French and English fluently. In brief, I doubt if you could have found the equal of this Pagan shopkeeper among the Christian traders of San Francisco.
There were a few others present,–a judge of the Federal Court, an editor, a high government official, and a prominent merchant. After we had drunk our tea, and tasted a few sweetmeats from a mysterious jar, that looked as if it might contain a preserved mouse among its other nondescript treasures, Hop Sing arose, and, gravely beckoning us to follow him, began to descend to the basement. When we got there, we were amazed at finding it brilliantly lighted, and that a number of chairs were arranged in a half-circle on the asphalt pavement. When he had courteously seated us, he said,–
“I have invited you to witness a performance which I can at least promise you no other foreigners but yourselves have ever seen. Wang, the court-juggler, arrived here yesterday morning. He has never given a performance outside of the palace before. I have asked him to entertain my friends this evening. He requires no theatre, stage accessories, or any confederate,–nothing more than you see here. Will you be pleased to examine the ground yourselves, gentlemen.”
Of course we examined the premises. It was the ordinary basement or cellar of the San Francisco storehouse, cemented to keep out the damp. We poked our sticks into the pavement, and rapped on the walls, to satisfy our polite host–but for no other purpose. We were quite content to be the victims of any clever deception. For myself, I knew I was ready to be deluded to any extent, and, if I had been offered an explanation of what followed, I should have probably declined it.
Although I am satisfied that Wang’s general performance was the first of that kind ever given on American soil, it has, probably, since become so familiar to many of my readers, that I shall not bore them with it here. He began by setting to flight, with the aid of his fan, the usual number of butterflies, made before our eyes of little bits of tissue-paper, and kept them in the air during the remainder of the performance. I have a vivid recollection of the judge trying to catch one that had lit on his knee, and of its evading him with the pertinacity of a living insect. And, even at this time, Wang, still plying his fan, was taking chickens out of hats, making oranges disappear, pulling endless yards of silk from his sleeve, apparently filling the whole area of the basement with goods that appeared mysteriously from the ground, from his own sleeves, from nowhere! He swallowed knives to the ruin of his digestion for years to come; he dislocated every limb of his body; he reclined in the air, apparently upon nothing. But his crowning performance, which I have never yet seen repeated, was the most weird, mysterious, and astounding. It is my apology for this long introduction, my sole excuse for writing this article, and the genesis of this veracious history.
He cleared the ground of its encumbering articles for a space of about fifteen feet square, and then invited us all to walk forward, and again examine it. We did so gravely. There was nothing but the cemented pavement below to be seen or felt. He then asked for the loan of a handkerchief; and, as I chanced to be nearest him, I offered mine. He took it, and spread it open upon the floor. Over this he spread a large square of silk, and over this, again, a large shawl nearly covering the space he had cleared. He then took a position at one of the points of this rectangle, and began a monotonous chant, rocking his body to and fro in time with the somewhat lugubrious air.
We sat still and waited. Above the chant we could hear the striking of the city clocks, and the occasional rattle of a cart in the street overhead. The absolute watchfulness and expectation, the dim, mysterious half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen bulk of a Chinese deity in the back ground, a faint smell of opium-smoke mingling with spice, and the dreadful uncertainty of what we were really waiting for, sent an uncomfortable thrill down our backs, and made us look at each other with a forced and unnatural smile. This feeling was heightened when Hop Sing slowly rose, and, without a word, pointed with his finger to the centre of the shawl.
There was something beneath the shawl. Surely–and something that was not there before; at first a mere suggestion in relief, a faint outline, but growing more and more distinct and visible every moment. The chant still continued; the perspiration began to roll from the singer’s face; gradually the hidden object took upon itself a shape and bulk that raised the shawl in its centre some five or six inches. It was now unmistakably the outline of a small but perfect human figure, with extended arms and legs. One or two of us turned pale. There was a feeling of general uneasiness, until the editor broke the silence by a gibe, that, poor as it was, was received with spontaneous enthusiasm. Then the chant suddenly ceased. Wang arose, and with a quick, dexterous movement, stripped both shawl and silk away, and discovered, sleeping peacefully upon my handkerchief, a tiny Chinese baby.
The applause and uproar which followed this revelation ought to have satisfied Wang, even if his audience was a small one: it was loud enough to awaken the baby,–a pretty little boy about a year old, looking like a Cupid cut out of sandal-wood. He was whisked away almost as mysteriously as he appeared. When Hop Sing returned my handkerchief to me with a bow, I asked if the juggler was the father of the baby. “No sabe!” said the imperturbable Hop Sing, taking refuge in that Spanish form of non-committalism so common in California.
“But does he have a new baby for every performance?” I asked. “Perhaps: who knows?”–“But what will become of this one?”– “Whatever you choose, gentlemen,” replied Hop Sing with a courteous inclination. “It was born here: you are its godfathers.”
There were two characteristic peculiarities of any Californian assemblage in 1856,–it was quick to take a hint, and generous to the point of prodigality in its response to any charitable appeal. No matter how sordid or avaricious the individual, he could not resist the infection of sympathy. I doubled the points of my handkerchief into a bag, dropped a coin into it, and, without a word, passed it to the judge. He quietly added a twenty-dollar gold-piece, and passed it to the next. When it was returned to me, it contained over a hundred dollars. I knotted the money in the handkerchief, and gave it to Hop Sing.
“For the baby, from its godfathers.”
“But what name?” said the judge. There was a running fire of “Erebus,” “Nox,” “Plutus,” “Terra Cotta,” “Antaeus,” &c. Finally the question was referred to our host.
“Why not keep his own name?” he said quietly,–“Wan Lee.” And he did.
And thus was Wan Lee, on the night of Friday, the 5th of March, 1856, born into this veracious chronicle.
The last form of “The Northern Star” for the 19th of July, 1865,– the only daily paper published in Klamath County,–had just gone to press; and at three, A.M., I was putting aside my proofs and manuscripts, preparatory to going home, when I discovered a letter lying under some sheets of paper, which I must have overlooked. The envelope was considerably soiled: it had no post-mark; but I had no difficulty in recognizing the hand of my friend Hop Sing. I opened it hurriedly, and read as follows:–
“MY DEAR SIR,–I do not know whether the bearer will suit you; but, unless the office of ‘devil’ in your newspaper is a purely technical one, I think he has all the qualities required. He is very quick, active, and intelligent; understands English better than he speaks it; and makes up for any defect by his habits of observation and imitation. You have only to show him how to do a thing once, and he will repeat it, whether it is an offence or a virtue. But you certainly know him already. You are one of his godfathers; for is he not Wan Lee, the reputed son of Wang the conjurer, to whose performances I had the honor to introduce you? But perhaps you have forgotten it.
“I shall send him with a gang of coolies to Stockton, thence by express to your town. If you can use him there, you will do me a favor, and probably save his life, which is at present in great peril from the hands of the younger members of your Christian and highly-civilized race who attend the enlightened schools in San Francisco.
“He has acquired some singular habits and customs from his experience of Wang’s profession, which he followed for some years,–until he became too large to go in a hat, or be produced from his father’s sleeve. The money you left with me has been expended on his education. He has gone through the Tri-literal Classics, but, I think, without much benefit. He knows but little of Confucius, and absolutely nothing of Mencius. Owing to the negligence of his father, he associated, perhaps, too much with American children.
“I should have answered your letter before, by post; but I thought that Wan Lee himself would be a better messenger for this.
“Yours respectfully,
“HOP SING.”
And this was the long-delayed answer to my letter to Hop Sing. But where was “the bearer”? How was the letter delivered? I summoned hastily the foreman, printers, and office-boy, but without eliciting any thing. No one had seen the letter delivered, nor knew any thing of the bearer. A few days later, I had a visit from my laundry-man, Ah Ri.
“You wantee debbil? All lightee: me catchee him.”
He returned in a few moments with a bright-looking Chinese boy, about ten years old, with whose appearance and general intelligence I was so greatly impressed, that I engaged him on the spot. When the business was concluded, I asked his name.
“Wan Lee,” said the boy.
“What! Are you the boy sent out by Hop Sing? What the devil do you mean by not coming here before? and how did you deliver that letter?”
Wan Lee looked at me, and laughed. “Me pitchee in top side window.”
I did not understand. He looked for a moment perplexed, and then, snatching the letter out of my hand, ran down the stairs. After a moment’s pause, to my great astonishment, the letter came flying in the window, circled twice around the room, and then dropped gently, like a bird upon my table. Before I had got over my surprise, Wan Lee re-appeared, smiled, looked at the letter and then at me, said, “So, John,” and then remained gravely silent. I said nothing further; but it was understood that this was his first official act.
His next performance, I grieve to say, was not attended with equal success. One of our regular paper-carriers fell sick, and, at a pinch, Wan Lee was ordered to fill his place. To prevent mistakes, he was shown over the route the previous evening, and supplied at about daylight with the usual number of subscribers’ copies. He returned, after an hour, in good spirits, and without the papers. He had delivered them all, he said.
Unfortunately for Wan Lee, at about eight o’clock, indignant subscribers began to arrive at the office. They had received their copies; but how? In the form of hard-pressed cannon-balls, delivered by a single shot, and a mere tour de force, through the glass of bedroom-windows. They had received them full in the face, like a base ball, if they happened to be up and stirring; they had received them in quarter-sheets, tucked in at separate windows; they had found them in the chimney, pinned against the door, shot through attic-windows, delivered in long slips through convenient keyholes, stuffed into ventilators, and occupying the same can with the morning’s milk. One subscriber, who waited for some time at the office-door to have a personal interview with Wan Lee (then comfortably locked in my bedroom), told me, with tears of rage in his eyes, that he had been awakened at five o’clock by a most hideous yelling below his windows; that, on rising in great agitation, he was startled by the sudden appearance of “The Northern Star,” rolled hard, and bent into the form of a boomerang, or East-Indian club, that sailed into the window, described a number of fiendish circles in the room, knocked over the light, slapped the baby’s face, “took” him (the subscriber) “in the jaw,” and then returned out of the window, and dropped helplessly in the area. During the rest of the day, wads and strips of soiled paper, purporting to be copies of “The Northern Star” of that morning’s issue, were brought indignantly to the office. An admirable editorial on “The Resources of Humboldt County,” which I had constructed the evening before, and which, I had reason to believe, might have changed the whole balance of trade during the ensuing year, and left San Francisco bankrupt at her wharves, was in this way lost to the public.
It was deemed advisable for the next three weeks to keep Wan Lee closely confined to the printing-office, and the purely mechanical part of the business. Here he developed a surprising quickness and adaptability, winning even the favor and good will of the printers and foreman, who at first looked upon his introduction into the secrets of their trade as fraught with the gravest political significance. He learned to set type readily and neatly, his wonderful skill in manipulation aiding him in the mere mechanical act, and his ignorance of the language confining him simply to the mechanical effort, confirming the printer’s axiom, that the printer who considers or follows the ideas of his copy makes a poor compositor. He would set up deliberately long diatribes against himself, composed by his fellow-printers, and hung on his hook as copy, and even such short sentences as “Wan Lee is the devil’s own imp,” “Wan Lee is a Mongolian rascal,” and bring the proof to me with happiness beaming from every tooth, and satisfaction shining in his huckleberry eyes.
It was not long, however, before he learned to retaliate on his mischievous persecutors. I remember one instance in which his reprisal came very near involving me in a serious misunderstanding. Our foreman’s name was Webster; and Wan Lee presently learned to know and recognize the individual and combined letters of his name. It was during a political campaign; and the eloquent and fiery Col. Starbottle of Siskyou had delivered an effective speech, which was reported especially for “The Northern Star.” In a very sublime peroration, Col. Starbottle had said, “In the language of the godlike Webster, I repeat”–and here followed the quotation, which I have forgotten. Now, it chanced that Wan Lee, looking over the galley after it had been revised, saw the name of his chief persecutor, and, of course, imagined the quotation his. After the form was locked up, Wan Lee took advantage of Webster’s absence to remove the quotation, and substitute a thin piece of lead, of the same size as the type, engraved with Chinese characters, making a sentence, which, I had reason to believe, was an utter and abject confession of the incapacity and offensiveness of the Webster family generally, and exceedingly eulogistic of Wan Lee himself personally.
The next morning’s paper contained Col. Starbottle’s speech in full, in which it appeared that the “godlike” Webster had, on one occasion, uttered his thoughts in excellent but perfectly enigmatical Chinese. The rage of Col. Starbottle knew no bounds. I have a vivid recollection of that admirable man walking into my office, and demanding a retraction of the statement.
“But my dear sir,” I asked, “are you willing to deny, over your own signature, that Webster ever uttered such a sentence? Dare you deny, that, with Mr. Webster’s well-known attainments, a knowledge of Chinese might not have been among the number? Are you willing to submit a translation suitable to the capacity of our readers, and deny, upon your honor as a gentleman, that the late Mr. Webster ever uttered such a sentiment? If you are, sir, I am willing to publish your denial.”
The colonel was not, and left, highly indignant.
Webster, the foreman, took it more coolly. Happily, he was unaware, that, for two days after, Chinamen from the laundries, from the gulches, from the kitchens, looked in the front office- door, with faces beaming with sardonic delight; that three hundred extra copies of the “Star” were ordered for the wash-houses on the river. He only knew, that, during the day, Wan Lee occasionally went off into convulsive spasms, and that he was obliged to kick him into consciousness again. A week after the occurrence, I called Wan Lee into my office.
“Wan,” I said gravely, “I should like you to give me, for my own personal satisfaction, a translation of that Chinese sentence which my gifted countryman, the late godlike Webster, uttered upon a public occasion.” Wan Lee looked at me intently, and then the slightest possible twinkle crept into his black eyes. Then he replied with equal gravity,–
“Mishtel Webstel, he say, ‘China boy makee me belly much foolee. China boy makee me heap sick.'” Which I have reason to think was true.
But I fear I am giving but one side, and not the best, of Wan Lee’s character. As he imparted it to me, his had been a hard life. He had known scarcely any childhood: he had no recollection of a father or mother. The conjurer Wang had brought him up. He had spent the first seven years of his life in appearing from baskets, in dropping out of hats, in climbing ladders, in putting his little limbs out of joint in posturing. He had lived in an atmosphere of trickery and deception. He had learned to look upon mankind as dupes of their senses: in fine, if he had thought at all, he would have been a sceptic; if he had been a little older, he would have been a cynic; if he had been older still, he would have been a philosopher. As it was, he was a little imp. A good-natured imp it was, too,–an imp whose moral nature had never been awakened,– an imp up for a holiday, and willing to try virtue as a diversion. I don’t know that he had any spiritual nature. He was very superstitious. He carried about with him a hideous little porcelain god, which he was in the habit of alternately reviling and propitiating. He was too intelligent for the commoner Chinese vices of stealing or gratuitous lying. Whatever discipline he practised was taught by his intellect.
I am inclined to think that his feelings were not altogether unimpressible, although it was almost impossible to extract an expression from him; and I conscientiously believe he became attached to those that were good to him. What he might have become under more favorable conditions than the bondsman of an overworked, under-paid literary man, I don’t know: I only know that the scant, irregular, impulsive kindnesses that I showed him were gratefully received. He was very loyal and patient, two qualities rare in the average American servant. He was like Malvolio, “sad and civil” with me. Only once, and then under great provocation, do I remember of his exhibiting any impatience. It was my habit, after leaving the office at night, to take him with me to my rooms, as the bearer of any supplemental or happy after-thought, in the editorial way, that might occur to me before the paper went to press. One night I had been scribbling away past the usual hour of dismissing Wan Lee, and had become quite oblivious of his presence in a chair near my door, when suddenly I became aware of a voice saying in plaintive accents, something that sounded like “Chy Lee.”
I faced around sternly.
“What did you say?”
“Me say, ‘Chy Lee.'”
“Well?” I said impatiently.
“You sabe, ‘How do, John?'”
“Yes.”
“You sabe, ‘So long, John’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ‘Chy Lee’ allee same!”
I understood him quite plainly. It appeared that “Chy Lee” was a form of “good-night,” and that Wan Lee was anxious to go home. But an instinct of mischief, which, I fear, I possessed in common with him, impelled me to act as if oblivious of the hint. I muttered something about not understanding him, and again bent over my work. In a few minutes I heard his wooden shoes pattering pathetically over the floor. I looked up. He was standing near the door.
“You no sabe, ‘Chy Lee’?”
“No,” I said sternly.
“You sabe muchee big foolee! allee same!”
And, with this audacity upon his lips, he fled. The next morning, however, he was as meek and patient as before, and I did not recall his offence. As a probable peace-offering, he blacked all my boots,–a duty never required of him,–including a pair of buff deer-skin slippers and an immense pair of horseman’s jack-boots, on which he indulged his remorse for two hours.
I have spoken of his honesty as being a quality of his intellect rather than his principle, but I recall about this time two exceptions to the rule. I was anxious to get some fresh eggs as a change to the heavy diet of a mining-town; and, knowing that Wan Lee’s countrymen were great poultry-raisers, I applied to him. He furnished me with them regularly every morning, but refused to take any pay, saying that the man did not sell them,–a remarkable instance of self-abnegation, as eggs were then worth half a dollar apiece. One morning my neighbor Forster dropped in upon me at breakfast, and took occasion to bewail his own ill fortune, as his hens had lately stopped laying, or wandered off in the bush. Wan Lee, who was present during our colloquy, preserved his characteristic sad taciturnity. When my neighbor had gone, he turned to me with a slight chuckle: “Flostel’s hens–Wan Lee’s hens allee same!” His other offence was more serious and ambitious. It was a season of great irregularities in the mails, and Wan Lee had heard me deplore the delay in the delivery of my letters and newspapers. On arriving at my office one day, I was amazed to find my table covered with letters, evidently just from the post-office, but, unfortunately, not one addressed to me. I turned to Wan Lee, who was surveying them with a calm satisfaction, and demanded an explanation. To my horror he pointed to an empty mail-bag in the corner, and said, “Postman he say, ‘No lettee, John; no lettee, John.’ Postman plentee lie! Postman no good. Me catchee lettee last night allee same!” Luckily it was still early: the mails had not been distributed. I had a hurried interview with the postmaster; and Wan Lee’s bold attempt at robbing the United States mail was finally condoned by the purchase of a new mail-bag, and the whole affair thus kept a secret.
If my liking for my little Pagan page had not been sufficient, my duty to Hop Sing was enough, to cause me to take Wan Lee with me when I returned to San Francisco after my two years’ experience with “The Northern Star.” I do not think he contemplated the change with pleasure. I attributed his feelings to a nervous dread of crowded public streets (when he had to go across town for me on an errand, he always made a circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness. That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me until long after.
Nevertheless it really seemed as if the opportunity I had long looked for and confidently expected had come,–the opportunity of placing Wan Lee under gently restraining influences, of subjecting him to a life and experience that would draw out of him what good my superficial care and ill-regulated kindness could not reach. Wan Lee was placed at the school of a Chinese missionary,–an intelligent and kind-hearted clergyman, who had shown great interest in the boy, and who, better than all, had a wonderful faith in him. A home was found for him in the family of a widow, who had a bright and interesting daughter about two years younger than Wan Lee. It was this bright, cheery, innocent, and artless child that touched and reached a depth in the boy’s nature that hitherto had been unsuspected; that awakened a moral susceptibility which had lain for years insensible alike to the teachings of society, or the ethics of the theologian.
These few brief months–bright with a promise that we never saw fulfilled–must have been happy ones to Wan Lee. He worshipped his little friend with something of the same superstition, but without any of the caprice, that he bestowed upon his porcelain Pagan god. It was his delight to walk behind her to school, carrying her books–a service always fraught with danger to him from the little hands of his Caucasian Christian brothers. He made her the most marvellous toys; he would cut out of carrots and turnips the most astonishing roses and tulips; he made life-like chickens out of melon-seeds; he constructed fans and kites, and was singularly proficient in the making of dolls’ paper dresses. On the other hand, she played and sang to him, taught him a thousand little prettinesses and refinements only known to girls, gave him a yellow ribbon for his pig-tail, as best suiting his complexion, read to him, showed him wherein he was original and valuable, took him to Sunday school with her, against the precedents of the school, and, small-woman-like, triumphed. I wish I could add here, that she effected his conversion, and made him give up his porcelain idol. But I am telling a true story; and this little girl was quite content to fill him with her own Christian goodness, without letting him know that he was changed. So they got along very well together,–this little Christian girl with her shining cross hanging around her plump, white little neck; and this dark little Pagan, with his hideous porcelain god hidden away in his blouse.
There were two days of that eventful year which will long be remembered in San Francisco,–two days when a mob of her citizens set upon and killed unarmed, defenceless foreigners because they were foreigners, and of another race, religion, and color, and worked for what wages they could get. There were some public men so timid, that, seeing this, they thought that the end of the world had come. There were some eminent statesmen, whose names I am ashamed to write here, who began to think that the passage in the Constitution which guarantees civil and religious liberty to every citizen or foreigner was a mistake. But there were, also, some men who were not so easily frightened; and in twenty-four hours we had things so arranged, that the timid men could wring their hands in safety, and the eminent statesmen utter their doubts without hurting any body or any thing. And in the midst of this I got a note from Hop Sing, asking me to come to him immediately.
I found his warehouse closed, and strongly guarded by the police against any possible attack of the rioters. Hop Sing admitted me through a barred grating with his usual imperturbable calm, but, as it seemed to me, with more than his usual seriousness. Without a word, he took my hand, and led me to the rear of the room, and thence down stairs into the basement. It was dimly lighted; but there was something lying on the floor covered by a shawl. As I approached he drew the shawl away with a sudden gesture, and revealed Wan Lee, the Pagan, lying there dead.
Dead, my reverend friends, dead,–stoned to death in the streets of San Francisco, in the year of grace 1869, by a mob of half-grown boys and Christian school-children!
As I put my hand reverently upon his breast, I felt something crumbling beneath his blouse. I looked inquiringly at Hop Sing. He put his hand between the folds of silk, and drew out something with the first bitter smile I had ever seen on the face of that Pagan gentleman.
It was Wan Lee’s porcelain god, crushed by a stone from the hands of those Christian iconoclasts!
HOW OLD MAN PLUNKETT WENT HOME
I think we all loved him. Even after he mismanaged the affairs of the Amity Ditch Company, we commiserated him, although most of us were stockholders, and lost heavily. I remember that the blacksmith went so far as to say that “them chaps as put that responsibility on the old man oughter be lynched.” But the blacksmith was not a stockholder; and the expression was looked upon as the excusable extravagance of a large, sympathizing nature, that, when combined with a powerful frame, was unworthy of notice. At least, that was the way they put it. Yet I think there was a general feeling of regret that this misfortune would interfere with the old man’s long-cherished plan of “going home.”
Indeed, for the last ten years he had been “going home.” He was going home after a six-months’ sojourn at Monte Flat; he was going home after the first rains; he was going home when the rains were over; he was going home when he had cut the timber on Buckeye Hill, when there was pasture on Dow’s Flat, when he struck pay-dirt on Eureka Hill, when the Amity Company paid its first dividend, when the election was over, when he had received an answer from his wife. And so the years rolled by, the spring rains came and went, the woods of Buckeye Hill were level with the ground, the pasture on Dow’s Flat grew sear and dry, Eureka Hill yielded its pay-dirt and swamped its owner, the first dividends of the Amity Company were made from the assessments of stockholders, there were new county officers at Monte Flat, his wife’s answer had changed into a persistent question, and still old man Plunkett remained.
It is only fair to say that he had made several distinct essays toward going. Five years before, he had bidden good-by to Monte Hill with much effusion and hand-shaking. But he never got any farther than the next town. Here he was induced to trade the sorrel colt he was riding for a bay mare,–a transaction that at once opened to his lively fancy a vista of vast and successful future speculation. A few days after, Abner Dean of Angel’s received a letter from him, stating that he was going to Visalia to buy horses. “I am satisfied,” wrote Plunkett, with that elevated rhetoric for which his correspondence was remarkable,–“I am satisfied that we are at last developing the real resources of California. The world will yet look to Dow’s Flat as the great stock-raising centre. In view of the interests involved, I have deferred my departure for a month.” It was two before he again returned to us–penniless. Six months later, he was again enabled to start for the Eastern States; and this time he got as far as San Francisco. I have before me a letter which I received a few days after his arrival, from which I venture to give an extract: “You know, my dear boy, that I have always believed that gambling, as it is absurdly called, is still in its infancy in California. I have always maintained that a perfect system might be invented, by which the game of poker may be made to yield a certain percentage to the intelligent player. I am not at liberty at present to disclose the system; but before leaving this city I intend to perfect it.” He seems to have done so, and returned to Monte Flat with two dollars and thirty-seven cents, the absolute remainder of his capital after such perfection.
It was not until 1868 that he appeared to have finally succeeded in going home. He left us by the overland route,–a route which he declared would give great opportunity for the discovery of undeveloped resources. His last letter was dated Virginia City. He was absent three years. At the close of a very hot day in midsummer, he alighted from the Wingdam stage, with hair and beard powdered with dust and age. There was a certain shyness about his greeting, quite different from his usual frank volubility, that did not, however, impress us as any accession of character. For some days he was reserved regarding his recent visit, contenting himself with asserting, with more or less aggressiveness, that he had “always said he was going home, and now he had been there.” Later he grew more communicative, and spoke freely and critically of the manners and customs of New York and Boston, commented on the social changes in the years of his absence, and, I remember, was very hard upon what he deemed the follies incidental to a high state of civilization. Still later he darkly alluded to the moral laxity of the higher planes of Eastern society; but it was not long before he completely tore away the veil, and revealed the naked wickedness of New York social life in a way I even now shudder to recall. Vinous intoxication, it appeared, was a common habit of the first ladies of the city. Immoralities which he scarcely dared name were daily practised by the refined of both sexes. Niggardliness and greed were the common vices of the rich. “I have always asserted,” he continued, “that corruption must exist where luxury and riches are rampant, and capital is not used to develop the natural resources of the country. Thank you–I will take mine without sugar.” It is possible that some of these painful details crept into the local journals. I remember an editorial in “The Monte Flat Monitor,” entitled “The Effete East,” in which the fatal decadence of New York and New England was elaborately stated, and California offered as a means of natural salvation. “Perhaps,” said “The Monitor,” “we might add that Calaveras County offers superior inducements to the Eastern visitor with capital.”
Later he spoke of his family. The daughter he had left a child had grown into beautiful womanhood. The son was already taller and larger than his father; and, in a playful trial of strength, “the young rascal,” added Plunkett, with a voice broken with paternal pride and humorous objurgation, had twice thrown his doting parent to the ground. But it was of his daughter he chiefly spoke. Perhaps emboldened by the evident interest which masculine Monte Flat held in feminine beauty, he expatiated at some length on her various charms and accomplishments, and finally produced her photograph,–that of a very pretty girl,–to their infinite peril. But his account of his first meeting with her was so peculiar, that I must fain give it after his own methods, which were, perhaps, some shades less precise and elegant than his written style.
“You see, boys, it’s always been my opinion that a man oughter be able to tell his own flesh and blood by instinct. It’s ten years since I’d seen my Melindy; and she was then only seven, and about so high. So, when I went to New York, what did I do? Did I go straight to my house, and ask for my wife and daughter, like other folks? No, sir! I rigged myself up as a peddler, as a peddler, sir; and I rung the bell. When the servant came to the door, I wanted–don’t you see?–to show the ladies some trinkets. Then there was a voice over the banister says, ‘Don’t want any thing: send him away.’–‘Some nice laces, ma’am, smuggled,’ I says, looking up. ‘Get out, you wretch!’ says she. I knew the voice, boys: it was my wife, sure as a gun. Thar wasn’t any instinct thar. ‘Maybe the young ladies want somethin’,’ I said. ‘Did you hear me?’ says she; and with that she jumps forward, and I left. It’s ten years, boys, since I’ve seen the old woman; but somehow, when she fetched that leap, I naterally left.”
He had been standing beside the bar–his usual attitude–when he made this speech; but at this point he half faced his auditors with a look that was very effective. Indeed, a few who had exhibited some signs of scepticism and lack of interest, at once assumed an appearance of intense gratification and curiosity as he went on,–
“Well, by hangin round there for a day or two, I found out at last it was to be Melindy’s birthday next week, and that she was goin’ to have a big party. I tell ye what, boys, it weren’t no slouch of a reception. The whole house was bloomin’ with flowers, and blazin’ with lights; and there was no end of servants and plate and refreshments and fixin’s”–
“Uncle Joe.”
“Well?”
“Where did they get the money?”
Plunkett faced his interlocutor with a severe glance. “I always said,” he replied slowly, “that, when I went home, I’d send on ahead of me a draft for ten thousand dollars. I always said that, didn’t I? Eh? And I said I was goin’ home–and I’ve been home, haven’t I? Well?”
Either there was something irresistibly conclusive in this logic, or else the desire to hear the remainder of Plunkett’s story was stronger; but there was no more interruption. His ready good-humor quickly returned, and, with a slight chuckle, he went on,–
“I went to the biggest jewelry shop in town, and I bought a pair of diamond ear-rings, and put them in my pocket, and went to the house. ‘What name?’ says the chap who opened the door; and he looked like a cross ‘twixt a restaurant waiter and a parson. ‘Skeesicks,’ said I. He takes me in; and pretty soon my wife comes sailin’ into the parlor, and says, ‘Excuse me; but I don’t think I recognize the name.’ She was mighty polite; for I had on a red wig and side-whiskers. ‘A friend of your husband’s from California, ma’am, with a present for your daughter, Miss–,’ and I made as I had forgot the name. But all of a sudden a voice said, ‘That’s too thin;’ and in walked Melindy. ‘It’s playin’ it rather low down, father, to pretend you don’t know your daughter’s name; ain’t it, now? How are you, old man?’ And with that she tears off my wig and whiskers, and throws her arms around my neck–instinct, sir, pure instinct!”
Emboldened by the laughter which followed his description of the filial utterances of Melinda, he again repeated her speech, with more or less elaboration, joining in with, and indeed often leading, the hilarity that accompanied it, and returning to it, with more or less incoherency, several times during the evening.
And so, at various times and at various places, but chiefly in bar- rooms, did this Ulysses of Monte Flat recount the story of his wanderings. There were several discrepancies in his statement; there was sometimes considerable prolixity of detail; there was occasional change of character and scenery; there was once or twice an absolute change in the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that of Monte Flat,–a community accustomed to great expectation and small realization,–a community wherein, to use the local dialect, “they got the color, and struck hardpan,” more frequently than any other mining-camp,–in such a community, the fullest credence was not given to old man Plunkett’s facts. There was only one exception to the general unbelief,– Henry York of Sandy Bar. It was he who was always an attentive listener; it was his scant purse that had often furnished Plunkett with means to pursue his unprofitable speculations; it was to him that the charms of Melinda were more frequently rehearsed; it was he that had borrowed her photograph; and it was he that, sitting alone in his little cabin one night, kissed that photograph, until his honest, handsome face glowed again in the firelight.
It was dusty in Monte Flat. The ruins of the long dry season were crumbling everywhere: everywhere the dying summer had strewn its red ashes a foot deep, or exhaled its last breath in a red cloud above the troubled highways. The alders and cottonwoods, that marked the line of the water-courses, were grimy with dust, and looked as if they might have taken root in the open air. The gleaming stones of the parched water-courses themselves were as dry bones in the valley of death. The dusty sunset at times painted the flanks of the distant hills a dull, coppery hue: on other days, there was an odd, indefinable earthquake halo on the volcanic cones of the farther coast-spurs. Again an acrid, resinous smoke from the burning wood on Heavytree Hill smarted the eyes, and choked the free breath of Monte Flat; or a fierce wind, driving every thing, including the shrivelled summer, like a curled leaf before it, swept down the flanks of the Sierras, and chased the inhabitants to the doors of their cabins, and shook its red fist in at their windows. And on such a night as this, the dust having in some way choked the wheels of material progress in Monte Flat, most of the inhabitants were gathered listlessly in the gilded bar-room of the Moquelumne Hotel, spitting silently at the red-hot stove that tempered the mountain winds to the shorn lambs of Monte Flat, and waiting for the rain.
Every method known to the Flat of beguiling the time until the advent of this long-looked-for phenomenon had been tried. It is true, the methods were not many, being limited chiefly to that form of popular facetiae known as practical joking; and even this had assumed the seriousness of a business-pursuit. Tommy Roy, who had spent two hours in digging a ditch in front of his own door, into which a few friends casually dropped during the evening, looked ennuye and dissatisfied. The four prominent citizens, who, disguised as foot-pads, had stopped the county treasurer on the Wingdam road, were jaded from their playful efforts next morning. The principal physician and lawyer of Monte Flat, who had entered into an unhallowed conspiracy to compel the sheriff of Calaveras and his posse to serve a writ of ejectment on a grizzly bear, feebly disguised under the name of one “Major Ursus,” who haunted the groves of Heavytree Hill, wore an expression of resigned weariness. Even the editor of “The Monte Flat Monitor,” who had that morning written a glowing account of a battle with the Wipneck Indians, for the benefit of Eastern readers,–even HE looked grave and worn. When, at last, Abner Dean of Angel’s, who had been on a visit to San Francisco, walked into the room, he was, of course, victimized in the usual way by one or two apparently honest questions, which ended in his answering them, and then falling into the trap of asking another, to his utter and complete shame and mortification; but that was all. Nobody laughed; and Abner, although a victim, did not lose his good-humor. He turned quietly on his tormentors, and said,–
“I’ve got something better than that–you know old man Plunkett?”
Everybody simultaneously spat at the stove, and nodded his head.
“You know he went home three years ago?” Two or three changed the position of their legs from the backs of different chairs; and one man said, “Yes.”
“Had a good time, home?”
Everybody looked cautiously at the man who had said, “Yes;” and he, accepting the responsibility with a faint-hearted smile, said, “Yes,” again, and breathed hard. “Saw his wife and child–purty gal?” said Abner cautiously. “Yes,” answered the man doggedly. “Saw her photograph, perhaps?” continued Abner Dean quietly.
The man looked hopelessly around for support. Two or three, who had been sitting near him, and evidently encouraging him with a look of interest, now shamelessly abandoned him and looked another way. Henry York flushed a little, and veiled his gray eyes. The man hesitated, and then with a sickly smile, that was intended to convey the fact that he was perfectly aware of the object of this questioning, and was only humoring it from abstract good feeling, returned, “Yes,” again.
“Sent home–let’s see–ten thousand dollars, wasn’t it?” Abner Dean went on. “Yes,” reiterated the man with the same smile.
“Well, I thought so,” said Abner quietly. “But the fact is, you see, that he never went home at all–nary time.”
Everybody stared at Abner in genuine surprise and interest, as, with provoking calmness and a half-lazy manner, he went on,–
“You see, thar was a man down in ‘Frisco as knowed him, and saw him in Sonora during the whole of that three years. He was herding sheep, or tending cattle, or spekilating all that time, and hadn’t a red cent. Well it ‘mounts to this,–that ‘ar Plunkett ain’t been east of the Rocky Mountains since ’49.”
The laugh which Abner Dean had the right to confidently expect came; but it was bitter and sardonic. I think indignation was apparent in the minds of his hearers. It was felt, for the first time, that there was a limit to practical joking. A deception carried on for a year, compromising the sagacity of Monte Flat, was deserving the severest reprobation. Of course, nobody had believed Plunkett; but then the supposition that it might be believed in adjacent camps that they HAD believed him was gall and bitterness. The lawyer thought that an indictment for obtaining money under false pretences might be found. The physician had long suspected him of insanity, and was not certain but that he ought to be confined. The four prominent merchants thought that the business- interests of Monte Flat demanded that something should be done. In the midst of an excited and angry discussion, the door slowly opened, and old man Plunkett staggered into the room.
He had changed pitifully in the last six months. His hair was a dusty, yellowish gray, like the chemisal on the flanks of Heavytree Hill; his face was waxen white, and blue and puffy under the eyes; his clothes were soiled and shabby, streaked in front with the stains of hurriedly eaten luncheons, and fluffy behind with the wool and hair of hurriedly-extemporized couches. In obedience to that odd law, that, the more seedy and soiled a man’s garments become, the less does he seem inclined to part with them, even during that portion of the twenty-four hours when they are deemed less essential, Plunkett’s clothes had gradually taken on the appearance of a kind of a bark, or an outgrowth from within, for which their possessor was not entirely responsible. Howbeit, as he entered the room, he attempted to button his coat over a dirty shirt, and passed his fingers, after the manner of some animal, over his cracker-strewn beard, in recognition of a cleanly public sentiment. But, even as he did so, the weak smile faded from his lips; and his hand, after fumbling aimlessly around a button, dropped helplessly at his side. For as he leaned his back against the bar, and faced the group, he, for the first time, became aware that every eye but one was fixed upon him. His quick, nervous apprehension at once leaped to the truth. His miserable secret was out, and abroad in the very air about him. As a last resort, he glanced despairingly at Henry York; but his flushed face was turned toward the windows.
No word was spoken. As the bar-keeper silently swung a decanter and glass before him, he took a cracker from a dish, and mumbled it with affected unconcern. He lingered over his liquor until its potency stiffened his relaxed sinews, and dulled the nervous edge of his apprehension, and then he suddenly faced around. “It don’t look as if we were goin’ to hev any rain much afore Christmas,” he said with defiant ease.
No one made any reply.
“Just like this in ’52, and again in ’60. It’s always been my opinion that these dry seasons come reg’lar. I’ve said it afore. I say it again. It’s jist as I said about going home, you know,” he added with desperate recklessness.
“Thar’s a man,” said Abner Dean lazily, ez sez you never went home. Thar’s a man ez sez you’ve been three years in Sonora. Thar’s a man ez sez you hain’t seen your wife and daughter since ’49. Thar’s a man ez sez you’ve been playin’ this camp for six months.”
There was a dead silence. Then a voice said quite as quietly,–
“That man lies.”
It was not the old man’s voice. Everybody turned as Henry York slowly rose, stretching out his six feet of length, and, brushing away the ashes that had fallen from his pipe upon his breast, deliberately placed himself beside Plunkett, and faced the others.
“That man ain’t here,” continued Abner Dean, with listless indifference of voice, and a gentle pre-occupation of manner, as he carelessly allowed his right hand to rest on his hip near his revolver. “That man ain’t here; but, if I’m called upon to make good what he says, why, I’m on hand.”
All rose as the two men–perhaps the least externally agitated of them all–approached each other. The lawyer stepped in between them.
“Perhaps there’s some mistake here. York, do you KNOW that the old man has been home?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know it?”
York turned his clear, honest, frank eyes on his questioner, and without a tremor told the only direct and unmitigated lie of his life. “Because I’ve seen him there.”
The answer was conclusive. It was known that York had been visiting the East during the old man’s absence. The colloquy had diverted attention from Plunkett, who, pale and breathless, was staring at his unexpected deliverer. As he turned again toward his tormentors, there was something in the expression of his eye that caused those that were nearest to him to fall back, and sent a strange, indefinable thrill through the boldest and most reckless. As he made a step forward, the physician, almost unconsciously, raised his hand with a warning gesture; and old man Plunkett, with his eyes fixed upon the red-hot stove, and an odd smile playing about his mouth, began,–
“Yes–of course you did. Who says you didn’t? It ain’t no lie. I said I was goin’ home–and I’ve been home. Haven’t I? My God! I have. Who says I’ve been lyin’? Who says I’m dreamin’? Is it true–why don’t you speak? It is true, after all. You say you saw me there: why don’t you speak again? Say, say!–is it true? It’s going now. O my God! it’s going again. It’s going now. Save me!” And with a fierce cry he fell forward in a fit upon the floor.
When the old man regained his senses, he found himself in York’s cabin. A flickering fire of pine-boughs lit up the rude rafters, and fell upon a photograph tastefully framed with fir-cones, and hung above the brush whereon he lay. It was the portrait of a young girl. It was the first object to meet the old man’s gaze; and it brought with it a flush of such painful consciousness, that he started, and glanced quickly around. But his eyes only encountered those of York,–clear, gray, critical, and patient,– and they fell again.
“Tell me, old man,” said York not unkindly, but with the same cold, clear tone in his voice that his eye betrayed a moment ago,–“tell me, is THAT a lie too?” and he pointed to the picture.
The old man closed his eyes, and did not reply. Two hours before, the question would have stung him into some evasion or bravado. But the revelation contained in the question, as well as the tone of York’s voice, was to him now, in his pitiable condition, a relief. It was plain, even to his confused brain, that York had lied when he had indorsed his story in the bar-room; it was clear to him now that he had not been home, that he was not, as he had begun to fear, going mad. It was such a relief, that, with characteristic weakness, his former recklessness and extravagance returned. He began to chuckle, finally to laugh uproariously.
York, with his eyes still fixed on the old man, withdrew the hand with which he had taken his.
“Didn’t we fool ’em nicely; eh, Yorky! He, he! The biggest thing yet ever played in this camp! I always said I’d play ’em all some day, and I have–played ’em for six months. Ain’t it rich?–ain’t it the richest thing you ever seed? Did you see Abner’s face when he spoke ’bout that man as seed me in Sonora? Warn’t it good as the minstrels? Oh, it’s too much!” and, striking his leg with the palm of his hand, he almost threw himself from the bed in a paroxysm of laughter,–a paroxysm that, nevertheless, appeared to be half real and half affected.
“Is that photograph hers?” said York in a low voice, after a slight pause.
“Hers? No! It’s one of the San Francisco actresses. He, he! Don’t you see? I bought it for two bits in one of the bookstores. I never thought they’d swaller THAT too; but they did! Oh, but the old man played ’em this time didn’t he–eh?” and he peered curiously in York’s face.
“Yes, and he played ME too,” said York, looking steadily in the old man’s eye.
“Yes, of course,” interposed Plunkett hastily; “but you know, Yorky, you got out of it well! You’ve sold ’em too. We’ve both got em on a string now–you and me–got to stick together now. You did it well, Yorky: you did it well. Why, when you said you’d seen me in York City, I’m d—-d if I didn’t”–
“Didn’t what?” said York gently; for the old man had stopped with a pale face and wandering eye.
“Eh?”
“You say when I said I had seen you in New York you thought”–
“You lie!” said the old man fiercely. “I didn’t say I thought any thing. What are you trying to go back on me for, eh?” His hands were trembling as he rose muttering from the bed, and made his way toward the hearth.
“Gimme some whiskey,” he said presently “and dry up. You oughter treat anyway. Them fellows oughter treated last night. By hookey, I’d made ’em–only I fell sick.”
York placed the liquor and a tin cup on the table beside him, and, going to the door, turned his back upon his guest, and looked out on the night. Although it was clear moonlight, the familiar prospect never to him seemed so dreary. The dead waste of the broad Wingdam highway never seemed so monotonous, so like the days that he had passed, and were to come to him, so like the old man in its suggestion of going sometime, and never getting there. He turned, and going up to Plunkett put his hand upon his shoulder, and said,–
“I want you to answer one question fairly and squarely.”
The liquor seemed to have warmed the torpid blood in the old man’s veins, and softened his acerbity; for the face he turned up to York was mellowed in its rugged outline, and more thoughtful in expression, as he said,–
“Go on, my boy.”
“Have you a wife and–daughter?”
“Before God I have!”
The two men were silent for a moment, both gazing at the fire. Then Plunkett began rubbing his knees slowly.
“The wife, if it comes to that, ain’t much,” he began cautiously, “being a little on the shoulder, you know, and wantin’, so to speak a liberal California education, which makes, you know, a bad combination. It’s always been my opinion, that there ain’t any worse. Why, she’s as ready with her tongue as Abner Dean is with his revolver, only with the difference that she shoots from principle, as she calls it; and the consequence is, she’s always layin’ for you. It’s the effete East, my boy, that’s ruinin’ her. It’s them ideas she gets in New York and Boston that’s made her and me what we are. I don’t mind her havin’ ’em, if she didn’t shoot. But, havin’ that propensity, them principles oughtn’t to be lying round loose no more’n firearms.”
“But your daughter?” said York.
The old man’s hands went up to his eyes here, and then both hands and head dropped forward on the table. “Don’t say any thing ’bout her, my boy, don’t ask me now.” With one hand concealing his eyes, he fumbled about with the other in his pockets for his handkerchief– but vainly. Perhaps it was owing to this fact, that he repressed his tears; for, when he removed his hand from his eyes, they were quite dry. Then he found his voice.
“She’s a beautiful girl, beautiful, though I say it; and you shall see her, my boy,–you shall see her sure. I’ve got things about fixed now. I shall have my plan for reducin’ ores perfected a day or two; and I’ve got proposals from all the smeltin’ works here” (here he hastily produced a bundle of papers that fell upon the floor), “and I’m goin’ to send for ’em. I’ve got the papers here as will give me ten thousand dollars clear in the next month,” he added, as he strove to collect the valuable documents again. “I’ll have ’em here by Christmas, if I live; and you shall eat your Christmas dinner with me, York, my boy,–you shall sure.”
With his tongue now fairly loosened by liquor and the suggestive vastness of his prospects, he rambled on more or less incoherently, elaborating and amplifying his plans, occasionally even speaking of them as already accomplished, until the moon rode high in the heavens, and York led him again to his couch. Here he lay for some time muttering to himself, until at last he sank into a heavy sleep. When York had satisfied himself of the fact, he gently took down the picture and frame, and, going to the hearth, tossed them on the dying embers, and sat down to see them burn.
The fir-cones leaped instantly into flame; then the features that had entranced San Francisco audiences nightly, flashed up and passed away (as such things are apt to pass); and even the cynical smile on York’s lips faded too. And then there came a supplemental and unexpected flash as the embers fell together, and by its light York saw a paper upon the floor. It was one that had fallen from the old man’s pocket. As he picked it up listlessly, a photograph slipped from its folds. It was the portrait of a young girl; and on its reverse was written in a scrawling hand, “Melinda to father.”
It was at best a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a second time. He turned to the letter for relief.
It was misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable. Yet it was sincere in a certain kind of vague yearning for the presence of the degraded man to whom it was written,–an affection that was more like a confused instinct than a sentiment.
York folded it again carefully, and placed it beneath the old man’s pillow. Then he returned to his seat by the fire. A smile that had been playing upon his face, deepening the curves behind his mustache, and gradually overrunning his clear gray eyes, presently faded away. It was last to go from his eyes; and it left there, oddly enough to those who did not know him, a tear.
He sat there for a long time, leaning forward, his head upon his hands. The wind that had been striving with the canvas roof all at once lifted its edges, and a moonbeam slipped suddenly in, and lay for a moment like a shining blade upon his shoulder; and, knighted by its touch, straightway plain Henry York arose, sustained, high- purposed and self-reliant.
The rains had come at last. There was already a visible greenness on the slopes of Heavytree Hill; and the long, white track of the Wingdam road was lost in outlying pools and ponds a hundred rods from Monte Flat. The spent water-courses, whose white bones had been sinuously trailed over the flat, like the vertebrae of some forgotten saurian, were full again; the dry bones moved once more in the valley; and there was joy in the ditches, and a pardonable extravagance in the columns of “The Monte Flat Monitor.” “Never before in the history of the county has the yield been so satisfactory. Our contemporary of ‘The Hillside Beacon,’ who yesterday facetiously alluded to the fact (?) that our best citizens were leaving town in ‘dugouts,’ on account of the flood, will be glad to hear that our distinguished fellow-townsman, Mr. Henry York, now on a visit to his relatives in the East, lately took with him in his ‘dugout’ the modest sum of fifty thousand dollars, the result of one week’s clean-up. We can imagine,” continued that sprightly journal, “that no such misfortune is likely to overtake Hillside this season. And yet we believe ‘The Beacon’ man wants a railroad.” A few journals broke out into poetry. The operator at Simpson’s Crossing telegraphed to “The Sacramento Universe” “All day the low clouds have shook their garnered fulness down.” A San Francisco journal lapsed into noble verse, thinly disguised as editorial prose: “Rejoice: the gentle rain has come, the bright and pearly rain, which scatters blessings on the hills, and sifts them o’er the plain. Rejoice,” &c. Indeed, there was only one to whom the rain had not brought blessing, and that was Plunkett. In some mysterious and darksome way, it had interfered with the perfection of his new method of reducing ores, and thrown the advent of that invention back another season. It had brought him down to an habitual seat in the bar- room, where, to heedless and inattentive ears, he sat and discoursed of the East and his family.
No one disturbed him. Indeed, it was rumored that some funds had been lodged with the landlord, by a person or persons unknown, whereby his few wants were provided for. His mania–for that was the charitable construction which Monte Flat put upon his conduct– was indulged, even to the extent of Monte Flat’s accepting his invitation to dine with his family on Christmas Day,–an invitation extended frankly to every one with whom the old man drank or talked. But one day, to everybody’s astonishment, he burst into the bar-room, holding an open letter in his hand. It read as follows:–
“Be ready to meet your family at the new cottage on Heavytree Hill on Christmas Day. Invite what friends you choose.
“HENRY YORK.”
The letter was handed round in silence. The old man, with a look alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group. The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. “It’s a forgery evidently,” he said in a low voice. “He’s cunning enough to conceive it (they always are); but you’ll find he’ll fail in executing it. Watch his face!–Old man,” he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, “this is a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in the eye. Isn’t it so?”
The eyes of Plunkett stared a moment, and then dropped weakly. Then, with a feebler smile, he said, “You’re too many for me, boys. The Doc’s right. The little game’s up. You can take the old man’s hat;” and so, tottering, trembling, and chuckling, he dropped into silence and his accustomed seat. But the next day he seemed to have forgotten this episode, and talked as glibly as ever of the approaching festivity.
And so the days and weeks passed until Christmas–a bright, clear day, warmed with south winds, and joyous with the resurrection of springing grasses–broke upon Monte Flat. And then there was a sudden commotion in the hotel bar-room; and Abner Dean stood beside the old man’s chair, and shook him out of a slumber to his feet. “Rouse up, old man. York is here, with your wife and daughter, at the cottage on Heavytree. Come, old man. Here, boys, give him a lift;” and in another moment a dozen strong and willing hands had raised the old man, and bore him in triumph to the street up the steep grade of Heavytree Hill, and deposited him, struggling and confused, in the porch of a little cottage. At the same instant two women rushed forward, but were restrained by a gesture from Henry York. The old man was struggling to his feet. With an effort at last, he stood erect, trembling, his eye fixed, a gray pallor on his cheek, and a deep resonance in his voice.
“It’s all a trick, and a lie! They ain’t no flesh and blood or kin o’ mine. It ain’t my wife, nor child. My daughter’s a beautiful girl–a beautiful girl, d’ye hear? She’s in New York with her mother, and I’m going to fetch her here. I said I’d go home, and I’ve been home: d’ye hear me? I’ve been home! It’s a mean trick you’re playin’ on the old man. Let me go: d’ye hear? Keep them women off me! Let me go! I’m going–I’m going–home!”
His hands were thrown up convulsively in the air, and, half turning round, he fell sideways on the porch, and so to the ground. They picked him up hurriedly, but too late. He had gone home.
THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS
He lived alone. I do not think this peculiarity arose from any wish to withdraw his foolishness from the rest of the camp, nor was it probable that the combined wisdom of Five Forks ever drove him into exile. My impression is, that he lived alone from choice,–a choice he made long before the camp indulged in any criticism of his mental capacity. He was much given to moody reticence, and, although to outward appearances a strong man, was always complaining of ill-health. Indeed, one theory of his isolation was, that it afforded him better opportunities for taking medicine, of which he habitually consumed large quantities.
His folly first dawned upon Five Forks through the post-office windows. He was, for a long time, the only man who wrote home by every mail; his letters being always directed to the same person,– a woman. Now, it so happened that the bulk of the Five Forks correspondence was usually the other way. There were many letters received (the majority being in the female hand), but very few answered. The men received them indifferently, or as a matter of course. A few opened and read them on the spot, with a barely repressed smile of self-conceit, or quite as frequently glanced over them with undisguised impatience. Some of the letters began with “My dear husband;” and some were never called for. But the fact that the only regular correspondent of Five Forks never received any reply became at last quite notorious. Consequently, when an envelope was received, bearing the stamp of the “dead letter office,” addressed to “The Fool,” under the more conventional title of “Cyrus Hawkins,” there was quite a fever of excitement. I do not know how the secret leaked out; but it was eventually known to the camp, that the envelope contained Hawkins’s own letters returned. This was the first evidence of his weakness. Any man who repeatedly wrote to a woman who did not reply must be a fool. I think Hawkins suspected that his folly was known to the camp; but he took refuge in symptoms of chills and fever, which he at once developed, and effected a diversion with three bottles of Indian cholagogue and two boxes of pills. At all events, at the end of a week, he resumed a pen stiffened by tonics, with all his old epistolatory pertinacity. This time the letters had a new address.
In those days a popular belief obtained in the mines, that luck particularly favored the foolish and unscientific. Consequently, when Hawkins struck a “pocket” in the hillside near his solitary cabin, there was but little surprise. “He will sink it all in the next hole” was the prevailing belief, predicated upon the usual manner in which the possessor of “nigger luck” disposed of his fortune. To everybody’s astonishment, Hawkins, after taking out about eight thousand dollars, and exhausting the pocket, did not prospect for another. The camp then waited patiently to see what he would do with his money. I think, however, that it was with the greatest difficulty their indignation was kept from taking the form of a personal assault when it became known that he had purchased a draft for eight thousand dollars, in favor of “that woman.” More than this, it was finally whispered that the draft was returned to him as his letters had been, and that he was ashamed to reclaim the money at the express-office. “It wouldn’t be a bad specilation to go East, get some smart gal, for a hundred dollars, to dress herself up and represent that ‘Hag,’ and jest freeze onto that eight thousand,” suggested a far-seeing financier. I may state here, that we always alluded to Hawkins’s fair unknown as the “Hag” without having, I am confident, the least justification for that epithet.
That the “Fool” should gamble seemed eminently fit and proper. That he should occasionally win a large stake, according to that popular theory which I have recorded in the preceding paragraph, appeared, also, a not improbable or inconsistent fact. That he should, however, break the faro bank which Mr. John Hamlin had set up in Five Forks, and carry off a sum variously estimated at from ten to twenty thousand dollars, and not return the next day, and lose the money at the same table, really appeared incredible. Yet such was the fact. A day or two passed without any known investment of Mr. Hawkins’s recently-acquired capital. “Ef he allows to send it to that ‘Hag,'” said one prominent citizen, “suthin’ ought to be done. It’s jest ruinin’ the reputation of this yer camp,–this sloshin’ around o’ capital on non-residents ez don’t claim it!” “It’s settin’ an example o’ extravagance,” said another, “ez is little better nor a swindle. Thais mor’n five men in this camp, thet, hearin’ thet Hawkins hed sent home eight thousand dollars, must jest rise up and send home their hard earnings too! And then to think thet thet eight thousand was only a bluff, after all, and thet it’s lyin’ there on call in Adams & Co.’s bank! Well, I say it’s one o’ them things a vigilance committee oughter look into.”
When there seemed no possibility of this repetition of Hawkins’s folly, the anxiety to know what he had really done with his money became intense. At last a self-appointed committee of four citizens dropped artfully, but to outward appearances carelessly, upon him in his seclusion. When some polite formalities had been exchanged, and some easy vituperation of a backward season offered by each of the parties, Tom Wingate approached the subject.
“Sorter dropped heavy on Jack Hamlin the other night, didn’t ye? He allows you didn’t give him no show for revenge. I said you wasn’t no such d—-d fool; didn’t I, Dick?” continued the artful Wingate, appealing to a confederate.
“Yes,” said Dick promptly. “You said twenty thousand dollars wasn’t goin’ to be thrown around recklessly. You said Cyrus had suthin’ better to do with his capital,” super-added Dick with gratuitous mendacity. “I disremember now what partickler investment you said he was goin’ to make with it,” he continued, appealing with easy indifference to his friend.
Of course Wingate did not reply, but looked at the “Fool,” who, with a troubled face, was rubbing his legs softly. After a pause, he turned deprecatingly toward his visitors.
“Ye didn’t enny of ye ever hev a sort of tremblin’ in your legs, a kind o’ shakiness from the knee down? Suthin’,” he continued, slightly brightening with his topic,–“suthin’ that begins like chills, and yet ain’t chills? A kind o’ sensation of goneness here, and a kind o’ feelin’ as it you might die suddint?–when Wright’s Pills don’t somehow reach the spot, and quinine don’t fetch you?”
“No!” said Wingate with a curt directness, and the air of authoritatively responding for his friends,–“no, never had. You was speakin’ of this yer investment.”
“And your bowels all the time irregular?” continued Hawkins, blushing under Wingate’s eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a shipwrecked mariner to his plank.
Wingate did not reply, but glanced significantly at the rest. Hawkins evidently saw this recognition of his mental deficiency, and said apologetically, “You was saying suthin’ about my investment?”
“Yes,” said Wingate, so rapidly as to almost take Hawkins’s breath away,–“the investment you made in”–
“Rafferty’s Ditch,” said the “Fool” timidly.
For a moment, the visitors could only stare blankly at each other. “Rafferty’s Ditch,” the one notorious failure of Five Forks!– Rafferty’s Ditch, the impracticable scheme of an utterly unpractical man!–Rafferty’s Ditch, a ridiculous plan for taking water that could not be got to a place where it wasn’t wanted!– Rafferty’s Ditch, that had buried the fortunes of Rafferty and twenty wretched stockholders in its muddy depths!
“And thet’s it, is it?” said Wingate, after a gloomy pause. “Thet’s it! I see it all now, boys. That’s how ragged Pat Rafferty went down to San Francisco yesterday in store-clothes, and his wife and four children went off in a kerridge to Sacramento. Thet’s why them ten workmen of his, ez hadn’t a cent to bless themselves with, was playin’ billiards last night, and eatin’ isters. Thet’s whar that money kum frum,–one hundred dollars to pay for the long advertisement of the new issue of ditch stock in the “Times” yesterday. Thet’s why them six strangers were booked at the Magnolia hotel yesterday. Don’t you see? It’s thet money– and that ‘Fool’!”
The “Fool” sat silent. The visitors rose without a word.
“You never took any of them Indian Vegetable Pills?” asked Hawkins timidly of Wingate.
“No!” roared Wingate as he opened the door.
“They tell me, that, took with the Panacea,–they was out o’ the Panacea when I went to the drug-store last week,–they say, that, took with the Panacea, they always effect a certin cure.” But by this time, Wingate and his disgusted friends had retreated, slamming the door on the “Fool” and his ailments.
Nevertheless, in six months the whole affair was forgotten: the money had been spent; the “Ditch” had been purchased by a company of Boston capitalists, fired by the glowing description of an Eastern tourist, who had spent one drunken night at Five Forks; and I think even the mental condition of Hawkins might have remained undisturbed by criticism, but for a singular incident.
It was during an exciting political campaign, when party-feeling ran high, that the irascible Capt. McFadden of Sacramento visited Five Forks. During a heated discussion in the Prairie Rose Saloon, words passed between the captain and the Hon. Calhoun Bungstarter, ending in a challenge. The captain bore the infelicitous reputation of being a notorious duellist and a dead-shot. The captain was unpopular. The captain was believed to have been sent by the opposition for a deadly purpose; and the captain was, moreover, a stranger. I am sorry to say that with Five Forks this latter condition did not carry the quality of sanctity or reverence that usually obtains among other nomads. There was, consequently, some little hesitation when the captain turned upon the crowd, and asked for some one to act as his friend. To everybody’s astonishment, and to the indignation of many, the “Fool” stepped forward, and offered himself in that capacity. I do not know whether Capt. McFadden would have chosen him voluntarily; but he was constrained, in the absence of a better man, to accept his services.
The duel never took place. The preliminaries were all arranged, the spot indicated; the men were present with their seconds; there was no interruption from without; there was no explanation or apology passed–but the duel did not take place. It may be readily imagined that these facts, which were all known to Five Forks, threw the whole community into a fever of curiosity. The principals, the surgeon, and one second left town the next day. Only the “Fool” remained. HE resisted all questioning, declaring himself held in honor not to divulge: in short, conducted himself with consistent but exasperating folly. It was not until six months had passed, that Col. Starbottle, the second of Calhoun Bungstarter, in a moment of weakness, superinduced by the social glass, condescended to explain. I should not do justice to the parties, if I did not give that explanation in the colonel’s own words. I may remark, in passing, that the characteristic dignity of Col. Starbottle always became intensified by stimulants, and that, by the same process, all sense of humor was utterly eliminated.
“With the understanding that I am addressing myself confidentially to men of honor,” said the colonel, elevating his chest above the bar-room counter of the Prairie Rose Saloon, “I trust that it will not be necessary for me to protect myself from levity, as I was forced to do in Sacramento on the only other occasion when I entered into an explanation of this delicate affair by–er–er– calling the individual to a personal account–er. I do not believe,” added the colonel, slightly waving his glass of liquor in the air with a graceful gesture of courteous deprecation, “knowing what I do of the present company, that such a course of action is required here. Certainly not, sir, in the home of Mr. Hawkins–er– the gentleman who represented Mr. Bungstarter, whose conduct, ged, sir, is worthy of praise, blank me!”
Apparently satisfied with the gravity and respectful attention of his listeners, Col. Starbottle smiled relentingly and sweetly, closed his eyes half-dreamily, as if to recall his wandering thoughts, and began,–
“As the spot selected was nearest the tenement of Mr. Hawkins, it was agreed that the parties should meet there. They did so promptly at half-past six. The morning being chilly, Mr. Hawkins extended the hospitalities of his house with a bottle of Bourbon whiskey, of which all partook but myself. The reason for that exception is, I believe, well known. It is my invariable custom to take brandy–a wineglassful in a cup of strong coffee–immediately on rising. It stimulates the functions, sir, without producing any blank derangement of the nerves.”
The barkeeper, to whom, as an expert, the colonel had graciously imparted this information, nodded approvingly; and the colonel, amid a breathless silence, went on.
“We were about twenty minutes in reaching the spot. The ground was measured, the weapons were loaded, when Mr. Bungstarter confided to me the information that he was unwell, and in great pain. On consultation with Mr. Hawkins, it appeared that his principal, in a distant part of the field, was also suffering, and in great pain. The symptoms were such as a medical man would pronounce ‘choleraic.’ I say WOULD have pronounced; for, on examination, the surgeon was also found to be–er–in pain, and, I regret to say, expressing himself in language unbecoming the occasion. His impression was, that some powerful drug had been administered. On referring the question to Mr. Hawkins, he remembered that the bottle of whiskey partaken by them contained a medicine which he had been in the habit of taking, but which, having failed to act upon him, he had concluded to be generally ineffective, and had forgotten. His perfect willingness to hold himself personally responsible to each of the parties, his genuine concern at the disastrous effect of the mistake, mingled with his own alarm at the state of his system, which–er–failed to–er–respond to the peculiar qualities of the medicine, was most becoming to him as a man of honor and a gentleman. After an hour’s delay, both principals being completely exhausted, and abandoned by the surgeon, who was unreasonably alarmed at his own condition, Mr. Hawkins and I agreed to remove our men to Markleville. There, after a further consultation with Mr. Hawkins, an amicable adjustment of all difficulties, honorable to both parties, and governed by profound secrecy, was arranged. I believe,” added the colonel, looking around, and setting down his glass, “no gentleman has yet expressed himself other than satisfied with the result.”
Perhaps it was the colonel’s manner; but, whatever was the opinion of Five Forks regarding the intellectual display of Mr. Hawkins in this affair, there was very little outspoken criticism at the moment. In a few weeks the whole thing was forgotten, except as part of the necessary record of Hawkins’s blunders, which was already a pretty full one. Again, some later follies conspired to obliterate the past, until, a year later, a valuable lead was discovered in the “Blazing Star” tunnel, in the hill where he lived; and a large sum was offered him for a portion of his land on the hilltop. Accustomed as Five Forks had become to the exhibition of his folly, it was with astonishment that they learned that he resolutely and decidedly refused the offer. The reason that he gave was still more astounding,–he was about to build.
To build a house upon property available for mining-purposes was preposterous; to build at all, with a roof already covering him, was an act of extravagance; to build a house of the style he proposed was simply madness.
Yet here were facts. The plans were made, and the lumber for the new building was already on the ground, while the shaft of the “Blazing Star” was being sunk below. The site was, in reality, a very picturesque one, the building itself of a style and quality hitherto unknown in Five Forks. The citizens, at first sceptical, during their moments of recreation and idleness gathered doubtingly about the locality. Day by day, in that climate of rapid growths, the building, pleasantly known in the slang of Five Forks as the “Idiot Asylum,” rose beside the green oaks and clustering firs of Hawkins Hill, as if it were part of the natural phenomena. At last it was completed. Then Mr. Hawkins proceeded to furnish it with an expensiveness and extravagance of outlay quite in keeping with his former idiocy. Carpets, sofas, mirrors, and finally a piano,–the only one known in the county, and brought at great expense from Sacramento,–kept curiosity at a fever-heat. More than that, there were articles and ornaments which a few married experts declared only fit for women. When the furnishing of the house was complete,–it had occupied two months of the speculative and curious attention of the camp,–Mr. Hawkins locked the front-door, put the key in his pocket, and quietly retired to his more humble roof, lower on the hillside.
I have not deemed it necessary to indicate to the intelligent reader all of the theories which obtained in Five Forks during the erection of the building. Some of them may be readily imagined. That the “Hag” had, by artful coyness and systematic reticence, at last completely subjugated the “Fool,” and that the new house was intended for the nuptial bower of the (predestined) unhappy pair, was, of course, the prevailing opinion. But when, after a reasonable time had elapsed, and the house still remained untenanted, the more exasperating conviction forced itself upon the general mind, that the “Fool” had been for the third time imposed upon; when two months had elapsed, and there seemed no prospect of a mistress for the new house,–I think public indignation became so strong, that, had the “Hag” arrived, the marriage would have been publicly prevented. But no one appeared that seemed to answer to this idea of an available tenant; and all inquiry of Mr. Hawkins as to his intention in building a house, and not renting it, or occupying it, failed to elicit any further information. The reasons that he gave were felt to be vague, evasive, and unsatisfactory. He was in no hurry to move, he said. When he WAS ready, it surely was not strange that he should like to have his house all ready to receive him. He was often seen upon the veranda, of a summer evening, smoking a cigar. It is reported that one night the house was observed to be brilliantly lighted from garret to basement; that a neighbor, observing this, crept toward the open parlor-window, and, looking in, espied the “Fool” accurately dressed in evening costume, lounging upon a sofa in the drawing-room, with the easy air of socially entertaining a large party. Notwithstanding this, the house was unmistakably vacant that evening, save for the presence of the owner, as the witness afterward testified. When this story was first related, a few practical men suggested the theory that Mr. Hawkins was simply drilling himself in the elaborate duties of hospitality against a probable event in his history. A few ventured the belief that the house was haunted. The imaginative editor of the Five Forks “Record” evolved from the depths of his professional consciousness a story that Hawkins’s sweetheart had died, and that he regularly entertained her spirit in this beautifully furnished mausoleum. The occasional spectacle of Hawkins’s tall figure pacing the veranda on moonlight nights lent some credence to this theory, until an unlooked-for incident diverted all speculation into another channel.
It was about this time that a certain wild, rude valley, in the neighborhood of Five Forks, had become famous as a picturesque resort. Travellers had visited it, and declared that there were more cubic yards of rough stone cliff, and a waterfall of greater height, than any they had visited. Correspondents had written it up with extravagant rhetoric and inordinate poetical quotation. Men and women who had never enjoyed a sunset, a tree, or a flower, who had never appreciated the graciousness or meaning of the yellow sunlight that flecked their homely doorways, or the tenderness of a midsummer’s night, to whose moonlight they bared their shirt- sleeves or their tulle dresses, came from thousands of miles away to calculate the height of this rock, to observe the depth of this chasm, to remark upon the enormous size of this unsightly tree, and to believe with ineffable self-complacency that they really admired Nature. And so it came to pass, that, in accordance with the tastes or weaknesses of the individual, the more prominent and salient points of the valley were christened; and there was a “Lace Handkerchief Fall,” and the “Tears of Sympathy Cataract,” and one distinguished orator’s “Peak,” and several “Mounts” of various noted people, living or dead, and an “Exclamation-Point,” and a “Valley of Silent Adoration.” And, in course of time, empty soda- water bottles were found at the base of the cataract, and greasy newspapers, and fragments of ham-sandwiches, lay at the dusty roots of giant trees. With this, there were frequent irruptions of closely-shaven and tightly-cravated men, and delicate, flower-faced women, in the one long street of Five Forks, and a scampering of mules, and an occasional procession of dusty brown-linen cavalry.
A year after “Hawkins’s Idiot Asylum” was completed, one day there drifted into the valley a riotous cavalcade of “school-marms,” teachers of the San Francisco public schools, out for a holiday. Not severely-spectacled Minervas, and chastely armed and mailed Pallases, but, I fear, for the security of Five Forks, very human, charming, and mischievous young women. At least, so the men thought, working in the ditches, and tunnelling on the hillside; and when, in the interests of science, and the mental advancement of juvenile posterity, it was finally settled that they should stay in Five Forks two or three days for the sake of visiting the various mines, and particularly the “Blazing Star” tunnel, there was some flutter of masculine anxiety. There was a considerable inquiry for “store-clothes,” a hopeless overhauling of old and disused raiment, and a general demand fox “boiled shirts” and the barber.
Meanwhile, with that supreme audacity and impudent hardihood of the sex when gregarious, the school-marms rode through the town, admiring openly the handsome faces and manly figures that looked up from the ditches, or rose behind the cars of ore at the mouths of tunnels. Indeed, it is alleged that Jenny Forester, backed and supported by seven other equally shameless young women, had openly and publicly waved her handkerchief to the florid Hercules of Five Forks, one Tom Flynn, formerly of Virginia, leaving that good- natured but not over-bright giant pulling his blonde mustaches in bashful amazement.
It was a pleasant June afternoon that Miss Milly Arnot, principal of the primary department of one of the public schools of San Francisco, having evaded her companions, resolved to put into operation a plan which had lately sprung up in her courageous and mischief-loving fancy. With that wonderful and mysterious instinct of her sex, from whom no secrets of the affections are hid, and to whom all hearts are laid open, she had heard the story of Hawkins’s folly, and the existence of the “Idiot Asylum.” Alone, on Hawkins Hill, she had determined to penetrate its seclusion. Skirting the underbrush at the foot of the hill, she managed to keep the heaviest timber between herself and the “Blazing Star” tunnel at its base, as well as the cabin of Hawkins, half-way up the ascent, until, by a circuitous route, at last she reached, unobserved, the summit. Before her rose, silent, darkened, and motionless, the object of her search. Here her courage failed her, with all the characteristic inconsequence of her sex. A sudden fear of all the dangers she had safely passed–bears, tarantulas, drunken men, and lizards–came upon her. For a moment, as she afterward expressed it, “she thought she should die.” With this belief, probably, she gathered three large stones, which she could hardly lift, for the purpose of throwing a great distance; put two hair-pins in her mouth; and carefully re-adjusted with both hands two stray braids of her lovely blue-black mane, which had fallen in gathering the stones. Then she felt in the pockets of her linen duster for her card-case, handkerchief, pocketbook, and smelling-bottle, and, finding them intact, suddenly assumed an air of easy, ladylike unconcern, went up the steps of the veranda, and demurely pulled the front doorbell, which she knew would not be answered. After a decent pause, she walked around the encompassing veranda, examining the closed shutters of the French windows until she found one that yielded to her touch. Here she paused again to adjust her coquettish hat by the mirror-like surface of the long sash-window, that reflected the full length of her pretty figure. And then she opened the window, and entered the room.
Although long closed, the house had a smell of newness and of fresh paint, that was quite unlike the mouldiness of the conventional haunted house. The bright carpets, the cheerful walls, the glistening oil-cloths, were quite inconsistent with the idea of a ghost. With childish curiosity, she began to explore the silent house, at first timidly,–opening the doors with a violent push, and then stepping back from the threshold to make good a possible retreat,–and then more boldly, as she became convinced of her security and absolute loneliness. In one of the chambers–the largest–there were fresh flowers in a vase, evidently gathered that morning; and, what seemed still more remarkable, the pitchers and ewers were freshly filled with water. This obliged Miss Milly to notice another singular fact, namely, that the house was free from dust, the one most obtrusive and penetrating visitor of Five Forks. The floors and carpets had been recently swept, the chairs and furniture carefully wiped and dusted. If the house WAS haunted, it was possessed by a spirit who had none of the usual indifference to decay and mould. And yet the beds had evidently never been slept in, the very springs of the chair in which she sat creaked stiffly at the novelty; the closet-doors opened with the reluctance of fresh paint and varnish; and in spite of the warmth, cleanliness, and cheerfulness of furniture and decoration, there was none of the ease of tenancy and occupation. As Miss Milly afterward confessed, she longed to “tumble things around;” and, when she reached the parlor or drawing-room again, she could hardly resist the desire. Particularly was she tempted by a closed piano, that stood mutely against the wall. She thought she would open it just to see who was the maker. That done, it would be no harm to try its tone. She did so, with one little foot on the soft pedal. But Miss Milly was too good a player, and too enthusiastic a musician, to stop at half-measures. She tried it again, this time so sincerely, that the whole house seemed to spring into voice. Then she stopped and listened. There was no response: the empty rooms seemed to have relapsed into their old stillness. She stepped out on the veranda. A woodpecker recommenced his tapping on an adjacent tree: the rattle of a cart in the rocky gulch below the hill came faintly up. No one was to be seen far or near. Miss Milly, re-assured, returned. She again ran her fingers over the keys, stopped, caught at a melody running in her mind, half played it, and then threw away all caution. Before five minutes had elapsed, she had entirely forgotten herself, and with her linen duster thrown aside, her straw hat flung on the piano, her white hands bared, and a black loop of her braided hair hanging upon her shoulder, was fairly embarked upon a flowing sea of musical recollection.
She had played, perhaps, half an hour, when having just finished an elaborate symphony, and resting her hands on the keys, she heard very distinctly and unmistakably the sound of applause from without. In an instant the fires of shame and indignation leaped into her cheeks; and she rose from the instrument, and ran to the window, only in time to catch sight of a dozen figures in blue and red flannel shirts vanishing hurriedly through the trees below.
Miss Milly’s mind was instantly made up. I think I have already intimated, that, under the stimulus of excitement, she was not wanting in courage; and as she quietly resumed her gloves, hat, and duster, she was not, perhaps, exactly the young person that it would be entirely safe for the timid, embarrassed, or inexperienced of my sex to meet alone. She shut down the piano; and having carefully reclosed all the windows and doors, and restored the house to its former desolate condition, she stepped from the veranda, and proceeded directly to the cabin of the unintellectual Hawkins, that reared its adobe chimney above the umbrage a quarter of a mile below.
The door opened instantly to her impulsive knock, and the “Fool of Five Forks” stood before her. Miss Milly had never before seen the man designated by this infelicitous title; and as he stepped backward, in half courtesy and half astonishment, she was, for the moment, disconcerted. He was tall, finely formed, and dark- bearded. Above cheeks a little hollowed by care and ill-health shone a pair of hazel eyes, very large, very gentle, but inexpressibly sad and mournful. This was certainly not the kind of man Miss Milly had expected to see; yet, after her first embarrassment had passed, the very circumstance, oddly enough, added to her indignation, and stung her wounded pride still more deeply. Nevertheless, the arch hypocrite instantly changed her tactics with the swift intuition of her sex.
“I have come,” she said with a dazzling smile, infinitely more dangerous than her former dignified severity,–“I have come to ask your pardon for a great liberty I have just taken. I believe the new house above us on the hill is yours. I was so much pleased with its exterior, that I left my friends for a moment below here,” she continued artfully, with a slight wave of the hand, as if indicating a band of fearless Amazons without, and waiting to avenge any possible insult offered to one of their number, “and ventured to enter it. Finding it unoccupied, as I had been told, I am afraid I had the audacity to sit down and amuse myself for a few moments at the piano, while waiting for my friends.”
Hawkins raised his beautiful eyes to hers. He saw a very pretty girl, with frank gray eyes glistening with excitement, with two red, slightly freckled cheeks glowing a little under his eyes, with a short scarlet upper-lip turned back, like a rose-leaf, over a little line of white teeth, as she breathed somewhat hurriedly in her nervous excitement. He saw all this calmly, quietly, and, save for the natural uneasiness of a shy, reticent man, I fear without a quickening of his pulse.
“I knowed it,” he said simply. “I heerd ye as I kem up.”
Miss Milly was furious at his grammar, his dialect, his coolness, and, still more, at the suspicion that he was an active member of her in visible elaque.
“Ah!” she said, still smiling. “Then I think I heard YOU”–
“I reckon not,” he interrupted gravely. “I didn’t stay long. I found the boys hanging round the house, and I allowed at first I’d go in and kinder warn you; but they promised to keep still: and you looked so comfortable, and wrapped up in your music, that I hadn’t the heart to disturb you, and kem away. I hope,” he added earnestly, “they didn’t let on ez they heerd you. They ain’t a bad lot,–them Blazin’ Star boys–though they’re a little hard at times. But they’d no more hurt ye then they would a–a–a cat!” continued Mr. Hawkins, blushing with a faint apprehension of the inelegance of his simile.
“No, no!” said Miss Milly, feeling suddenly very angry with herself, the “Fool,” and the entire male population of Five Forks. “No! I have behaved foolishly, I suppose–and, if they HAD, it would have served me right. But I only wanted to apologize to you. You’ll find every thing as you left it. Good-day!”
She turned to go. Mr. Hawkins began to feel embarrassed. “I’d have asked ye to sit down,” he said finally, “if it hed been a place fit for a lady. I oughter done so, enny way. I don’t know what kept me from it. But I ain’t well, miss. Times I get a sort o’ dumb ager,–it’s the ditches, I think, miss,–and I don’t seem to hev my wits about me.”
Instantly Miss Arnot was all sympathy: her quick woman’s heart was touched.
“Can I–can any thing be done?” she asked more timidly than she had before spoken.
“No–not onless ye remember suthin’ about these pills.” He exhibited a box containing about half a dozen. “I forget the direction–I don’t seem to remember much, any way, these times. They’re ‘Jones’s Vegetable Compound.’ If ye’ve ever took ’em, ye’ll remember whether the reg’lar dose is eight. They ain’t but six here. But perhaps ye never tuk any,” he added deprecatingly.
“No,” said Miss Milly curtly. She had usually a keen sense of the ludicrous; but somehow Mr. Hawkins’s eccentricity only pained her.
“Will you let me see you to the foot of the hill?” he said again, after another embarrassing pause.
Miss Arnot felt instantly that such an act would condone her trespass in the eyes of the world. She might meet some of her invisible admirers, or even her companions; and, with all her erratic impulses, she was, nevertheless, a woman, and did not entirely despise the verdict of conventionality. She smiled sweetly, and assented; and in another moment the two were lost in the shadows of the wood.
Like many other apparently trivial acts in an uneventful life, it was decisive. As she expected, she met two or three of her late applauders, whom, she fancied, looked sheepish and embarrassed; she met, also, her companions looking for her in some alarm, who really appeared astonished at her escort, and, she fancied, a trifle envious of her evident success. I fear that Miss Arnot, in response to their anxious inquiries, did not state entirely the truth, but, without actual assertion, led them to believe that she had, at a very early stage of the proceeding, completely subjugated this weak-minded giant, and had brought him triumphantly to her feet. From telling this story two or three times, she got finally to believing that she had some foundation for it, then to a vague sort of desire that it would eventually prove to be true, and then to an equally vague yearning to hasten that consummation. That it would redound to any satisfaction of the “Fool” she did not stop to doubt. That it would cure him of his folly she was quite confident. Indeed, there are very few of us, men or women, who do not believe that even a hopeless love for ourselves is more conducive to the salvation of the lover than a requited affection for another.
The criticism of Five Forks was, as the reader may imagine, swift and conclusive. When it was found out that Miss Arnot was not the “Hag” masquerading as a young and pretty girl, to the ultimate deception of Five Forks in general, and the “Fool” in particular, it was at once decided that nothing but the speedy union of the “Fool” and the “pretty school-marm” was consistent with ordinary common sense. The singular good-fortune of Hawkins was quite in accordance with the theory of his luck as propounded by the camp. That, after the “Hag” failed to make her appearance, he should “strike a lead” in his own house, without the trouble of “prospectin’,” seemed to these casuists as a wonderful but inevitable law. To add to these fateful probabilities, Miss Arnot fell, and sprained her ankle, in the ascent of Mount Lincoln, and was confined for some weeks to the hotel after her companions had departed. During this period, Hawkins was civilly but grotesquely attentive. When, after a reasonable time had elapsed, there still appeared to be no immediate prospect of the occupancy of the new house, public opinion experienced a singular change in regard to its theories of Mr. Hawkins’s conduct. The “Hag” was looked upon as a saint-like and long-suffering martyr to the weaknesses and inconsistency of the “Fool.” That, after erecting this new house at her request, he had suddenly “gone back” on her; that his celibacy was the result of a long habit of weak proposal and subsequent shameless rejection; and that he was now trying his hand on the helpless schoolmarm, was perfectly plain to Five Forks. That he should be frustrated in his attempts at any cost was equally plain. Miss Milly suddenly found herself invested with a rude chivalry that would have been amusing, had it not been at times embarrassing; that would have been impertinent, but for the almost superstitious respect with which it was proffered. Every day somebody from Five Forks rode out to inquire the health of the fair patient. “Hez Hawkins bin over yer to-day?” queried Tom Flynn, with artful ease and indifference, as he leaned over Miss Milly’s easy-chair on the veranda. Miss Milly, with a faint pink flush on her cheek, was constrained to answer, “No.” “Well, he sorter sprained his foot agin a rock yesterday,” continued Flynn with shameless untruthfulness. “You mus’n’t think any thing o’ that, Miss Arnot. He’ll be over yer to-morrer; and meantime he told me to hand this yer bookay with his re-gards, and this yer specimen.” And Mr. Flynn laid down the flowers he had picked en route against such an emergency, and presented respectfully a piece of quartz and gold, which he had taken that morning from his own sluice-box. “You mus’n’t mind Hawkins’s ways, Miss Milly,” said another sympathizing miner. “There ain’t a better man in camp than that theer Cy Hawkins–but he don’t understand the ways o’ the world with wimen. He hasn’t mixed as much with society as the rest of us,” he added, with an elaborate Chesterfieldian ease of manner; “but he means well.” Meanwhile a few other sympathetic tunnelmen were impressing upon Mr. Hawkins the necessity of the greatest attention to the invalid. “It won’t do, Hawkins,” they explained, “to let that there gal go back to San Francisco and say, that, when she was sick and alone, the only man in Five Forks under whose roof she had rested, and at whose table she had sat” (this was considered a natural but pardonable exaggeration of rhetoric) “ever threw off on her; and it sha’n’t be done. It ain’t the square thing to Five Forks.” And then the “Fool” would rush away to the valley, and be received by Miss Milly with a certain reserve of manner that finally disappeared in a flush of color, some increased vivacity, and a pardonable coquetry. And so the days passed. Miss Milly grew better in health, and more troubled in mind; and Mr. Hawkins became more and more embarrassed; and Five Forks smiled, and rubbed its hands, and waited for the approaching denoument. And then it came–but not, perhaps, in the manner that Five Forks had imagined.
It was a lovely afternoon in July that a party of Eastern tourists rode into Five Forks. They had just “done” the Valley of Big Things; and, there being one or two Eastern capitalists among the party, it was deemed advisable that a proper knowledge of the practical mining-resources of California should be added to their experience of the merely picturesque in Nature. Thus far every thing had been satisfactory; the amount of water which passed over the Fall was large, owing to a backward season; some snow still remained in the canyons near the highest peaks; they had ridden round one of the biggest trees, and through the prostrate trunk of another. To say that they were delighted is to express feebly the enthusiasm of these ladies and gentlemen, drunk with the champagny hospitality of their entertainers, the utter novelty of scene, and the dry, exhilarating air of the valley. One or two had already expressed themselves ready to live and die there; another had written a glowing account to the Eastern press, depreciating all other scenery in Europe and America; and, under these circumstances, it was reasonably expected that Five Forks would do its duty, and equally impress the stranger after its own fashion.
Letters to this effect were sent from San Francisco by prominent capitalists there; and, under the able superintendence of one of their agents, the visitors were taken in hand, shown “what was to be seen,” carefully restrained from observing what ought not to be visible, and so kept in a blissful and enthusiastic condition. And so the graveyard of Five Forks, in which but two of the occupants had died natural deaths; the dreary, ragged cabins on the hillsides, with their sad-eyed, cynical, broken-spirited occupants, toiling on day by day for a miserable pittance, and a fare that a self-respecting Eastern mechanic would have scornfully rejected,– were not a part of the Eastern visitors’ recollection. But the hoisting works and machinery of the “Blazing Star Tunnel Company” was,–the Blazing Star Tunnel Company, whose “gentlemanly superintendent” had received private information from San Francisco to do the “proper thing” for the party. Wherefore the valuable heaps of ore in the company’s works were shown; the oblong bars of gold, ready for shipment, were playfully offered to the ladies who could lift and carry them away unaided; and even the tunnel itself, gloomy, fateful, and peculiar, was shown as part of the experience; and, in the noble language of one correspondent, “The wealth of Five Forks, and the peculiar inducements that it offered to Eastern capitalists,” were established beyond a doubt. And then occurred a little incident, which, as an unbiassed spectator, I am free to say offered no inducements to anybody whatever, but which, for its bearing upon the central figure of this veracious chronicle, I cannot pass over.
It had become apparent to one or two more practical and sober- minded in the party, that certain portions of the “Blazing Star” tunnel (owing, perhaps, to the exigencies of a flattering annual dividend) were economically and imperfectly “shored” and supported, and were, consequently, unsafe, insecure, and to be avoided. Nevertheless, at a time when champagne corks were popping in dark corners, and enthusiastic voices and happy laughter rang through the half-lighted levels and galleries, there came a sudden and mysterious silence. A few lights dashed swiftly by in the direction of a distant part of the gallery, and then there was a sudden sharp issuing of orders, and a dull, ominous rumble. Some of the visitors turned pale: one woman fainted.
Something had happened. What? “Nothing” (the speaker is fluent, but uneasy)–“one of the gentlemen, in trying to dislodge a ‘specimen’ from the wall, had knocked away a support. There had been a ‘cave’–the gentleman was caught, and buried below his shoulders. It was all right, they’d get him out in a moment–only it required great care to keep from extending the ‘cave.’ Didn’t know his name. It was that little man, the husband of that lively lady with the black eyes. Eh! Hullo, there! Stop her! For God’s sake! Not that way! She’ll fall from that shaft. She’ll be killed!”
But the lively lady was already gone. With staring black eyes, imploringly trying to pierce the gloom, with hands and feet that sought to batter and break down the thick darkness, with incoherent cries and supplications following the moving of ignis fatuus lights ahead, she ran, and ran swiftly!–ran over treacherous foundations, ran by yawning gulfs, ran past branching galleries and arches, ran wildly, ran despairingly, ran blindly, and at last ran into the arms of the “Fool of Five Forks.”
In an instant she caught at his hand. “Oh, save him!” she cried. “You belong here; you know this dreadful place: bring me to him. Tell me where to go, and what to do, I implore you! Quick, he is dying! Come!”
He raised his eyes to hers, and then, with a sudden cry, dropped the rope and crowbar he was carrying, and reeled against the wall.
“Annie!” he gasped slowly. “Is it you?”
She caught at both his hands, brought her face to his with staring eyes, murmured, “Good God, Cyrus!” and sank upon her knees before him.
He tried to disengage the hand that she wrung with passionate entreaty.