasteboard boxes. There was nothing in the way of food to be found.
He sniffed fastidiously at the corrupt odor of cooking, then knelt upon
the floor and began a search, crawling gingerly on hands and knees. The
ends of three matches projected slightly above the surface of the matted
layers of rubbish. Here he scraped the dirt away with a case-knife and
came upon a little paper-wrapped parcel which, opened, disclosed three
bright twenty-five-cent pieces. He wrapped them up again, tucked them
into the hole in the dirt and went on with his quest.
His next find, a foot or so from the base-board of the double doors, was
a _cache_ containing a pearl-handled pen-knife. He put it back. Here
and there in the subsoil he came upon other treasure trove, each article
carefully wrapped in paper or bits of rag--a jet ear-ring, a folded
calendar, a silver chain, two watches, a dozen screw-eyes, several
five-dollar gold pieces, a roll of corset laces. He returned them one
by one as he found them, and smoothed the dirt over the place.
He had nearly exhausted the field in the front room, when he came upon a
small paper bag containing a few macaroons. These he sat down to eat,
first brushing off feathery bits of green mold. He discovered another
bag containing peanuts. He chewed them slowly, throwing the shells upon
the floor, his eyes wandering, his air abstracted.
Leading off the front room was a smaller one whose door was shut. He
opened it now, and went in somewhat fearfully. Here was another cot
drawn up in front of the window, and, upon nails driven in the wall,
women's hats and dresses. Upon the inside of the door was pinned a
stained, yellowing newspaper cut--the portrait of a man perhaps thirty
years old, with mustache and side-whiskers and a wide flowing collar.
Beneath it was printed the name, "Oliver Payson." The boy gazed at it
curiously for some moments.
From this, he turned to a corner where stood an old trunk covered with
cowhide whose hair was rubbed off in mangy spots. Corroded brass-headed
nails held a rotting, pinked flap of red leather about the edge of the
cover. On the top of the trunk, also in brass-headed nails, were the
letters "F.G."
He stooped over and tried the lid. The trunk was locked. He lifted it,
testing its weight, and found it too heavy to be budged. He rubbed the
hair with his hand, played with the handles and fingered the lock
longingly; then, after a last look, he left the room and closed the
door.
He had gone back to the bookcase and taken down a volume of Montaigne's
_Essays_, when he heard a knock on the door of the back room leading
into the hallway. He unlocked the door, opened it a few inches and
stood guarding the entrance.
A woman of middle age in a black bonnet, shawl and gown attempted to
pass him. He stood stiffly in her way, regarding her harsh, sour
visage, thin, cruel lips and pale, humid, bluish eyes. At his resolute
defense her attitude weakened.
"Ain't Madam Grant to home?" she said.
"No, she is not. What do you want?"
"Oh, I just wanted to see her; you let me come in and wait a
while--she'll be back soon, I s'pose?"
"She doesn't allow me to let anybody in when she's away," the boy
protested.
"Oh, that's all right, Frankie; I'm a particular friend of hers. I'll
just come in and make myself to home till she comes in. I'm all winded
comin' up them steep stairs, and I've got to set down."
"I'm sorry," the boy said more politely, "but I mustn't let you in. I
did let a lady in once, and Mamsy scolded me for it. The next day we
missed a watch, too."
"My sakes! Does she keep her watches in the dirt on the floor, too?"
the woman said, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. "You needn't worry
about me, my dear; everybody knows me, and trusts me, too. Besides, my
business is important and I've just _got_ to see the Madam, sure."
"You may wait on the stairs, if you like, but you can't come in here.
She says that the neighbors are altogether too curious." The remark was
made deliberately, as if to aid his defense by its rudeness. But the
woman's skin was tough.
"You're a pert one, you be!" she sniffed. "I'd like to know what you do
here all day, anyway. You ought to be to school! We'll have to look
after you, young man; they's societies that makes a business of seeing
to children that's neglected like you, and takes 'em away where they can
be taught an education and live decent."
The boy's face changed to dismay. The tears came into his eyes. "I
don't _want_ to go away, I want to live here, and I'm going to, too!
Besides, I can read and write already, and I learn more things than you
can learn at school. I'd just like to see them take me away!"
"What do you learn, now?" said the woman insinuatingly. "Do you learn
how to tell fortunes? Can you tell mine, now? I'll give you a nickel
if you will!"
"I don't want a nickel. I've got all the money I want!"
"Oh, you have, have you? How much have you got? Say, I hear the
Madam's pretty well fixed. How much do you s'pose she's worth, now?"
"You can't work me that way."
She put forth a shaky hand to stroke his dark hair, and he warded her
off. "Nor that way either!" he said, beginning to grow angry.
"Say, sonny, do you ever see the spirits here?" she began again.
"No, but I can smell 'em now," he replied.
She burst out into a cackle of laughter. "Say, that's pretty good!
You're a likely little feller, you be. I didn't mean no harm, noways."
"You mean that you didn't mean any harm, don't you?" he asked soberly.
"No, I don't mean no harm, sure I don't! What d'you mean?"
"She says one shouldn't use double negatives."
"What's them, then?"
"I mean you don't use good English," said the boy.
"I don't talk English? What do I talk then--Dutch? What's the matter
with you?"
"Oh, I'm just studying grammar, that's all. Now you see I don't need to
go to school, the way you said. Mamsy teaches me every night."
"Oh, she does, does she? Well, well! I hear she has a fine education;
some say she's went to college, even."
"Yes, she has. She went to a woman's college in the East, once."
"Then what's she living in this pigsty for, I'd like to know! It beats
all, this room does. Let me come in for a moment and just look round a
bit, will you? I won't touch nothing at all, sure."
The boy protested, and it might have come to a physical struggle had not
footsteps been heard coming up the narrow stairway. The visitor peered
over the railing of the balusters.
"That's her!" she whispered hoarsely.
A head, rising, looked between the balusters, like a wild animal gazing
through the bars of its cage. It was the head of a woman of twenty-seven
or eight, and though her face had a strange, wild expression, with
staring eyes, she was, or had undoubtedly been, a lady. Her hair,
prematurely gray, was parted in the center and brought down in waves
over her ears. Her eyebrows, in vivid contrast, were black; and between
them a single vertical line cleft her forehead. What might have been a
rare beauty was now distorted into something fantastic and mysterious,
though when at rare intervals she smiled, a veil seemed to be drawn
aside and she became an engaging, familiar, warm-hearted woman. She was
dressed in a brilliant red gown and dolman of mosaic cloth with a
Tyrolean hat of the period. Such striking color was, thirty years ago,
uncommon upon the streets, but, even had it been more usual, the
severity of her costume with neither a bustle nor the elaborate ruffles
and trimmings then in vogue, would have made her conspicuous.
She came up, with a white face, gasping for breath after her climb, one
hand to her heart. For a moment she seemed unable to speak. Then
suddenly and sharply she said:
"Francis, shut the door!"
The boy obeyed, coming out into the hall, with a hand still holding the
knob.
"The lady wanted me to let her in, but I wouldn't do it, Mamsy," he
said.
Madam Grant turned her eyes upon the apologetic, cringing figure, whose
thin, skinny fingers plucked at her shawl.
"I just called neighborly like, thinkin' maybe you'd give me a settin',
Madam Grant," she said.
Madam Grant had come nearer, now, and stood gazing at her visitor. The
expression of scorn had faded from her face, her eyes glazed. She spoke
slowly in a deliberate monotone.
"Your name is Margaret Riley."
The woman nodded. Her lips had fallen open, and her eyes were fixed in
awe.
"Who are the three men I see beside you?" demanded Madam Grant.
"They was only two! I swear to God they was only two!"
"There is a little child, too."
"For the love of Heaven!" Mrs. Riley moaned. "Send 'em away, send 'em
away, tell 'em to leave me be!"
Madam Grant's eyes brightened a little, and her color returned.
"Come in the room and I will see what I can do for you."
The three entered, Mrs. Riley, half terrified but curious, darting her
eyes about the apartment, sniffing at the foul odor, her furtive glances
returning ever to the mad woman. Francis went to the bookcase and
resumed his reading without manifesting further interest in the visitor.
Madam Grant seated herself upon a wooden box covered with sacking and
untied the strings of her hat.
"What do you want to know?" she asked sharply.
"I got three tickets in the lottery, and I want to know which one to
keep," Mrs. Riley ventured, somewhat shamefaced.
Madam Grant gave a fierce gesture, and the line between her brows grew
deeper. "I'll answer such questions for nobody! That's the devil's
work, not mine. How did your three husbands die, Margaret Riley?"
The woman held up her hands in protest. "Two, only two!" she cried;
"and they died in their beds regular enough. God knows I wore my
fingers out for 'em, too!"
"They died suddenly," Madam Grant replied impassively. "Who's the other
one with the smooth face--the one who limps?"