[Illustration: “‘WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?’ HE ASKED.”--_Page 85._]
A Whirl Asunder
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
AUTHOR OF “THE DOOMSWOMAN” AND “BEFORE
THE GRINGO CAME.”
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
E. FREDERICK
New York and London
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1895, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
All rights reserved._
A WHIRL ASUNDER.
CHAPTER I.
As the train stopped for the sixth time, Clive descended abruptly.
“I think I’ll walk the rest of the way,” he said to the conductor.
“Just look after my portmanteau, will you? and see that it is left at
Yorba with my boxes.”
“O. K.”, said the man. “But you must like walking.”
Clive had spent seven days on the ocean, three in the furious energy
of New York, and six on a transcontinental train, whose discomforts
made him wonder if he had a moral right to enter the embarrassing
state of matrimony with a temper hopelessly soured. As he had come
to California to marry, and as his betrothed was at a hotel in the
northern redwoods, he did not pause for rest in San Francisco; he left,
two hours after his arrival, on a narrow guage train, which dashed down
precipitous mountain slopes, shot, rocking from side to side, about
curves on a road so narrow that the brush scraped the windows, or the
eye looked down into the blackness of a cañon, five hundred feet below;
raced shrieking across trestles which seemed to swing midway between
heaven and earth; only to slacken, with protesting snort and jerk,
when climbing to some dizzier height. Clive had stood for an hour on
the platform, fascinated by the danger and the bleak solemnity of the
forests, whose rigid trunks and short stiffly pointed arms looked as
if they had not quivered since time began. But he felt that he had had
enough, moreover that he had not drawn an uncompanioned breath since he
left England. If he was not possessed by the graceful impatience of the
lover, he reminded himself that he was tired and nervous, and had been
obliged to go dirty for six days, enough to knock the romance out of
any man; the ubiquitous human animal had talked incessantly for sixteen
days, and his legs ached for want of stretching.
A twisted old man with a sharp eye, a rusty beard depending aimlessly
from a thin tobacco-stained mouth, limped across the platform, rolling
a flag. Clive asked him if he could get to the Yorba hotel on foot.
The man stared. “Well, you _be_ an Englishman, _I_ guess,” he remarked.
“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Clive haughtily.
“Oh, no offence, but the way you English do walk beats us. We ain’t
none too fond of walkin’ in Californy. Too many mountains, I guess.
Yes, you kin walk it, and I guess you’ll have to. There goes your
train. Stranger in these parts?”
“I arrived in California to-day.”
“So. Goin’ to raise cattle, or just seein’ the wonders of the Gold
State?”
“Will you kindly point out the way? And I should like to send a
dispatch to the hotel, if possible.”
“Oh, suttenly. We don’t think much of English manners in these parts,
I don’t mind sayin’. You English act as if you owned God Almighty
when you come out here. You forget we licked ye twice. Come after a
Californy heiress?”
Clive felt an impulse to throw the man over the trestle, then laughed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am sorry my manners are bad but the
truth is my head is tired and my legs are not. Come, show me the way.”
Being further mollified by a silver dollar, the old man replied
graciously, “All right, sir. Just amuse yourself while I send your
telegram, and fetch a dark lantern. You’ll need it. The moon’s doin’
well, but the tops of them redwoods knit together, and are as close as
a roof.”
Clive walked idly about the little waiting-room. The walls were
decorated with illustrated weekly newspapers, and the gratuitous
lithograph. John L. Sullivan, looking, under the softening influence
of the weekly artist, as if sculptured from mush, glowered across at
Corbett, who displayed his muscles in a dandified attitude. There were
also several lithographs of pretty, rather elegant-looking girls. Clive
noticed that one had a rude frame of young redwood branches about it,
and occupied the post of honor at the head of the room. He walked over
and examined it as well as he could by the light of the smoking lamp.
The head was in profile, severe in outline, as classic as the modern
head ever is. The chin was lifted proudly, the nostrils looked capable
of expansion. The brow and eyes suggested intellect, the lower part of
the face pride and self-will and passion, perhaps undeveloped cruelty
and sensuality.
“Who is Miss Belmont?” he asked, as the station agent left the
telegraph table.
“Oh, she’s one of the heiresses. That’s our high-toned society paper.
It’s printin’ a series of Californy heiresses. One of the other papers
says as how it’s a good guide book for impecoonious furriners, and I
guess that’s about the size of it. She’s got a million, and nobody but
an aunt, and she has her own way, I--tell--you. She’ll be a handful
to manage; but somehow, although she keeps people talkin’, they don’t
believe as much harm of her as of some that’s more quiet. You’ll
meet her, I guess, if you’re goin’ to stay at Yorba, for she’s got a
big house in the redwoods and knows a lot of the hotel folks and the
Bohemian Club fellers. I like her. She rides this way once a year or
so, and we have a good chin about politics. She knows a thing or two,
you bet, and she believes in Grover.”
“How old is she? And why doesn’t she marry?” asked Clive idly, as they
walked up the road.
“She’s twenty-six, and she’s goin’ to marry--a Noo York feller; one
of them with Dutch names. She’s had offers, _I_ guess. Three of your
lords, I know of. But lords don’t stand much show with Californy
girls--them as was raised here, anyhow. They don’t give a damn for
titles, and they scent a fortune-hunter before he’s off the dock.
They’ve put their heads together and talked him over before he’s
registered. This Dutchman’s got money, so I guess he’s all right. Be
you a lord?”
“I am not. I am a barrister, and the son of a barrister.”
“What may that be?”
“I believe you call it lawyer out here.”
“O--h--h--a lawyer’s a gay bird, ain’t he? And don’t he have a good
time?” The old man chuckled.
“I never found them different from other men. What do you mean?”
“Ours are rippers. I’ve been in Californy since ’49, and I could spin
some yarns that would make your hair curl, young man. Lord, Lord, the
old ones were tough. The young ones ain’t quite so bad, but they’re
doing their best.”
“California is rather a wild place, isn’t it?”
“It was. It’s quietin’ down now, and it ain’t near so interestin’. Jack
Belmont, that there young lady’s father, was a lawyer when he fust come
here, but he struck it rich in Con. Virginia, in ’74, and after that
warn’t he a ripper. Oh, Lord! He _was_ a terror. But he done his dooty
by his girl; had her eddicated in Paris and Noo York, and never let
no one cross her. He was as fine-lookin’ a man as ever I seen, almost
as tall and clean made as you be, and awful open-handed and popular,
although a terrible enemy. He’s shot his man twice over, they say,
and I believe it. His wife died ten years before him. She was fond of
him, too, poor thing, and he made no bones about bein’ unfaithful to
her--they don’t out here. A man’s no good if you can’t tell a yarn or
two about him. Well, Jack Belmont died five years ago, and left about
a million dollars to his girl. He’d had a long sight more, but she was
lucky to git that. They say as how she was awful broke up when he died.”
“You’re a regular old _chronique scandaleuse_,” said Clive, much
interested. “What sort of a social position has this Miss Belmont? Is
she received?”
“Received? Glory, man--why her father was a Southern gent--Maryland,
as I remember, and her mother was from Boston. They led society here in
the sixties; they’re one of the old families of Californy. That’s the
reason Miss Belmont does as she damned pleases, and nobody dares say
boo--that and the million. She’s ancient aristocracy, she is. Received!
Oh, Lord!”
Clive, much amused, asked, “What does she do that is so dreadful?”
“Oh, she’s been engaged fifteen times; she rides about the country
in boy’s clothes, and sits up all night under the trees at Del Monte
talkin’ to a man, or gives all her dances to one man at a party, and
then cuts him the next day on the street; and when she gits tired of
people, comes up here without even her aunt. She used to run to fires,
but she give that up some years ago. She travels about the country for
weeks without a chaperon, and once went camping alone with five men.
Sometimes she’ll fill her house up with men for a week, and not have no
other woman, savin’ her aunt. Lately she’s more quiet, they say, and
has become a terrible reader. Last winter she stayed up here for three
months alone. I hear as how people talked. But I didn’t see nothin’.
She’s all right, or my name ain’t Jo Bagley. Well, here you are, sir.
Good luck to ye! Keep to the road and don’t strike off on any of them
side trails, and you can’t go wrong. Evenin’.”
Clive went into the dark forest. What the old man had told him of Miss
Belmont had quickened his imagination, and he speculated about her for
some moments; then his thoughts wandered to his English betrothed.
He had not seen her for two years. Her mother’s health failing, her
father had taken his family to Southern California. A year later Mrs.
Gordon had died, and her husband having bought a ranch in which he
was much interested, had written to Clive that he wanted his eldest
daughter for another year; by that time her sister would have finished
school, and could take her place as head of the household. Lately he
and Mary had felt the debilitating influence of the southern climate
and had gone to the redwoods of the north. There Clive was to meet
them, remain a few weeks, then marry in San Francisco and take his wife
back to England.
Clive was thirty-four, ten years older than Mary Gordon. He recalled
the day he had proposed to her. She had come down the steps of her
father’s house, in a blue gown and garden hat, and they had gone for
a walk in the woods. She was not a clever woman, and she had only the
white and pink and brown, the rounded lines of youth, no positive
beauty of face or figure; but with the blind instinct of his race he
had turned almost automatically to the type of woman who, time out of
mind, has produced the strong-limbed, strong-brained men that have made
a nation insolently great. She reminded him of his mother, with her
even sweetness of nature, her sympathy, her large maternal suggestion.
He had known her since her early girlhood and grown fonder of her each
year. She rested him, and had the divine feminine faculty of making him
feel a better and cleverer man than he was in the habit of thinking
himself else where.
She had accepted him with the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and
he had wondered if other men were as fortunate. For two years he saw
much of her, then she went to America, and he had plunged into his
work and his man’s life, not missing her as consistently as he had
expected, but caring for her none the less. The Saturday mail brought
him, unintermittingly, a letter eight pages long, neatly written, and
describing in detail the daily life of her family, and of the strange
people about them. They were calm, affectionate, interesting letters,
which Clive enjoyed, and to which he replied with a hurried scrawl,
rarely covering more than one page. An Englishwoman does not expect
much, but Mary occasionally hinted sadly that a longer letter would
make her happier; whereupon his conscience hurt him and he wrote her
two pages.
He enjoyed these two years, despite hard work; he was popular with
men and women, and much was popular with him that adds to the keener
pleasures of life. When the time came to pack his boxes and go to
America he puffed a large regretful rack from his last pipe of freedom;
but it did not occur to him to ask release. For the matter of that,
although he had come to regard Mary Gordon as the inevitable rather
than the desired, he had felt for her the strong tenderness which such
men feel for such women, which endures, and never in any circumstance
turns to hate.
After a time Clive extinguished the lantern: it illumined the road
fitfully, but accentuated the dense blackness of the forest. The
undergrowth was too thick to permit him to stray aside, and he
wanted to form some idea of his surroundings. His eyes accustomed
themselves to the dark. Moon rays splashed or trickled here and there
through lofty cleft and mesh. Clive paused once and looked up. The
straight trees, sometimes slender, sometimes huge, were as inflexible
as granite, an unbroken column for a hundred feet or more; then
thrusting out rigid arms from a tapering trunk into another hundred
feet of space. The effect was that of a dense forest suspended in air,
supported above the low brush forest on a vast irregular colonnade, out
of whose ruins it might have sprung. Clive had never known a stillness
so profound, a repose so absolute. But it was not the peaceful repose
of an English wood. It suggested the heavy brooding stillness of
archaic days, when the uneasy world drowsed before another convulsion.
There was some other influence abroad in the woods, but at the time
its meaning eluded him.
Suddenly it occurred to him that he could not see Mary Gordon in this
forest. There was an irritating incongruity in the very thought. She
belonged to the sweet calm beech woods, of England; nothing in her was
in consonance with the storm and stress, the passion and fatality which
this strange country suggested. Did the women of California fit their
frame? He experienced a strong desire for the companionship of a woman
who would interpret this forest to him, then called himself an ass and
strode on.
An hour later he became aware of a distant and deep murmur. It was
crossed suddenly by a wild, hilarious yell. Clive relit the lantern
and flashed it along the brush at his right. Presently he came upon
a narrow trail. The prospect of adventure after sixteen days of
civilized monotony lured him aside, and he walked rapidly down the
by-path. In a few moments he found himself on the edge of a large
clearing. The moon poured in without let, and revealed a scene of
singular and uncomfortable suggestion.
In the middle of the space was a huge funeral pyre; beyond it,
evidently on a bier, Clive could see the stony, upturned feet of a
mammoth corpse, lightly covered with a white pall. Between the pyre
and the trees nearer him a large caldron swung over a heap of fagots,
which were beginning to crackle gently. The place looked as if about
to be the scene of some awful rite. Englishmen are willing to believe
anything about California, and Clive, who had commanded the admiration
of his father’s colleagues with his clear, quick, logical brain, leaped
at once to the conclusion that this part of California was still the
hunting-ground of the Red Indian, and that some mighty chief was about
to be cremated; whilst his widow, perchance, sacrificed herself in the
caldron.
He plunged his hands into his pockets and awaited developments with the
nervous delight of a schoolboy. Although the forest was silent again,
he had an uneasy sense of many human beings at no great distance.
He had not long to wait. There was a sudden red glare which made
the aisles of the forest seem alive with dancing shapes, hideously
contorted. Simultaneously there arose a low soft chanting, monotonous
and musical, bizarre rather than weird. Then out of the recesses on
the far side of the clearing, startlingly defined under the blaze of
many torches held aloft in the background, emerged a high priest, his
crown shaven, his beard flowing to his waist, his white robes marking
the austerity of his order. His hands were folded on his breast, his
head bowed. Behind him, two and two, followed twenty acolytes, swinging
censers, the heavy perfume of the incense rising to the pungent odor
of the redwoods, blending harmoniously: the lofty forest aisles were
become those of some vast primeval crypt.
Then illusion was in a measure dispelled. The two hundred torch-bearers
who came after wore the ordinary outing clothes of civilization.
The strange procession marched slowly round the circle, passing
perilously close to Clive. Then the priest and acolytes walked solemnly
up to the caldron, the others dispersing themselves irregularly,
leaping occasionally and waving their torches. The fagots were blazing;
Clive fancied he heard a merry bubbling. A moment of profound silence.
Then the priest dropped something into the caldron, chanting an
invocation of which Clive could make nothing, although he was a scholar
in several languages. The acolytes and torch-bearers tossed to the
priest entities and imaginations, which he dropped with much ceremony
into the caldron, to the accompaniment of hollow, not to say ribald
laughter, and jests which had a strong flavor of personalities.
The prologue lasted ten minutes. Then the mummers crowded backward
and faced the pyre. Again the heavy silence fell. The priest went
forward, and raising his clasped hands and set face to the moon,
stood, for a moment, like a statue on a monument, then turned
slowly and beckoned. The acolytes formed in line and marched with
solemn precision to the other side of the pyre. A moment later they
reappeared, walking with halting steps, their heads bowed, chanting
dismally. On their shoulders they carried a long bier, on which,
apparently, lay the corpse of a dead giant. The priest sprinkled the
body, then turned away with a gesture of loathing. The acolytes carried
it by the torch-bearers, who spat upon and execrated it; then slowly
and laboriously mounted the pyre, and dropping the bier on its apex,
scampered indecorously down with savage grunts of satisfaction, their
white garments fluttering along the dark pile like a wash on a windy
day. The corpse lay long and white and horrid under the beating moon
and the flare of torch. As the acolytes reached the ground the rest
of the company rushed simultaneously forward, and with a hideous yell
flung their torches at the pyre. There was the hiss of tar, the leap
of one great flame, an angry crackling. A moment more and the forest
would be more vividly alight than it had ever been at noonday. Clive,
feeling as uncomfortable as an eavesdropper, but too fascinated to
retreat, stepped behind a large redwood. With his eyes still fixed on
the strange scene he did not pick his steps, and coming suddenly in
contact with a pliable body, he nearly knocked it over. There was a
smothered shriek, followed by a suppressed but forcible vocative. Clive
mechanically lifted his hat.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, addressing a tall lad, whose face was
partly concealed by the visor of a cap; “I hope I have not hurt you.”
“I am not so easily hurt,” said the lad haughtily.
The masculine man never lived who did not recognize a feminine woman
in whatever guise, if within the radius of her magnetism. This young
masquerader interested Clive at once. Her voice had a warm huskiness.
The mouth and chin were classically cut, but very human. She had thrown
back her head and revealed a round beautiful throat. The loose flannel
shirt and jacket concealed her figure, but even the slight motions she
had made revealed energy and grace.
Clive offered her a cigarette. She accepted it and smoked daintily,
withdrawing as much as possible into the shadow and shielding her face
with her hand. He leaned his back against the tree and lit a cigar.
“What on earth is the meaning of this scene?” he asked.
“That is the great Midsummer Jinks ceremony of the Bohemian Club. They
have it every year, and never invite outsiders. So I was bound I’d see
it anyhow.”
“I wonder you don’t become a member.”
“Oh, I’m too young,” promptly.
“Tell me more about it. What do these ceremonies mean?”
“Oh, they put all sorts of things into that caldron--the liver of a
grasshopper with one of Harry Armstrong’s jokes; the wasted paint on
somebody’s last picture with the misshapen feet of somebody’s else
latest verse. The corpse is an effigy of Care, and they are cremating
him. Now they’ll be happy, that is to say, drunk, till morning, for
Care is dead. I’m going to stop and see it out.”
“I think you had better go home.”
“Indeed?” Clive saw the hand that shielded her face jerk.
“Did you ever see, or rather hear a lot of men on a lark when they
fancied that no women were about?”
“No; but that is what I wish to do.”
“Which you are not going to do to-night.”
There was a sudden snapping of dry leaves. A small foot had come down
with emphasis.
“_What_ do you mean?”
“That this is no place for a woman, and that you must go.”
“I’m not--well, I am, and I don’t care in the least whether you know it
or not. I wish you to understand, sir, that I shall stay here, and that
I am not in the habit of being dictated to.”
“You are Miss Belmont, I suppose.”
An instant’s pause. Then she replied with a haughty pluck which
delighted him: “Yes, I am Miss Belmont, and you are an insolent
Englishman.”
“How do you know that I am an Englishman?”
“Anyone could tell from your voice and your overbearing manner.”
“Well, I am,” said Clive, much amused.
“I detest Englishmen.”
“Smoke a little, or I am afraid you will cry.”
She obeyed with unexpected docility, but in a moment crushed the coal
of her cigarette on a damp tree stump. Then she turned to him and
folded her arms.
“I am not going to leave,” she said evenly. “What are you going to do
about it?”
“How did you get here?”
“On my horse.”
“Where is he?”
“Tethered off the road.”
“Very well; if you are not on that horse in five minutes, I shall carry
you to it, and what is more, I shall kiss you.”
She deliberately moved into the light and pushed her cap to the back
of her head, disarranging a mass of curling dark hair. Her coloring
was indefinable in the red light, but her eyes were large and long,
and heavily lashed. They sparkled wickedly. The nostrils of her finely
cut nose were dilating; her short upper lip was lifted. Clive ardently
hoped that she would continue to defy him. Her whole attitude was that
of a young worldling, delighting in an unforeseen adventure.
“Who are you, anyhow?” she demanded. “Of course I could see at once
that you were a gentleman, or I should not have taken the slightest
notice of you.”
“Thanks. My name is Owin Clive.”
“Oh, you are Mary Gordon’s friend, that she has been expecting.”
“Miss Gordon is an old friend of mine.” He half-consciously hoped that
Miss Belmont did not know of his engagement.
“She says you are frightfully handsome.”
Clive laughed. “I cannot imagine Miss Gordon using any such expression;
but then she has been two years in California.”
“I suppose Englishmen can’t help being rude. I remember exactly what
she said, and she said it so slowly and placidly. ‘Oh, yes, dear Miss
Belmont, I think our men are very fine-looking indeed.’ (I had been
black-guarding them.) ‘My friend, Mr. Clive, of whom you have heard me
speak, is quite the handsomest man I have ever seen.’”
“That sounds more like it. And that is exactly what she would have said
two years ago. I mean,” laughing with some embarrassment, “the way she
would have expressed herself.”
“Oh, I suppose you are a mass of vanity; all men are. Yes; your Mary
Gordon is as English as if she had never left Hertfordshire. And always
will be. She hasn’t a spark of originality.”
Clive discerned her purpose, but he replied coldly, “Say rather that
she has individuality.”
“Which she hasn’t, and you know it. I have that. Do you think there is
much in common between us?”
“How can I tell after knowing you ten minutes?”
“I can’t get a rise out of you, I see. You Englishmen are such
phlegmatic creatures. I don’t believe there is a spark of impulse left
in your island.”
“You are a very brave young woman.”
“Why?” She drew her eyelashes together, shooting forth audacity.
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
The muscles of her face twitched angrily. “An Englishman’s only idea of
wit is impertinence.”
“What have Englishmen done to you that you are so bitter? I don’t
believe those lordlings I have heard of, proposed, after all.”
“They did,” replied Miss Belmont emphatically, and quite restored.
“Every last one of them. I made Dynebor fetch and carry like a trained
dog. It was great fun. I used to say, before a room full of people,
‘Go get my fan, little man; I left it with Charley Rollins in the
conservatory.’ And he would trot off; he was that hard up, poor thing!”
“I am glad you did not marry any of them; I am sure they were not good
enough for you.”
“How polite of you. Why don’t you step out and let me see you?”
“My vanity will not permit. I feel sure that your remarkable frankness
would not allow you to disguise your disappointment.”
“Well, I shall see you on Sunday. You are coming with Miss Gordon to
dine with me. She has accepted for you.”
“I shall wait until then. I look better in evening clothes and when I
am clean.”
“I like your voice and your figure, and you certainly have a remarkable
amount of magnetism,” she said meditatively. “Good heavens! what a row
those idiots are making. And do look at that bonfire. It looks for all
the world as if the earth had run its tongue out at the moon.”
Clive wondered why he did not kiss her. He certainly wanted to, and he
certainly would have been justified. He recalled no other attractive
woman who would have had to offer half the encouragement with which
Miss Belmont had recklessly toyed. A man who coined epigrams for
sale had once said of him: “Clive is thoroughbred; he can drink the
strongest whiskey, smoke the blackest cigars, and he never fails to
kiss a pretty woman when the opportunity offers.” And yet, so far,
something about Miss Belmont stayed him. He had no intention that it
should endure, however.
The scene was growing more and more picturesque. Behind them was a
great roar, crossed by the howling and yelling of two hundred and
twenty-one abandoned throats. The remotest aisles of the forest were
crimson. Every needle of the delicate young redwoods, every waving
frond was etched minutely on the red transparency. The thousand columns
with their stark capitals wore a softened and gracious aspect, albeit
the general effect of the night was infernal.
“Are you going?” asked Clive.
“No.” She curled her lips defiantly away from her teeth.
Clive crossed the short space between them with one step, lifted her
in his arms and walked rapidly up the trail. For a moment she was too
stupefied to protest; then she attempted violently to free herself.
“What do you mean?” she cried furiously. “Do you know who I am? I am in
the habit of doing exactly as I please. Everybody knows me here. If you
have misunderstood me it’s because you are a thick-headed Englishman,
used to women who are either stupid or bad.”
“You mean that the men you surround yourself with are idiots who permit
you to play with them as you choose. Keep quiet. Don’t you see that you
can’t get away? If you struggle I shall hurt you, and I don’t want to
do that.”
“I have sat up all night with men and they have never dared to kiss me,
however much they may have wanted to.”
“Then they were rotters, and you can tell them so, with my
compliments. If I sat up all night with you I should kiss you, and
several times.”
“Well, you never will!”
They reached the road. She stiffened suddenly and tried to spring out
of his arms. He placed her on her feet and grasped her firmly by the
shoulders.
“Now,” he said, “kiss me, and don’t be silly about it. If you go in for
larks of this sort you must take the consequences.” She wrenched again.
He caught and held her so firmly that she could not struggle.
“You brute of an Englishman,” she gasped.
Clive clasped his hand about the lower part of her face and lifted it
gently. As he did so he shifted his position and the light, for the
first time, shone full on his face. The girl became suddenly quiet.
Something leaped into her eyes which his own answered. But as he bent
his face she moved her head backward along his shoulder.
“Please, _please_ don’t,” she said beseechingly. “Oh, please don’t.”
Clive let her go. He walked with her to the horse, mounted her, and
watched her dash away.
“What a stupid ass I am,” he thought. “Why on earth didn’t I kiss that
woman?”
He walked up the road for a few moments, then turned and made for the
clearing.
The flames were still leaping symmetrically upward into a dense column
of smoke, the men still dancing about the pyre, their enthusiasm
unabated. As Clive suddenly appeared in their midst an immediate and
disagreeable silence fell. Clive had never felt so uncomfortable in his
life. He concealed a certain amount of natural shyness under a haughty
bearing, which would have repelled strangers had it not been for his
charm of expression, the quick laughter of his eyes.
“Does Mr. Charles Rollins happen to be here?” he asked stiffly. “I have
brought a letter to him. My name is Clive. I have an apology to make. I
stumbled upon your strange ceremony and watched it, not knowing at the
time that there was anything private about it----”
“Don’t mention it. Don’t mention it,” cried a hearty voice. A young man
pushed forward from the back of the circle and grasped his hand. “I had
a letter from Stanley and hoped you would get here in time for this.
You can make up for being late only by drinking six quarts of fizz
between now and sunrise. Boys, come up and shake.”
Clive’s hand was shaken, with a solemnity which at first embarrassed,
then amused him, by every man present. Then solemnity vanished, and
with it any lingering remnant of Clive’s shyness.
The odor of savory viands mingled with burning pitch and the subtler
perfumes of the forest. A great table was spread. Champagne corks flew.
Before an hour was done Clive was voted the liveliest Englishman, that
had ever set foot in California, and elected off-hand an honorary
member of the Bohemian Club.