 | CHAPTER I. Tales of the Argonauts, and other sketches |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
IT was nearly two o'clock in the morning.
The lights were out in Robinson's Hall,
where there had been dancing and revelry; and
the moon, riding high, painted the black windows
with silver. The cavalcade, that an hour
ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and
laughter, were all dispersed. One enamoured
swain had ridden east, another west, another
north, another south; and the object of their
adoration, left within her bower at Chemisal
Ridge, was calmly going to bed.
I regret that I am not able to indicate the
exact stage of that process. Two chairs were
already filled with delicate inwrappings and
white confusion; and the young lady herself,
half-hidden in the silky threads of her yellow
hair, had at one time borne a faint resemblance
to a partly-husked ear of Indian corn. But she
was now clothed in that one long, formless garment
that makes all women equal; and the
round shoulders and neat waist, that an hour
Four Forks, had utterly disappeared. The face
above it was very pretty: the foot below, albeit
shapely, was not small. “The flowers, as a
general thing, don't raise their heads much to
look after me,” she had said with superb frankness
to one of her lovers.
The expression of the “Rose” to-night was
contentedly placid. She walked slowly to the
window, and, making the smallest possible peep-hole
through the curtain, looked out. The
motionless figure of a horseman still lingered on
the road, with an excess of devotion that only a
coquette, or a woman very much in love, could
tolerate. The “Rose,” at that moment, was
neither, and, after a reasonable pause, turned
away, saying quite audibly that it was “too
ridiculous for any thing.” As she came back to
her dressing-table, it was noticeable that she
walked steadily and erect, without that slight
affectation of lameness common to people with
whom bare feet are only an episode. Indeed, it
was only four years ago, that without shoes or
stockings, a long-limbed, colty girl, in a waistless
calico gown, she had leaped from the tail-board
of her father's emigrant-wagon when it
first drew up at Chemisal Ridge. Certain wild
habits of the “Rose” had outlived transplanting
and cultivation.
A knock at the door surprised her. In
another moment she had leaped into bed, and
with darkly-frowning eyes, from its secure
recesses demanded “Who's there?”
An apologetic murmur on the other side of
the door was the response.
“Why, father! — is that you?”
There were further murmurs, affirmative,
deprecatory, and persistent.
“Wait,” said the “Rose.” She got up, unlocked
the door, leaped nimbly into bed again,
and said, “Come.”
The door opened timidly. The broad, stooping
shoulders, and grizzled head, of a man past
the middle age, appeared: after a moment's
hesitation, a pair of large, diffident feet, shod
with canvas slippers, concluded to follow. When
the apparition was complete, it closed the door
softly, and stood there, — a very shy ghost indeed,
— with apparently more than the usual
spiritual indisposition to begin a conversation.
The “Rose” resented this impatiently, though,
I fear, not altogether intelligibly.
“Do, father, I declare!”
“You was abed, Jinny,” said Mr. McClosky
slowly, glancing, with a singular mixture of
masculine awe and paternal pride, upon the two
chairs and their contents, — “you was abed and
ondressed.”
“I was.”
“Surely,” said Mr. McClosky, seating himself
on the extreme edge of the bed, and painfully
tucking his feet away under it, — “surely.”
After a pause, he rubbed a short, thick, stumpy
beard, that bore a general resemblance to a
badly-worn blacking-brush, with the palm of
his hand, and went on, “You had a good time,
Jinny?”
“Yes, father.”
“They was all there?”
“Yes, Rance and York and Ryder and
Jack.”
“And Jack!” Mr. McClosky endeavored to
throw an expression of arch inquiry into his
small, tremulous eyes; but meeting the unabashed,
widely-opened lid of his daughter, he
winked rapidly, and blushed to the roots of his
hair.
“Yes, Jack was there,” said Jenny, without
change of color, or the least self-consciousness
in her great gray eyes; “and he came home
with me.” She paused a moment, locking her
two hands under her head, and assuming a more
comfortable position on the pillow. “He asked
me that same question again, father, and I said,
`Yes.' It's to be — soon. We're going to live
at Four Forks, in his own house; and next
winter we're going to Sacramento. I suppose
question with a slight kick through the bed-clothes,
as the parental McClosky had fallen
into an abstract revery.
“Yes, surely,” said Mr. McClosky, recovering
himself with some confusion. After a pause,
he looked down at the bed-clothes, and, patting
them tenderly, continued, “You couldn't have
done better, Jinny. They isn't a girl in Tuolumne
ez could strike it ez rich as you hev —
even if they got the chance.” He paused
again, and then said, “Jinny?”
“Yes, father.”
“You'se in bed, and ondressed?”
“Yes.”
“You couldn't,” said Mr. McClosky, glancing
hopelessly at the two chairs, and slowly rubbing
his chin, — “you couldn't dress yourself again
could yer?”
“Why, father!”
“Kinder get yourself into them things
again?” he added hastily. “Not all of 'em,
you know, but some of 'em. Not if I helped
you' — sorter stood by, and lent a hand now
and then with a strap, or a buckle, or a necktie,
or a shoestring?” he continued, still looking at
the chairs, and evidently trying to boldly familiarize
himself with their contents.
“Are you crazy, father?” demanded Jenny,
of her yellow mane. Mr. McClosky rubbed
one side of his beard, which already had the
appearance of having been quite worn away by
that process, and faintly dodged the question.
“Jinny,” he said, tenderly stroking the bed-clothes
as he spoke, “this yer's what's the
matter. Thar is a stranger down stairs, — a
stranger to you, lovey, but a man ez I've
knowed a long time. He's been here about an
hour; and he'll be here ontil fower o'clock,
when the up-stage passes. Now I wants ye,
Jinny dear, to get up and come down stairs, and
kinder help me pass the time with him. It's
no use, Jinny,” he went on, gently raising his
hand to deprecate any interruption, “it's no
use! He won't go to bed; he won't play
keerds; whiskey don't take no effect on him.
Ever since I knowed him, he was the most onsatisfactory
critter to hev round” —
“What do you have him round for, then?”
interrupted Miss Jinny sharply.
Mr. McClosky's eyes fell. “Ef he hedn't kem
out of his way to-night to do me a good turn, I
wouldn't ask ye, Jinny. I wouldn't, so help me!
But I thought, ez I couldn't do any thing with
him, you might come down, and sorter fetch
him, Jinny, as you did the others.”
Miss Jenny shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“Is he old, or young?”
“He's young enough, Jinny; but he knows a
power of things.”
“What does he do?”
“Not much, I reckon. He's got money in the
mill at Four Forks. He travels round a good
deal. I've heard, Jinny that he's a poet —
writes them rhymes, you know.” Mr. McClosky
here appealed submissively but directly
to his daughter. He remembered that she had
frequently been in receipt of printed elegaic
couplets known as “mottoes,” containing enclosures
equally saccharine.
Miss Jenny slightly curled her pretty lip.
She had that fine contempt for the illusions of
fancy which belongs to the perfectly healthy
young animal.
“Not,” continued Mr. McClosky, rubbing his
head reflectively, “not ez I'd advise ye, Jinny,
to say any thing to him about poetry. It ain't
twenty minutes ago ez I did. I set the
whiskey afore him in the parlor. I wound up
the music-box, and set it goin'. Then I sez to
him, sociable-like and free, `Jest consider yourself
in your own house, and repeat what you
allow to be your finest production,' and he
raged. That man, Jinny, jest raged! Thar's
no end of the names he called me. You see,
Jinny,” continued Mr. McClosky apologetically,
“he's known me a long time.”
But his daughter had already dismissed the
question with her usual directness. “I'll be
down in a few moments, father,” she said after
a pause, “but don't say any thing to him about
it — don't say I was abed.”
Mr. McClosky's face beamed. “You was
allers a good girl, Jinny,” he said, dropping on
one knee the better to imprint a respectful kiss
on her forehead. But Jenny caught him by
the wrists, and for a moment held him captive.
“Father,” said she, trying to fix his shy eyes
with the clear, steady glance of her own, “all
the girls that were there to-night had some one
with them. Mame Robinson had her aunt;
Lucy Rance had her mother; Kate Pierson had
her sister — all, except me, had some other
woman. Father dear,” her lip trembled just a
little, “I wish mother hand't died when I was
so small. I wish there was some other woman
in the family besides me. I ain't lonely with
you, father dear; but if there was only some
one, you know, when the time comes for John
and me” —
Her voice here suddenly gave out, but not
her brave eyes, that were still fixed earnestly
upon his face. Mr. McClosky, apparently
tracing out a pattern on the bedquilt, essayed
words of comfort.
“Thar ain't one of them gals ez you've
with a whole Noah's ark of relations at their
backs! Thar ain't one ez wouldn't sacrifice
her nearest relation to make the strike that
you hev. Ez to mothers, maybe, my dear
you're doin' better without one.” He rose
suddenly, and walked toward the door. When
he reached it, he turned, and, in his old deprecating
manner, said, “Don't be long, Jinny,”
smiled, and vanished from the head downward,
his canvas slippers asserting themselves resolutely
to the last.
When Mr. McClosky reached his parlor
again, his troublesome guest was not there.
The decanter stood on the table untouched;
three or four books lay upon the floor; a
number of photographic views of the Sierras
were scattered over the sofa; two sofa-pillows,
a newspaper, and a Mexican blanket, lay on the
carpet, as if the late occupant of the room had
tried to read in a recumbent position. A
French window opening upon a veranda, which
never before in the history of the house had
been unfastened, now betrayed by its waving
lace curtain the way that the fugitive had
escaped. Mr. McClosky heaved a sigh of
despair. He looked at the gorgeous carpet
purchased in Sacramento at a fabulous price, at
the crimson satin and rosewood furniture unparalleled
massively-framed pictures on the walls, and
looked beyond it, through the open window, to
the reckless man, who, fleeing these sybaritic
allurements, was smoking a cigar upon the
moonlit road. This room, which had so often
awed the youth of Tuolumne into filial respect,
was evidently a failure. It remained to be seen
if the “Rose” herself had lost her fragrance.
“I reckon Jinny will fetch him yet,” said Mr.
McClosky with parental faith.
He stepped from the window upon the
veranda; but he had scarcely done this, before
his figure was detected by the stranger, who at
once crossed the road. When within a few
feet of McClosky, he stopped. “You persistent
old plantigrade!” he said in a low voice, audible
only to the person addressed, and a face full of
affected anxiety, “why don't you go to bed?
Didn't I tell you to go and leave me here
alone? In the name of all that's idiotic and
imbecile, why do you contiuue to shuffle about
here? Or are you trying to drive me crazy
with your presence, as you have with that
wretched music-box that I've just dropped
under yonder tree? It's an hour and a half yet
before the stage passes: do you think, do you
imagine for a single moment, that I can tolerate
you until then, eh? Why don't you speak?
you have the audacity to add somnambulism to
your other weaknesses? you're not low enough
to repeat yourself under any such weak pretext
as that, eh?”
A fit of nervous coughing ended this extraordinary
exordium; and half sitting, half leaning
against the veranda, Mr. McClosky's guest
turned his face, and part of a slight elegant
figure, toward his host. The lower portion of
this upturned face wore an habitual expression
of fastidious discontent, with an occasional line
of physical suffering. But the brow above was
frank and critical; and a pair of dark, mirthful
eyes, sat in playful judgment over the supersensitive
mouth and its suggestion.
“I allowed to go to bed, Ridgeway,” said Mr.
McClosky meekly; “but my girl Jinny's jist
got back from a little tear up at Robinson's, and
ain't inclined to turn in yet. You know what
girls is. So I thought we three would jist have
a social chat together to pass away the time.”
“You mendacious old hypocrite! She got
back an hour ago,” said Ridgeway, “as that savage-looking
escort of hers, who has been haunting
the house ever since, can testify. My belief
is, that, like an enterprising idiot as you are,
you've dragged that girl out of her bed, that we
might mutually bore each other.”
Mr. McClosky was too much stunned by this
evidence of Ridgeway's apparently superhuman
penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's
confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's
mouth asked grimly, —
“And who is this girl, anyway?”
“Nancy's.”
“Your wife's?”
“Yes. But look yar, Ridgeway,” said
McClosky, laying one hand imploringly on
Ridgeway's sleeve, “not a word about her to
Jinny. She thinks her mother's dead — died in
Missouri. Eh!”
Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in
an excess of rage. “Good God! Do you
mean to say that you have been concealing
from her a fact that any day, any moment, may
come to her ears? That you've been letting
her grow up in ignorance of something that by
this time she might have outgrown and forgotten?
That you have been, like a besotted
old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt
that any one may crush her with? That”
— but here Ridgeway's cough took possession
of his voice, and even put a moisture into his
dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's aimless
hand feebly employed upon his beard.
“But,” said McClosky, “look how she's
done! She's held her head as high as any of
richest man in the county; and,” he added
cunningly, “Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to
sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or
her relations, you bet! But hush — that's her
foot on the stairs. She's cummin'.”
She came. I don't think the French window
ever held a finer view than when she put aside
the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed
herself simply and hurriedly, but with a
woman's knowledge of her best points; so that
you got the long curves of her shapely limbs,
the shorter curves of her round waist and
shoulders, the long sweep of her yellow braids,
the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate
rose of her complexion, without knowing
how it was delivered to you.
The introduction by Mr. McClosky was brief.
When Ridgeway had got over the fact that it
was two o'clock in the morning, and that the
cheek of this Tuolumne goddess nearest him
was as dewy and fresh as an infant's, that she
looked like Marguerite, without, probably, ever
having heard of Gœthe's heroine, he talked, I
dare say, very sensibly. When Miss Jenny —
who from her childhood had been brought up
among the sons of Anak, and who was accustomed
to have the supremacy of our noble sex
presented to her as a physical fact — found herself
power in the slight and elegant figure beside
her, she was at first frightened and cold. But
finding that this power, against which the
weapons of her own physical charms were of
no avail, was a kindly one, albeit general, she
fell to worshipping it, after the fashion of
woman, and casting before it the fetishes and
other idols of her youth. She even confessed
to it. So that, in half an hour, Ridgeway was
in possession of all the facts connected with
her life, and a great many, I fear, of her fancies
—except one. When Mr. McClosky found the
young people thus amicably disposed, he calmly
went to sleep.
It was a pleasant time to each. To Miss
Jenny it had the charm of novelty; and she
abandoned herself to it, for that reason, much
more freely and innocently than her companion,
who knew something more of the inevitable logic
of the position. I do not think, however, he had
any intention of love-making. I do not think
he was at all conscious of being in the attitude.
I am quite positive he would have shrunk from
the suggestion of disloyalty to the one woman
whom he admitted to himself he loved. But,
like most poets, he was much more true to an
idea than a fact, and having a very lofty conception
of womanhood, with a very sanguine nature,
realization of his ideal. It was, perhaps, an
unfortunate thing for the women, particularly as
he brought to each trial a surprising freshness,
which was very deceptive, and quite distinct
from the blasé familiarity of the man of gallantry.
It was this perennial virginity of the affections
that most endeared him to the best women,
who were prone to exercise toward him a chivalrous
protection,—as of one likely to go astray,
unless looked after,—and indulged in the dangerous
combination of sentiment with the
highest maternal instincts. It was this quality
which caused Jenny to recognize in him a
certain boyishness that required her womanly
care, and even induced her to offer to accompany
him to the cross-roads when the time for
his departure arrived. With her superior
knowledge of woodcraft and the locality, she
would have kept him from being lost. I wot
not but that she would have protected him from
bears or wolves, but chiefly, I think, from the
feline fascinations of Mame Robinson and Lucy
Rance, who might be lying in wait for this
tender young poet. Nor did she cease to be
thankful that Providence had, so to speak,
delivered him as a trust into her hands.
It was a lovely night. The moon swung low,
and languished softly on the snowy ridge
air; and a strange incense from the woods perfumed
their young blood, and seemed to swoon
in their pulses. Small wonder that they lingered
on the white road, that their feet climbed,
unwillingly the little hill where they were to
part, and that, when they at last reached it,
even the saving grace of speech seemed to have
forsaken them.
For there they stood alone. There was no
sound nor motion in earth, or woods, or heaven.
They might have been the one man and woman
for whom this goodly earth that lay at their
feet, rimmed with the deepest azure, was
created. And, seeing this, they turned toward
each other with a sudden instinct, and their
hands met, and then their lips in one long kiss.
And then out of the mysterious distance
came the sound of voices, and the sharp clatter
of hoofs and wheels, and Jenny slid away — a
white moonbeam — from the hill. For a moment
she glimmered through the trees, and
then, reaching the house, passed her sleeping
father on the veranda, and, darting into her
bedroom, locked the door, threw open the
window, and, falling on her knees beside it,
leaned her hot cheeks upon her hands, and
listened. In a few moments she was rewarded
by the sharp clatter of hoofs on the stony road;
was swiftly lost in the shadows of the lower
road. At another time she might have recognized
the man; but her eyes and ears were now
all intent on something else. It came presently
with dancing lights, a musical rattle of harness,
a cadence of hoof-beats, that set her heart to
beating in unison — and was gone. A sudden
sense of loneliness came over her; and tears
gathered in her sweet eyes.
She arose, and looked around her. There was
the little bed, the dressing-table, the roses that
she had worn last night, still fresh and blooming
in the little vase. Every thing was there;
but every thing looked strange. The roses should
have been withered, for the party seemed so
long ago. She could hardly remember when she
had worn this dress that lay upon the chair.
So she came back to the window, and sank down
beside it, with her cheek a trifle paler, leaning
on her hand, and her long braids reaching to
the floor. The stars paled slowly, like her
cheek; yet with eyes that saw not, she still
looked from her window for the coming dawn.
It came, with violet deepening into purple,
with purple flushing into rose, with rose shining
into silver, and glowing into gold. The straggling
line of black picket-fence below, that had
faded away with the stars, came back with the
fence? Jenny raised her head, and looked
intently. It was a man endeavoring to climb
the pickets, and falling backward with each
attempt. Suddenly she started to her feet, as
if the rosy flushes of the dawn had crimsoned
her from forehead to shoulders; then she stood,
white as the wall, with her hands clasped upon
her bosom; then, with a single bound, she
reached the door, and, with flying braids and
fluttering skirt, sprang down the stairs, and out
to the garden walk. When within a few feet
of the fence, she uttered a cry, the first she had
given, — the cry of a mother over her stricken
babe, of a tigress over her mangled cub; and in
another moment she had leaped the fence, and
knelt beside Ridgeway, with his fainting head
upon her breast.
“My boy, my poor, poor boy! who has done
this?”
Who, indeed? His clothes were covered
with dust; his waistcoat was torn open; and
his handkerchief, wet with the blood it could
not stanch, fell from a cruel stab beneath his
shoulder.
“Ridgeway, my poor boy! tell me what has
happened.”
Ridgeway slowly opened his heavy blue-veined
lids, and gazed upon her. Presently a
smile stole over his lips as he whispered
slowly, —
“It — was — your kiss — did it, Jenny dear!
I had forgotten — how high-priced the article
was here. Never mind, Jenny!” — he feebly
raised her hand to his white lips, — “it was —
worth it,” and fainted away.
Jenny started to her feet, and looked wildly
around her. Then, with a sudden resolution,
she stooped over the insensible man, and with
one strong effort lifted him in her arms as if
he had been a child. When her father, a
moment later, rubbed his eyes, and awoke from
his sleep upon the veranda, it was to see a
goddess, erect and triumphant, striding toward
the house with the helpless body of a man
lying across that breast where man had never
lain before, — a goddess, at whose imperious
mandate he arose, and cast open the doors before
her. And then, when she had laid her
unconscious burden on the sofa, the goddess
fled; and a woman, helpless and trembling,
stood before him, — a woman that cried out that
she had “killed him,” that she was “wicked,
wicked!” and that, even saying so, staggered,
and fell beside her late burden. And all that
Mr. McClosky could do was to feebly rub his
beard, and say to himself vaguely and incoherently,
that “Jinny had fetched him.”
| CHAPTER I. Tales of the Argonauts, and other sketches | |