These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, inher present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also,that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, wasamiable-looking,--in fact, a kind of blond Samson, whose corn-coloredsilken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razoror Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered onher ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself withreceiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and thegathered skirts of uncontamination. When she reentered the schoolroom,her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; andthen she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were allunconsciously very happy.
It was a hot day, and not long after this, that two short-legged boyscame to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Marycompassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. Atthe foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted armdexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was bothembarrassed and angry. "If you carried more of that for yourself," shesaid spitefully to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashesto its owner, "you'd do better." In the submissive silence that followedshe regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door thathe stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again,--a laugh in whichMiss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and asmysteriously filled with fresh spring-water every morning.
Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions."Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in thenewspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box-seat tothe fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the groundthat he had a habit of "cussin' on up grades," and gave her half thecoach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently riddenwith her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head ofa confederate for mentioning her name in a bar-room. The over-dressedmother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered nearthis astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts,but content to worship the priestess from afar.
With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over RedGulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors ofthe firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was lessfrequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unendinglesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedfulor listless ears. And so one day she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill,and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the stragglingshanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheapfinery of shop-windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass,and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in suchlocalities, what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of raggedrock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed,--how the waitingwoods opened their long files to receive them! How the children--perhapsbecause they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of thebounteous Mother--threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom withuncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Maryherself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity ofspotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran like a crestedquail at the head of her brood, until, romping, laughing, and panting,with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbonfrom her throat, she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of theforest, upon the luckless Sandy!
The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensuedneed not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary hadalready established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough thathe was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with thatquick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized afriend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, andtook other liberties,--as the helpless are apt to do. And when he hadbuilt a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries ofwoodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two suchfoolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of theschoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face as she sat upon the slopinghillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the sameattitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the similitudegreatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature, that had founda dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding anequal intoxication in love.
I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that helonged to be doing something,--slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage,or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in an heroicattitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, beingonly withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong convictionthat it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that myfairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always someuninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, whorescues, will forgive the omission.
So they sat there undisturbed,--the woodpeckers chattering overhead andthe voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.What they said matters little. What they thought--which might have beeninteresting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how MissMary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house to come to Californiafor the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an orphan too;how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a wildlife, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which, from awoodpecker's view-point, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and a wasteof time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and whenthe children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy whichthe schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at theoutskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her wearylife.
As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of RedGulch--to use a local euphuism--"dried up" also. In another day MissMary would be free, and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know herno more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting onher hand, her eyes half closed in one of those daydreams in which MissMary, I fear, to the danger of school discipline, was lately in thehabit of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and otherwoodland memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her ownthoughts that a gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translateditself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last itasserted itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek andopened the door. On the threshold stood a woman, the self-assertionand audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid,irresolute bearing. Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious motherof her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps shewas only fastidious; but as she coldly invited her to enter, she halfunconsciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closerher own chaste skirts. It was, perhaps, for this reason that theembarrassed stranger, after a moment's hesitation, left her gorgeousparasol open and sticking in the dust beside the door, and then sat downat the farther end of a long bench. Her voice was husky as she began,--
"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and Icouldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to myTommy." Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more thanthe poor attention she could give him.
"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening eventhrough the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war paint,"and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer theschoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that; and if I am his mother,there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain'tmuch as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer
, angeler teacher livesthan he's got."
Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over hershoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know," shewent on hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, todo it, either; but I come to ask a favor,--not for me, miss,--not forme, but for the darling boy."
Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting herlilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees,she went on, in a low voice:--
"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and Iain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, ofsending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringinga schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was allright, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And, oh! miss, he lovesyou so much; and if you could hear him talk about you in his pretty way,and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse him.
"It is natural," she went on rapidly, in a voice that trembled strangelybetween pride and humility,--"it's natural that he should take to you,miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a gentleman,--and theboy must forget me, sooner or later,--and so I ain't a-goin' to cryabout that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy,--God bless him forthe bestest, sweetest boy that lives,--to--to--take him with you."
She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and hadfallen on her knees beside her.
"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some goodschool, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to forget hismother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be kindnessto what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this wicked life,this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will! I know youwill,--won't you? You will,--you must not, you cannot say no! You willmake him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown-up, youwill tell him his father's name,--the name that hasn't passed my lipsfor years,--the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy!Miss Mary!--do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You willtake my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to lookon such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!"Miss Mary had risen, and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her way tothe open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, hereyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky.There was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on herwhite collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly away.The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her.
"I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but Icannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see it inyour sweet face,--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it inyour eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!"
The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with somethingof its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had set on RedGulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded pleasantly.
"I will take the boy. Send him to me to-night."
The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. Shewould have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not.She rose to her feet.
"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary suddenly.
"No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it."
"Go to him at once--to-night--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell himI have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the childagain. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, hemust not follow! There, go now, please,--I'm weary, and--have much yetto do!"
They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.
"Good-night!"
She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment theyoung girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own purebreast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.
It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Billtook the reins of the Slumgullion stage the next morning, for theschoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, inobedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he suddenly reined uphis horses and respectfully waited, as Tommy hopped out at the commandof Miss Mary.
"Not that bush, Tommy,--the next."
Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife, and cutting a branch from a tallazalea-bush, returned with it to Miss Mary. "All right now?"
"All right!"
And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
BROWN OF CALAVERAS
A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar-smoke andboot-heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evidentthat one of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the partof loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and someconcern in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, furtherindicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on thebox-seat, noted with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that hedepreciated the sex, but that he recognized therein a deceitful element,the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equallyuncertain blandishments of poker,--of which it may be remarked that Mr.Hamlin was a professional exponent.
So that, when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down,he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil wasfluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and graveindifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing togood-breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained airhe was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverishrestlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduateof Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his over-flowing vitality, hisintense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filledwith crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure besidethis lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homericgravity.
The driver called "All aboard!" and Mr. Hamlin returned to the coach.His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the level of theopen window, when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to be thefinest eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped downagain, addressed a few words to one of the inside passengers, effectedan exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. Mr. Hamlinnever allowed his philosophy to interfere with decisive and promptaction.
I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the otherpassengers, particularly those who were making themselves most agreeableto the lady. One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed toher information regarding Mr. Hamlin's profession in a single epithet.Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he recognized in the informanta distinguished jurist, from whom, but a few evenings before, he had wonseveral thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed nosign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past thelegal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features ofhis neighbor. An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from hismaternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling wheelsrattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the stage drew up atthe International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentleman and a member ofCongress leaped out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess,while Colonel Starbottle of Siskiyou took charge of her parasol andshawl. In this multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusionand delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the _opposite_ door of the coach,took the lady's hand, with that decision and positiveness which ahesitating and undecided sex know how to admire, and in an instant haddexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground and again lifted herto the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from thatother cynic, Yuba Bill, the driver. "Look keerfully arter that baggage,Kernel," said the expressman, with affected concern, as he looked afterColonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the triumphantprocession t
o the waiting-room.
Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled andawaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and outinto the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one leaving anunpleasant fancy behind him. The inmates uf dusty cabins by the roadsideshaded their eyes with their hands and looked after him, recognizing theman by his horse, and speculating what "was up with Comanche Jack." Yetmuch of this interest centred in the horse, in a community where thetime made by "French Pete's" mare, in his run from the Sheriff ofCalaveras, eclipsed all concern in the ultimate fate of that worthy.
The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself.He checked his speed, and turning into a byroad, sometimes used as acut-off, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly fromhis fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape changed andbecame more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosedsome rude attempts at cultivation,--a flowering vine trailed over theporch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled babe under the rosesof another. A little farther on, Mr. Hamlin came upon some bare-leggedchildren wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with abadinage peculiar to himself, that they were emboldened to climb uphis horse's legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop anexaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind somekisses and coin. And then, advancing deeper into the woods, where allsigns of habitation failed, he began to sing, uplifting a tenor sosingularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subdued and tender, that Iwot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin's voice wasnot cultivated; the subject of his song was some sentimental lunacy,borrowed from the negro minstrels; but there thrilled through all someoccult quality of tone and expression that was unspeakably touching.Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, witha pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending hisvoice before him through the dim woods with a plaint about his"Nelly's grave," in a way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. Asparrow-hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr.Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain toconfess the superiority of man. With a superior predatory capacity _he_couldn't sing.