that the settlement was waiting breathlessly for their rescue, who
anticipated that they would be welcomed as heroes, were obliged to
meet the ill-concealed amusement of passengers and friends at their
dishevelled and bedraggled appearance, which suggested only the
blundering mishaps of an ordinary summer outing! “Boatin' in the
reservoir, and fell in?” “Playing at canal-boat in the Ditch?” were some
of the cheerful hypotheses. The fleeting sense of gratitude they had
felt for their deliverers was dissipated by the time they had reached
their homes, and their rancor increased by the information that when the
earthquake occurred Mr. Tom Sparrell and Miss Delaware were enjoying
a “pasear” in the forest--he having a half-holiday by virtue of
the festival--and that the earthquake had revived his fears of a
catastrophe. The two had procured axes in the woodman's hut and did what
they thought was necessary to relieve the situation of the picnickers.
But the very modesty of this account of their own performance had the
effect of belittling the catastrophe itself, and the picnickers' report
of their exceeding peril was received with incredulous laughter.
For the first time in the history of Red Gulch there was a serious
division between the Piper family, supported by the Contingent, and the
rest of the settlement. Tom Sparrell's warning was remembered by
the latter, and the ingratitude of the picnickers to their rescuers
commented upon; the actual calamity to the reservoir was more or less
attributed to the imprudent and reckless contiguity of the revelers on
that day, and there were not wanting those who referred the accident
itself to the machinations of the scheming Ditch Director Piper!
It was said that there was a stormy scene in the Piper household that
evening. The judge had demanded that Delaware should break off her
acquaintance with Sparrell, and she had refused; the judge had demanded
of Sparrell's employer that he should discharge him, and had been met
with the astounding information that Sparrell was already a silent
partner in the concern. At this revelation Judge Piper was alarmed;
while he might object to a clerk who could not support a wife, as a
consistent democrat he could not oppose a fairly prosperous tradesman.
A final appeal was made to Delaware; she was implored to consider the
situation of her sisters, who had all made more ambitious marriages
or were about to make them. Why should she now degrade the family by
marrying a country storekeeper?
It is said that here the youngest Miss Piper made a memorable reply, and
a revelation the truth of which was never gainsaid:--
“You all wanter know why I'm going to marry Tom Sparrell?” she queried,
standing up and facing the whole family circle.
“Yes.”
“Why I prefer him to the hull caboodle that you girls have married or
are going to marry?” she continued, meditatively biting the end of her
braid.
“Yes.”
“Well, he's the only man of the whole lot that hasn't proposed to me
first.”
It is presumed that Sparrell made good the omission, or that the family
were glad to get rid of her, for they were married that autumn. And
really a later comparison of the family records shows that while Captain
Fairfax remained “Captain Fairfax,” and the other sons-in-law did not
advance proportionately in standing or riches, the lame storekeeper of
Red Gulch became the Hon. Senator Tom Sparrell.
A WIDOW OF THE SANTA ANA VALLEY
The Widow Wade was standing at her bedroom window staring out, in that
vague instinct which compels humanity in moments of doubt and perplexity
to seek this change of observation or superior illumination. Not that
Mrs. Wade's disturbance was of a serious character. She had passed the
acute stage of widowhood by at least two years, and the slight redness
of her soft eyelids as well as the droop of her pretty mouth were
merely the recognized outward and visible signs of the grievously minded
religious community in which she lived. The mourning she still wore
was also partly in conformity with the sad-colored garments of
her neighbors, and the necessities of the rainy season. She was in
comfortable circumstances, the mistress of a large ranch in the valley,
which had lately become more valuable by the extension of a wagon road
through its centre. She was simply worrying whether she should go to
a “sociable” ending with “a dance”--a daring innovation of some
strangers--at the new hotel, or continue to eschew such follies, that
were, according to local belief, unsuited to “a vale of tears.”
Indeed at this moment the prospect she gazed abstractedly upon seemed
to justify that lugubrious description. The Santa Ana Valley--a long
monotonous level--was dimly visible through moving curtains of rain or
veils of mist, to the black mourning edge of the horizon, and had looked
like that for months. The valley--in some remote epoch an arm of the San
Francisco Bay--every rainy season seemed to be trying to revert to its
original condition, and, long after the early spring had laid on its
liberal color in strips, bands, and patches of blue and yellow, the
blossoms of mustard and lupine glistened like wet paint. Nevertheless on
that rich alluvial soil Nature's tears seemed only to fatten the
widow's acres and increase her crops. Her neighbors, too, were equally
prosperous. Yet for six months of the year the recognized expression
of Santa Ana was one of sadness, and for the other six months--of
resignation. Mrs. Wade had yielded early to this influence, as she had
to others, in the weakness of her gentle nature, and partly as it was
more becoming the singular tragedy that had made her a widow.
The late Mr. Wade had been found dead with a bullet through his head in
a secluded part of the road over Heavy Tree Hill in Sonora County. Near
him lay two other bodies, one afterwards identified as John Stubbs, a
resident of the Hill, and probably a traveling companion of Wade's,
and the other a noted desperado and highwayman, still masked, as at the
moment of the attack. Wade and his companion had probably sold their
lives dearly, and against odds, for another mask was found on the
ground, indicating that the attack was not single-handed, and as
Wade's body had not yet been rifled, it was evident that the remaining
highwayman had fled in haste. The hue and cry had been given by
apparently the only one of the travelers who escaped, but as he was
hastening to take the overland coach to the East at the time, his
testimony could not be submitted to the coroner's deliberation. The
facts, however, were sufficiently plain for a verdict of willful murder
against the highwayman, although it was believed that the absent witness
had basely deserted his companion and left him to his fate, or, as was
suggested by others, that he might even have been an accomplice. It
was this circumstance which protracted comment on the incident, and
the sufferings of the widow, far beyond that rapid obliteration which
usually overtook such affairs in the feverish haste of the early days.
It caused her to remove to Santa Ana, where her old father had feebly
ranched a “quarter section” in the valley. He survived her husband
only a few months, leaving her the property, and once more in mourning.
Perhaps this continuity of woe endeared her to a neighborhood where
distinctive ravages of diphtheria or scarlet fever gave a kind of social
preeminence to any household, and she was so sympathetically assisted by
her neighbors in the management of the ranch that, from an unkempt
and wasteful wilderness, it became paying property. The slim, willowy
figure, soft red-lidded eyes, and deep crape of “Sister Wade” at church
or prayer-meeting was grateful to the soul of these gloomy worshipers,
and in time she herself found that the arm of these dyspeptics of mind
and body was nevertheless strong and sustaining. Small wonder that she
should hesitate to-night about plunging into inconsistent, even though
trifling, frivolities.
But apart from this superficial reason, there was another instinctive
one deep down in the recesses of Mrs. Wade's timid heart which she had
kept to herself, and indeed would have tearfully resented had it been
offered by another. The late Mr. Wade had been, in fact, a singular
example of this kind of frivolous existence carried to a man-like
excess. Besides being a patron of amusements, Mr. Wade gambled, raced,
and drank. He was often home late, and sometimes not at all. Not that
this conduct was exceptional in the “roaring days” of Heavy Tree Hill,
but it had given Mrs. Wade perhaps an undue preference for a less
certain, even if a more serious life. His tragic death was, of course,
a kind of martyrdom, which exalted him in the feminine mind to a saintly
memory; yet Mrs. Wade was not without a certain relief in that. It
was voiced, perhaps crudely, by the widow of Abner Drake in a visit of
condolence to the tearful Mrs. Wade a few days after Wade's death. “It's
a vale o' sorrow, Mrs. Wade,” said the sympathizer, “but it has its ups
and downs, and I recken ye'll be feelin' soon pretty much as I did about
Abner when HE was took. It was mighty soothin' and comfortin' to feel
that whatever might happen now, I always knew just whar Abner was
passin' his nights.” Poor slim Mrs. Wade had no disquieting sense of
humor to interfere with her reception of this large truth, and she
accepted it with a burst of reminiscent tears.
A long volleying shower had just passed down the level landscape, and
was followed by a rolling mist from the warm saturated soil like the
smoke of the discharge. Through it she could see a faint lightening
of the hidden sun, again darkening through a sudden onset of rain, and
changing as with her conflicting doubts and resolutions. Thus gazing,
she was vaguely conscious of an addition to the landscape in the shape
of a man who was passing down the road with a pack on his back like
the tramping “prospectors” she had often seen at Heavy Tree Hill. That
memory apparently settled her vacillating mind; she determined she
would NOT go to the dance. But as she was turning away from the window
a second figure, a horseman, appeared in another direction by a
cross-road, a shorter cut through her domain. This she had no difficulty
in recognizing as one of the strangers who were getting up the dance.
She had noticed him at church on the previous Sunday. As he passed the
house he appeared to be gazing at it so earnestly that she drew back
from the window lest she should be seen. And then, for no reason
whatever, she changed her mind once more, and resolved to go to the
dance. Gravely announcing this fact to the wife of her superintendent
who kept house with her in her loneliness, she thought nothing more
about it. She should go in her mourning, with perhaps the addition of a
white collar and frill.
It was evident, however, that Santa Ana thought a good deal more than
she did of this new idea, which seemed a part of the innovation already
begun by the building up of the new hotel. It was argued by some that
as the new church and new schoolhouse had been opened by prayer, it was
only natural that a lighter festivity should inaugurate the opening of
the hotel. “I reckon that dancin' is about the next thing to travelin'
for gettin' up an appetite for refreshments, and that's what the
landlord is kalkilatin' to sarve,” was the remark of a gloomy but
practical citizen on the veranda of “The Valley Emporium.” “That's so,”
rejoined a bystander; “and I notice on that last box o' pills I got for
chills the directions say that a little 'agreeable exercise'--not too
violent--is a great assistance to the working o' the pills.”
“I reckon that that Mr. Brooks who's down here lookin' arter mill
property, got up the dance. He's bin round town canvassin' all the women
folks and drummin' up likely gals for it. They say he actooally sent an
invite to the Widder Wade,” remarked another lounger. “Gosh! he's got
cheek!”
“Well, gentlemen,” said the proprietor judicially, “while we don't
intend to hev any minin' camp fandangos or 'Frisco falals round Santa
Any--(Santa Ana was proud of its simple agricultural virtues)--I ain't
so hard-shelled as not to give new things a fair trial. And, after all,
it's the women folk that has the say about it. Why, there's old Miss
Ford sez she hasn't kicked a fut sence she left Mizoori, but wouldn't
mind trying it agin. Ez to Brooks takin' that trouble--well, I suppose
it's along o' his bein' HEALTHY!” He heaved a deep dyspeptic sigh, which
was faintly echoed by the others. “Why, look at him now, ridin' round
on that black hoss o' his, in the wet since daylight and not carin' for
blind chills or rhumatiz!”
He was looking at a serape-draped horseman, the one the widow had seen
on the previous night, who was now cantering slowly up the street.
Seeing the group on the veranda, he rode up, threw himself lightly from
his saddle, and joined them. He was an alert, determined, good-looking
fellow of about thirty-five, whose smooth, smiling face hardly commended
itself to Santa Ana, though his eyes were distinctly sympathetic. He
glanced at the depressed group around him and became ominously serious.
“When did it happen?” he asked gravely.
“What happen?” said the nearest bystander.
“The Funeral, Flood, Fight, or Fire. Which of the four F's was it?”
“What are ye talkin' about?” said the proprietor stiffly, scenting some
dangerous humor.
“YOU,” said Brooks promptly. “You're all standing here, croaking like
crows, this fine morning. I passed YOUR farm, Johnson, not an hour ago;
the wheat just climbing out of the black adobe mud as thick as rows of
pins on paper--what have YOU to grumble at? I saw YOUR stock, Briggs,
over on Two-Mile Bottom, waddling along, fat as the adobe they were
sticking in, their coats shining like fresh paint--what's the matter
with YOU? And,” turning to the proprietor, “there's YOUR shed, Saunders,
over on the creek, just bursting with last year's grain that you know
has gone up two hundred per cent. since you bought it at a bargain--what
are YOU growling at? It's enough to provoke a fire or a famine to hear
you groaning--and take care it don't, some day, as a lesson to you.”
All this was so perfectly true of the prosperous burghers that they
could not for a moment reply. But Briggs had recourse to what he
believed to be a retaliatory taunt.
“I heard you've been askin' Widow Wade to come to your dance,” he said,
with a wink at the others. “Of course she said 'Yes.'”
“Of course she did,” returned Brooks coolly. “I've just got her note.”
“What?” ejaculated the three men together. “Mrs. Wade comin'?”
“Certainly! Why shouldn't she? And it would do YOU good to come too,
and shake the limp dampness out o' you,” returned Brooks, as he quietly
remounted his horse and cantered away.
“Darned ef I don't think he's got his eye on the widder,” said Johnson
faintly.
“Or the quarter section,” added Briggs gloomily.
For all that, the eventful evening came, with many lights in the
staring, undraped windows of the hotel, coldly bright bunting on the
still damp walls of the long dining-room, and a gentle downpour from the
hidden skies above. A close carryall was especially selected to bring
Mrs. Wade and her housekeeper. The widow arrived, looking a little
slimmer than usual in her closely buttoned black dress, white collar and
cuffs, very glistening in eye and in hair,--whose glossy black ringlets
were perhaps more elaborately arranged than was her custom,--and with
a faint coming and going of color, due perhaps to her agitation at this
tentative reentering into worldly life, which was nevertheless quite
virginal in effect. A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory
proceedings, and a singular want of sociability was visible in the
“sociable” part of the entertainment. People talked in whispers or with
that grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities;
conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk to
rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like water
drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the floor. The
widow became a helpless, religious centre of deacons and Sunday-school
teachers, which Brooks, untiring, yet fruitless, in his attempt to
produce gayety, tried in vain to break. To this gloom the untried
dangers of the impending dance, duly prefigured by a lonely cottage
piano and two violins in a desert of expanse, added a nervous
chill. When at last the music struck up--somewhat hesitatingly and
protestingly, from the circumstance that the player was the church
organist, and fumbled mechanically for his stops, the attempt to make
up a cotillon set was left to the heroic Brooks. Yet he barely escaped
disaster when, in posing the couples, he incautiously begged them to
look a little less as if they were waiting for the coffin to be borne
down the aisle between them, and was rewarded by a burst of tears from
Mrs. Johnson, who had lost a child two years before, and who had to
be led away, while her place in the set was taken by another. Yet the
cotillon passed off; a Spanish dance succeeded; “Moneymusk,” with the
Virginia Reel, put a slight intoxicating vibration into the air, and
healthy youth at last asserted itself in a score of freckled but buxom
girls in white muslin, with romping figures and laughter, at the lower
end of the room. Still a rigid decorum reigned among the elder dancers,
and the figures were called out in grave formality, as if, to Brooks's
fancy, they were hymns given from the pulpit, until at the close of
the set, in half-real, half-mock despair, he turned desperately to Mrs.
Wade, his partner:--
“Do you waltz?”
Mrs. Wade hesitated. She HAD, before marriage, and was a good waltzer.
“I do,” she said timidly, “but do you think they”--
But before the poor widow could formulate her fears as to the reception
of “round dances,” Brooks had darted to the piano, and the next moment
she heard with a “fearful joy” the opening bars of a waltz. It was an
old Julien waltz, fresh still in the fifties, daring, provocative
to foot, swamping to intellect, arresting to judgment, irresistible,
supreme! Before Mrs. Wade could protest, Brooks's arm had gathered up
her slim figure, and with one quick backward sweep and swirl they were
off! The floor was cleared for them in a sudden bewilderment of alarm--a
suspense of burning curiosity. The widow's little feet tripped quickly,
her long black skirt swung out; as she turned the corner there was
not only a sudden revelation of her pretty ankles, but, what was more
startling, a dazzling flash of frilled and laced petticoat, which
at once convinced every woman in the room that the act had been
premeditated for days! Yet even that criticism was presently forgotten
in the pervading intoxication of the music and the movement. The younger
people fell into it with wild rompings, whirlings, and clasping of hands
and waists. And stranger than all, a corybantic enthusiasm seized upon
the emotionally religious, and those priests and priestesses of Cybele
who were famous for their frenzy and passion in camp-meeting devotions
seemed to find an equal expression that night in the waltz. And when,
flushed and panting, Mrs. Wade at last halted on the arm of her partner,
they were nearly knocked over by the revolving Johnson and Mrs. Stubbs
in a whirl of gloomy exultation! Deacons and Sunday-school teachers
waltzed together until the long room shook, and the very bunting on
the walls waved and fluttered with the gyrations of those religious
dervishes. Nobody knew--nobody cared how long this frenzy lasted--it
ceased only with the collapse of the musicians. Then, with much vague
bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and incoherent partings,
everybody went dazedly home; there was no other dancing after that--the
waltz was the one event of the festival and of the history of Santa Ana.
And later that night, when the timid Mrs. Wade, in the seclusion of her
own room and the disrobing of her slim figure, glanced at her spotless
frilled and laced petticoat lying on a chair, a faint smile--the first
of her widowhood--curved the corners of her pretty mouth.
A week of ominous silence regarding the festival succeeded in Santa
Ana. The local paper gave the fullest particulars of the opening of the
hotel, but contented itself with saying: “The entertainment concluded
with a dance.” Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled to call upon his
late charming partner twice during the week, characteristically soothed
her anxieties as to the result. “The fact of it is, Mrs. Wade, there's
really nobody in particular to blame--and that's what gets them. They're
all mixed up in it, deacons and Sunday-school teachers; and when
old Johnson tried to be nasty the other evening and hoped you hadn't
suffered from your exertions that night, I told him you hadn't quite
recovered yet from the physical shock of having been run into by him and
Mrs. Stubbs, but that, you being a lady, you didn't tell just how you
felt at the exhibition he and she made of themselves. That shut him up.”
“But you shouldn't have said that,” said Mrs. Wade with a frightened
little smile.
“No matter,” returned Brooks cheerfully. “I'll take the blame of it with
the others. You see they'll have to have a scapegoat--and I'm just the
man, for I got up the dance! And as I'm going away, I suppose I shall
bear off the sin with me into the wilderness.”
“You're going away?” repeated Mrs. Wade in more genuine concern.
“Not for long,” returned Brooks laughingly. “I came here to look up a
mill site, and I've found it. Meantime I think I've opened their eyes.”
“You have opened mine,” said the widow with timid frankness.
They were soft pretty eyes when opened, in spite of their heavy red
lids, and Mr. Brooks thought that Santa Ana would be no worse if they
remained open. Possibly he looked it, for Mrs. Wade said hurriedly, “I
mean--that is--I've been thinking that life needn't ALWAYS be as gloomy
as we make it here. And even HERE, you know, Mr. Brooks, we have six
months' sunshine--though we always forget it in the rainy season.”
“That's so,” said Brooks cheerfully. “I once lost a heap of money
through my own foolishness, and I've managed to forget it, and I even
reckon to get it back again out of Santa Ana if my mill speculation
holds good. So good-by, Mrs. Wade--but not for long.” He shook her
hand frankly and departed, leaving the widow conscious of a certain
sympathetic confidence and a little grateful for--she knew not what.
This feeling remained with her most of the afternoon, and even imparted
a certain gayety to her spirits, to the extent of causing her to hum
softly to herself; the air being oddly enough the Julien Waltz. And
when, later in the day, the shadows were closing in with the rain,
word was brought to her that a stranger wished to see her in the
sitting-room, she carried a less mournful mind to this function of her
existence. For Mrs. Wade was accustomed to give audience to traveling
agents, tradesmen, working-hands and servants, as chatelaine of her
ranch, and the occasion was not novel. Yet on entering the room, which
she used partly as an office, she found some difficulty in classifying
the stranger, who at first glance reminded her of the tramping miner
she had seen that night from her window. He was rather incongruously
dressed, some articles of his apparel being finer than others; he wore
a diamond pin in a scarf folded over a rough “hickory” shirt; his light
trousers were tucked in common mining boots that bore stains of travel
and a suggestion that he had slept in his clothes. What she could see
of his unshaven face in that uncertain light expressed a kind of dogged
concentration, overlaid by an assumption of ease. He got up as she came
in, and with a slight “How do, ma'am,” shut the door behind her and
glanced furtively around the room.
“What I've got to say to ye, Mrs. Wade,--as I reckon you be,--is
strictly private and confidential! Why, ye'll see afore I get through.
But I thought I might just as well caution ye agin our being disturbed.”