of the junior partner, I may add briefly that he was just nineteen, that
he had early joined the emigration to California, and after one or two
previous light-hearted essays at other occupations, for which he was
singularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his present
venture, still less suited to his temperament. In those adventurous days
trades and vocations were not always filled by trained workmen; it was
extremely probable that the experienced chemist was already making his
success as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his partners,
and Mr. Kane's inexperienced position was by no means a novel one. A
slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an American schoolboy's
acquaintance with chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed
sufficient by his partner, a regular physician, for practical
cooperation in the vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. He
knew the difference between acids and alkalies and the peculiar results
which attended their incautious combination. But he was excessively
deliberate, painstaking, and cautious. The legend which adorned the desk
at the counter, “Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared,” was more
than usually true as regarded the adverb. There was no danger of his
poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was possible
that an urgent “case” might have succumbed to the disease while he was
putting up the remedy. Nor was his caution entirely passive. In those
days the “heroic” practice of medicine was in keeping with the abnormal
development of the country; there were “record” doses of calomel
and quinine, and he had once or twice incurred the fury of local
practitioners by sending back their prescriptions with a modest query.
The far-off clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested his attention;
looking down the street, he could see the lights of a hackney carriage
advancing towards him. They had already flashed upon the open crossing
a block beyond before his vague curiosity changed into an active
instinctive presentiment that they were coming to the shop. He withdrew
to a more becoming and dignified position behind the counter as the
carriage drew up with a jerk before the door.
The driver rolled from his box and opened the carriage door to a woman
whom he assisted, between some hysterical exclamations on her part and
some equally incoherent explanations of his own, into the shop. Kane saw
at a glance that both were under the influence of liquor, and one, the
woman, was disheveled and bleeding about the head. Yet she was elegantly
dressed and evidently en fete, with one or two “tricolor” knots and
ribbons mingled with her finery. Her golden hair, matted and darkened
with blood, had partly escaped from her French bonnet and hung heavily
over her shoulders. The driver, who was supporting her roughly, and with
a familiarity that was part of the incongruous spectacle, was the first
to speak.
“Madame le Blank! ye know! Got cut about the head down at the fete
at South Park! Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on some
champagne bottles. See? Wants plastering up!”
“Ah brute! Hog! Nozzing of ze kine! Why will you lie? I dance! Ze
cowards, fools, traitors zere upset ze table and I fall. I am cut! Ah,
my God, how I am cut!”
She stopped suddenly and lapsed heavily against the counter. At which
Kane hurried around to support her into the surgery with the one
fixed idea in his bewildered mind of getting her out of the shop,
and, suggestively, into the domain and under the responsibility of his
partner. The hackman, apparently relieved and washing his hands of any
further complicity in the matter, nodded and smiled, and saying, “I
reckon I'll wait outside, pardner,” retreated incontinently to his
vehicle. To add to Kane's half-ludicrous embarrassment the fair
patient herself slightly resisted his support, accused the hackman of
“abandoning her,” and demanded if Kane knew “zee reason of zees affair,”
yet she presently lapsed again into the large reclining-chair which
he had wheeled forward, with open mouth, half-shut eyes, and a strange
Pierrette mask of face, combined of the pallor of faintness and chalk,
and the rouge of paint and blood. At which Kane's cautiousness again
embarrassed him. A little brandy from the bottle labeled “Vini Galli”
seemed to be indicated, but his inexperience could not determine if her
relaxation was from bloodlessness or the reacting depression of alcohol.
In this dilemma he chose a medium course, with aromatic spirits of
ammonia, and mixing a diluted quantity in a measuring-glass, poured
it between her white lips. A start, a struggle, a cough--a volley
of imprecatory French, and the knocking of the glass from his
hand followed--but she came to! He quickly sponged her head of the
half-coagulated blood, and removed a few fragments of glass from a long
laceration of the scalp. The shock of the cold water and the appearance
of the ensanguined basin frightened her into a momentary passivity. But
when Kane found it necessary to cut her hair in the region of the wound
in order to apply the adhesive plaster, she again endeavored to rise and
grasp the scissors.
“You'll bleed to death if you're not quiet,” said the young man with
dogged gravity.
Something in his manner impressed her into silence again. He cut whole
locks away ruthlessly; he was determined to draw the edges of the wound
together with the strip of plaster and stop the bleeding--if he cropped
the whole head. His excessive caution for her physical condition did
not extend to her superficial adornment. Her yellow tresses lay on the
floor, her neck and shoulders were saturated with water from the sponge
which he continually applied, until the heated strips of plaster had
closed the wound almost hermetically. She whimpered, tears ran down her
cheeks; but so long as it was not blood the young man was satisfied.
In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and presently the sound
of rapping on the counter. Another customer!
Mr. Kane called out, “Wait a moment,” and continued his ministrations.
After a pause the rapping recommenced. Kane was just securing the last
strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence. Then the door flew
open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the threshold. It was
that of a miner recently returned from the gold diggings--so recently
that he evidently had not had time to change his clothes at his adjacent
hotel, and stood there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel
shirt, over which his coat was slung like a hussar's jacket from his
shoulder. Kane would have uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion,
had not the intruder himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment
and contrition that was beyond the effect of any reproval. He literally
gasped at the spectacle before him. A handsomely dressed woman reclining
in a chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depending from her saturated
shoulders; tresses of golden hair filling her lap and lying on the
floor; a pail of ruddy water and a sponge at her feet, and a pale
young man bending over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of yellow
plaster!
“'Scuse me, pard! I was just dropping in; don't you hurry! I kin wait,”
he stammered, falling back, and then the door closed abruptly behind
him.
Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and neck of his patient
with a clean towel and his own handkerchief, threw her gorgeous opera
cloak over her shoulders, and assisted her to rise. She did so, weakly
but obediently; she was evidently stunned and cowed in some mysterious
way by his material attitude, perhaps, or her sudden realization of her
position; at least the contrast between her aggressive entrance into
the shop and her subdued preparation for her departure was so remarkable
that it affected even Kane's preoccupation.
“There,” he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor with an
encouraging smile, “I think this will do; we've stopped the bleeding. It
will probably smart a little as the plaster sets closer. I can send my
partner, Dr. Sparlow, to you in the morning.”
She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile. “And zees Doctor
Sparrlow--eez he like you, M'sieu?”
“He is older, and very well known,” said the young man seriously. “I can
safely recommend him.”
“Ah,” she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her quite
pretty. “Ah--he ez older--your Doctor Sparrlow--but YOU are strong,
M'sieu.”
“And,” said Kane vaguely, “he will tell you what to do.”
“Ah,” she repeated again softly, with the same smile, “he will tell me
what to do if I shall not know myself. Dat ez good.”
Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless white
paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty fashion dear
to druggists' clerks. As he handed it to her she felt in her pocket and
produced a handful of gold.
“What shall I pay for zees, M'sieu?”
Kane reddened a little--solely because of his slow arithmetical
faculties. Adhesive plaster was cheap--he would like to have charged
proportionately for the exact amount he had used; but the division was
beyond him! And he lacked the trader's instinct.
“Twenty-five cents, I think,” he hazarded briefly.
She started, but smiled again. “Twenty-five cents for all zees--ze
medicine, ze strips for ze head, ze hair cut”--she glanced at the paper
parcel he had given her--“it is only twenty-five cents?”
“That's all.”
He selected from her outstretched palm, with some difficulty, the
exact amount, the smallest coin it held. She again looked at him
curiously--half confusedly--and moved slowly into the shop. The miner,
who was still there, retreated as before with a gaspingly apologetic
gesture--even flattening himself against the window to give her sweeping
silk flounces freer passage. As she passed into the street with a
“Merci, M'sieu, good a'night,” and the hackman started from the vehicle
to receive her, the miner drew a long breath, and bringing his fist down
upon the counter, ejaculated,--
“B'gosh! She's a stunner!”
Kane, a good deal relieved at her departure and the success of his
ministration, smiled benignly.
The stranger again stared after the retreating carriage, looked around
the shop, and even into the deserted surgery, and approached the
counter confidentially. “Look yer, pardner. I kem straight from St. Jo,
Mizzorri, to Gold Hill--whar I've got a claim--and I reckon this is the
first time I ever struck San Francisker. I ain't up to towny ways nohow,
and I allow that mebbe I'm rather green. So we'll let that pass! Now
look yer!” he added, leaning over the counter with still deeper and even
mysterious confidence, “I suppose this yer kind o' thing is the regular
go here, eh? nothin' new to YOU! in course no! But to me, pard, it's
just fetchin' me! Lifts me clear outer my boots every time! Why, when I
popped into that thar room, and saw that lady--all gold, furbelows,
and spangles--at twelve o'clock at night, sittin' in that cheer and you
a-cuttin' her h'r and swabbin' her head o' blood, and kinder prospectin'
for 'indications,' so to speak, and doin' it so kam and indifferent
like, I sez to myself, 'Rube, Rube,' sez I, 'this yer's life! city life!
San Francisker life! and b'gosh, you've dropped into it! Now, pard, look
yar! don't you answer, ye know, ef it ain't square and above board for
me to know; I ain't askin' you to give the show away, ye know, in the
matter of high-toned ladies like that, but” (very mysteriously, and
sinking his voice to the lowest confidential pitch, as he put his
hand to his ear as if to catch the hushed reply), “what mout hev bin
happening, pard?”
Considerably amused at the man's simplicity, Kane replied
good-humoredly: “Danced among some champagne bottles on a table at a
party, fell and got cut by glass.”
The stranger nodded his head slowly and approvingly as he repeated with
infinite deliberateness: “Danced on champagne bottles, champagne! you
said, pard? at a pahty! Yes!” (musingly and approvingly). “I reckon
that's about the gait they take. SHE'D do it.”
“Is there anything I can do for you? sorry to have kept you waiting,”
said Kane, glancing at the clock.
“O ME! Lord! ye needn't mind me. Why, I should wait for anythin' o' the
like o' that, and be just proud to do it! And ye see, I sorter helped
myself while you war busy.”
“Helped yourself?” said Kane in astonishment.
“Yes, outer that bottle.” He pointed to the ammonia bottle, which still
stood on the counter. “It seemed to be handy and popular.”
“Man! you might have poisoned yourself.”
The stranger paused a moment at the idea. “So I mout, I reckon,” he said
musingly, “that's so! pizined myself jest ez you was lookin' arter that
high-toned case, and kinder bothered you! It's like me!”
“I mean it required diluting; you ought to have taken it in water,” said
Kane.
“I reckon! It DID sorter h'ist me over to the door for a little fresh
air at first! seemed rayther scaldy to the lips. But wot of it that GOT
THAR,” he put his hand gravely to his stomach, “did me pow'ful good.”
“What was the matter with you?” asked Kane.
“Well, ye see, pard” (confidentially again), “I reckon it's suthin'
along o' my heart. Times it gets to poundin' away like a quartz stamp,
and then it stops suddent like, and kinder leaves ME out too.”
Kane looked at him more attentively. He was a strong, powerfully built
man with a complexion that betrayed nothing more serious than
the effects of mining cookery. It was evidently a common case of
indigestion.
“I don't say it would not have done you some good if properly
administered,” he replied. “If you like I'll put up a diluted quantity
and directions?”
“That's me, every time, pardner!” said the stranger with an accent of
relief. “And look yer, don't you stop at that! Ye just put me up some
samples like of anythin' you think mout be likely to hit. I'll go in for
a fair show, and then meander in every now and then, betwixt times, to
let you know. Ye don't mind my drifting in here, do ye? It's about ez
likely a place ez I struck since I've left the Sacramento boat, and my
hotel, just round the corner. Ye just sample me a bit o' everythin';
don't mind the expense. I'll take YOUR word for it. The way you--a
young fellow--jest stuck to your work in thar, cool and kam as a
woodpecker--not minding how high-toned she was--nor the jewelery and
spangles she had on--jest got me! I sez to myself, 'Rube,' sez I,
'whatever's wrong o' YOUR insides, you jest stick to that feller to set
ye right.'”
The junior partner's face reddened as he turned to his shelves
ostensibly for consultation. Conscious of his inexperience, the homely
praise of even this ignorant man was not ungrateful. He felt, too,
that his treatment of the Frenchwoman, though successful, might not be
considered remunerative from a business point of view by his partner. He
accordingly acted upon the suggestion of the stranger and put up two or
three specifics for dyspepsia. They were received with grateful alacrity
and the casual display of considerable gold in the stranger's pocket in
the process of payment. He was evidently a successful miner.
After bestowing the bottles carefully about his person, he again
leaned confidentially towards Kane. “I reckon of course you know this
high-toned lady, being in the way of seein' that kind o' folks. I
suppose you won't mind telling me, ez a stranger. But” (he added
hastily, with a deprecatory wave of his hand), “perhaps ye would.”
Mr. Kane, in fact, had hesitated. He knew vaguely and by report that
Madame le Blanc was the proprietress of a famous restaurant, over which
she had rooms where private gambling was carried on to a great extent.
It was also alleged that she was protected by a famous gambler and a
somewhat notorious bully. Mr. Kane's caution suggested that he had no
right to expose the reputation of his chance customer. He was silent.
The stranger's face became intensely sympathetic and apologetic. “I
see!--not another word, pard! It ain't the square thing to be givin'
her away, and I oughtn't to hev asked. Well--so long! I reckon I'll jest
drift back to the hotel. I ain't been in San Francisker mor' 'n three
hours, and I calkilate, pard, that I've jest seen about ez square a
sample of high-toned life as fellers ez haz bin here a year. Well,
hastermanyanner--ez the Greasers say. I'll be droppin' in to-morrow. My
name's Reuben Allen o' Mariposa. I know yours; it's on the sign, and it
ain't Sparlow.”
He cast another lingering glance around the shop, as if loath to leave
it, and then slowly sauntered out of the door, pausing in the street a
moment, in the glare of the red light, before he faded into darkness.
Without knowing exactly why, Kane had an instinct that the stranger knew
no one in San Francisco, and after leaving the shop was going into utter
silence and obscurity.
A few moments later Dr. Sparlow returned to relieve his wearied partner.
A pushing, active man, he listened impatiently to Kane's account of his
youthful practice with Madame le Blanc, without, however, dwelling much
on his methods. “You ought to have charged her more,” the elder said
decisively. “She'd have paid it. She only came here because she was
ashamed to go to a big shop in Montgomery Street--and she won't come
again.”
“But she wants you to see her to-morrow,” urged Kane, “and I told her
you would!”
“You say it was only a superficial cut?” queried the doctor, “and
you closed it? Umph! what can she want to see ME for?” He paid more
attention, however, to the case of the stranger, Allen. “When he comes
here again, manage to let me see him.” Mr. Kane promised, yet for some
indefinable reason he went home that night not quite as well satisfied
with himself.
He was much more concerned the next morning when, after relieving the
doctor for his regular morning visits, he was startled an hour later
by the abrupt return of that gentleman. His face was marked by some
excitement and anxiety, which nevertheless struggled with that sense
of the ludicrous which Californians in those days imported into most
situations of perplexity or catastrophe. Putting his hands deeply into
his trousers pockets, he confronted his youthful partner behind the
counter.
“How much did you charge that French-woman?” he said gravely.
“Twenty-five cents,” said Kane timidly.
“Well, I'd give it back and add two hundred and fifty dollars if she had
never entered the shop.”
“What's the matter?”
“Her head will be--and a mass of it, in a day, I reckon! Why, man, you
put enough plaster on it to clothe and paper the dome of the Capitol!
You drew her scalp together so that she couldn't shut her eyes without
climbing up the bed-post! You mowed her hair off so that she'll have to
wear a wig for the next two years--and handed it to her in a beau-ti-ful
sealed package! They talk of suing me and killing you out of hand.”
“She was bleeding a great deal and looked faint,” said the junior
partner; “I thought I ought to stop that.”
“And you did--by thunder! Though it might have been better business
for the shop if I'd found her a crumbling ruin here, than lathed and
plastered in this fashion, over there! However,” he added, with a laugh,
seeing an angry light in his junior partner's eye, “SHE don't seem to
mind it--the cursing all comes from THEM. SHE rather likes your style
and praises it--that's what gets me! Did you talk to her much,” he
added, looking critically at his partner.
“I only told her to sit still or she'd bleed to death,” said Kane
curtly.
“Humph!--she jabbered something about your being 'strong' and knowing
just how to handle her. Well, it can't be helped now. I think I came in
time for the worst of it and have drawn their fire. Don't do it again.
The next time a woman with a cut head and long hair tackles you, fill
up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack her off to some of the big
shops and make THEM pick it out.” And with a good-humored nod he started
off to finish his interrupted visits.
With a vague sense of remorse, and yet a consciousness of some injustice
done him, Mr. Kane resumed his occupation with filters and funnels, and
mortars and triturations. He was so gloomily preoccupied that he did
not, as usual, glance out of the window, or he would have observed the
mining stranger of the previous night before it. It was not until the
man's bowed shoulders blocked the light of the doorway that he looked up
and recognized him. Kane was in no mood to welcome his appearance. His
presence, too, actively recalled the last night's adventure of which he
was a witness--albeit a sympathizing one. Kane shrank from the illusions
which he felt he would be sure to make. And with his present ill luck,
he was by no means sure that his ministrations even to HIM had been any
more successful than they had been to the Frenchwoman. But a glance
at his good-humored face and kindling eyes removed that suspicion.
Nevertheless, he felt somewhat embarrassed and impatient, and perhaps
could not entirely conceal it. He forgot that the rudest natures are
sometimes the most delicately sensitive to slights, and the stranger had
noticed his manner and began apologetically.
“I allowed I'd just drop in anyway to tell ye that these thar pills you
giv' me did me a heap o' good so far--though mebbe it's only fair to
give the others a show too, which I'm reckoning to do.” He paused, and
then in a submissive confidence went on: “But first I wanted to hev you
excuse me for havin' asked all them questions about that high-toned lady
last night, when it warn't none of my business. I am a darned fool.”
Mr. Kane instantly saw that it was no use to keep up his attitude of
secrecy, or impose upon the ignorant, simple man, and said hurriedly:
“Oh no. The lady is very well known. She is the proprietress of a
restaurant down the street--a house open to everybody. Her name is
Madame le Blanc; you may have heard of her before?”
To his surprise the man exhibited no diminution of interest nor change
of sentiment at this intelligence. “Then,” he said slowly, “I reckon I
might get to see her again. Ye see, Mr. Kane, I rather took a fancy to
her general style and gait--arter seein' her in that fix last night. It
was rather like them play pictures on the stage. Ye don't think she'd
make any fuss to seein' a rough old 'forty-niner' like me?”
“Hardly,” said Kane, “but there might be some objection from her
gentlemen friends,” he added, with a smile,--“Jack Lane, a gambler, who
keeps a faro bank in her rooms, and Jimmy O'Ryan, a prize-fighter, who
is one of her 'chuckers out.'”
His further relation of Madame le Blanc's entourage apparently gave the
miner no concern. He looked at Kane, nodded, and repeated slowly
and appreciatively: “Yes, keeps a gamblin' and faro bank and a
prize-fighter--I reckon that might be about her gait and style too. And
you say she lives”--
He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop quickly, shut the
door behind him, and turned the key in the lock. It was done so quickly
that Kane instinctively felt that the man had been loitering in the
vicinity and had approached from the side street. A single glance at the
intruder's face and figure showed him that it was the bully of whom
he had just spoken. He had seen that square, brutal face once before,
confronting the police in a riot, and had not forgotten it. But today,
with the flush of liquor on it, it had an impatient awkwardness and
confused embarrassment that he could not account for. He did not
comprehend that the genuine bully is seldom deliberate of attack, and
is obliged--in common with many of the combative lower animals--to lash
himself into a previous fury of provocation. This probably saved him, as
perhaps some instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger kept
him cool. He remained standing quietly behind the counter. Allen glanced
around carelessly, looking at the shelves.
The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruffian's rage and
embarrassment. Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop and
clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which jarred the
glasses--yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and void of purpose
that he stopped in the midst of it and had to content himself with
glaring at Kane.
“Well,” said Kane quietly, “what does all this mean? What do you want
here?”
“What does it mean?” repeated the bully, finding his voice in a high
falsetto, designed to imitate Kane's. “It means I'm going to play merry
h-ll with this shop! It means I'm goin' to clean it out and the blank
hair-cuttin' blank that keeps it. What do I want here? Well--what I want
I intend to help myself to, and all h-ll can't stop me! And” (working
himself to the striking point) “who the blank are you to ask me?” He
sprang towards the counter, but at the same moment Allen seemed to
slip almost imperceptibly and noiselessly between them, and Kane found
himself confronted only by the miner's broad back.
“Hol' yer hosses, stranger,” said Allen slowly, as the ruffian suddenly
collided with his impassive figure. “I'm a sick man comin' in yer for
medicine. I've got somethin' wrong with my heart, and goin's on like
this yer kinder sets it to thumpin'.”
“Blank you and your blank heart!” screamed the bully, turning in a fury
of amazement and contempt at this impotent interruption. “Who”--but his
voice stopped. Allen's powerful right arm had passed over his head and
shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned his elbows against his sides.
Held rigidly upright, he attempted to kick, but Allen's right leg here
advanced, and firmly held his lower limbs against the counter that shook
to his struggles and blasphemous outcries. Allen turned quietly to Kane,
and, with a gesture of his unemployed arm, said confidentially:
“Would ye mind passing me down that ar Romantic Spirits of Ammonyer ye
gave me last night?”
Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle.