 | Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques |  |
A LEGEND OF THE TEHAMA HOUSE.
1. CHAPTER I.
It was evening at the Tehama. The apothecary, whose shop
formed the south-eastern corner of that edifice, had lighted
his lamps, which, shining through those large glass bottles
in the window, filled with red and blue liquors, once supposed
by this author, when young and innocent, to be medicine of
the most potent description, lit up the faces of the passers-by
with an unearthly glare, and exaggerated the general redness
and blueness of their noses. Within the office the hands of
the octagonal clock, which looked as though it had been
thrown against the wall in a moist state and stuck there,
pointed to the hour of eight. The apartment was nearly
deserted. Frink, “the courteous and gentlemanly manager,”
and the Major, had gone to the Theatre; having season tickets,
they felt themselves forced to attend, and never missed
a performance. The coal fire in the office stove glowed with
a hospitable warmth, emitting a gentle murmur of welcome to
only by an occasional deprecatory hiss, when insulted by a
stream of tobacco juice. Overcoats hung about the walls, still
moist with recent showers; umbrellas reclined lazily in corners;
spittoons stood about the floor, the whole diffusing that nameless
odor so fascinating to the married man, who, cigar in
mouth and hot whiskey punch at elbow, sits nightly until
twelve o'clock in the enjoyment of it, while the wife of his
bosom in their comfortable home on Powell street, wonders
at his absence, and unjustly curses the Know Nothings or the
Free and Accepted Masonic Fraternity.
Behind the office desk, perched on a high, three-legged
stool, his head supported by both hands, the youthful but literary
John Duncan was deeply engaged in the exciting perusal
of the last yellow-covered novel, “Blood for Blood, or the
Infatuated Dog.” He knew that, in a few moments, eighty-four
gentlemen “in hot haste,” would call to inquire whether
the Member of Congress had returned, and was anxious to
find out what the “Robber Chieftain” did with the “Lady
Maude Alleyne” before the arrival of the Sacramento boat.
The only other occupant of the office, was a short, fleshy gentleman
with a white hat, dark green coat with brass buttons,
drab pantaloons, short punchy little boots and gaiters.
These circumstances might be noted as he stood with his
back to the door, gazing intently upon one of those elaborate
works of art with which the spirited proprietor has lately seen
fit to adorn the walls of the Tehama. It represented a lady
in a ball dress, seated on the back of a large dray-horse (at
forefinger, while at her horse's feet kneeled a man in the
stage dress of Mercutio, doing something with five or six
other parrots. The piece was called “Hawking,” had a fine
gilt frame and glass, and in certain lights, answered the purpose
of a mirror, and was therefore a very pretty object to
gaze upon. In fact, the short, stout gentleman was adjusting
his shirt collar, which was of prodigious height, and had a perverse
inclination to turn down on one side, by its reflection.
As he turned from this employment, he exhibited one of
the most curious faces it is possible to conceive. Unlike most
fat men, whose little eyes, round, red cheeks, wart-like noses
and double chins, convey but little meaning or expression,
this gentleman's face was all expression. He wore a constant
look of the most intense curiosity. Inquisitiveness sat
upon every lineament of his countenance. His small, green
eyes protruding from his head, surmounted by thin but well-defined
and very curvilinear eyebrows, looked like two notes
of interrogation; his nose, though small, was sharp at the
end like a gimlet, and his little round mouth was constantly
pursed up into an expression of inquiring wonder, as though
the most natural sound that could fall from it, should be,
“O-o-o-o! come now, do tell.” In fact he was one of those
beings created by a wise but inscrutable Providence, for no
other purpose apparently but “to meddle with other people's
business,” and ask questions.
His name was Bogle, and with Mrs. Bogle, whom he had
married two years before, because, having exhausted all other
asked her if she would have him, and a little Bogle, who had
made its appearance some three months since, and already
“took notice” with an inquiring air painful to contemplate,
he occupied, for the present, “Room No, 31.”
Bogle would have made a fortune in no time, if he had
lived in the blessed era when the promise “Ask and ye shall
receive” was fulfilled; and so well was his disposition understood
by the frequenters of the Tehama, that they invariably
left the vicinity when he looked askant at them; his presence
cleared the room as quickly as a stream from a fire engine,
or a mad dog could have done it. Brushing some remains of
snuff from his snow white vest—Bogle took snuff inordinately
—he said it sharpened up his faculties—he turned upon the
hapless Duncan—who had just got the “Lady Maude” into
the cave, where the skeleton hand dripped blood from the
ceiling—“John, what time is it?” John looked at the
clock with a slight groan, “Five minutes past eight, Mr.
Bogle.”
“What time will the boat be in?”
“In a few moments, Mr. Bogle.”
“Will the General come down to-night?”
“I don't know, Mr. Bogle.”
“How old a man do you take him to be now?”
“Fontaine she screamed!—that is, I don't know, Mr
Bogle.”
“How much does he weigh?”
“The skeleton!—indeed, I don't know, sir.”
The conversation was here suspended by the sudden arrival
of a stranger. He was a large man, of stern and forbidding
aspect, exceedingly dark complexion, with long, black
hair hanging in unkempt tangles about his shoulders, and
with a fierce and uncompromising moustache and beard,
blacker than the driven charcoal, completely concealing the
lower part of his face. His dress was singular; a brown hat,
brown coat, brown vest, brown neck cloth, brown pantaloons,
brown gaiter boots. In his hand he carried a brown carpet
bag, and beneath his arm a brown silk umbrella. Hastily he
inscribed his name upon the Register, “General Tecumseh
Brown, Brownsville,” and, for an instant, seemed to fall into
a brown study. Bogle was on the qui vive; he looked over
the General's shoulder.
“From Sacramento, sir?” said he.
The General gazed at Bogle, sternly, for a moment, and
replied, “I am, sir.”
“I see, sir,” said Bogle with a cordial smile, “you live in
Brownsville; may I inquire if you are in business there?”
The General gazed at Bogle more sternly than before,
and shortly answered, “You may, sir.”
“Well,” said Bogle, “are you?”
“Yes, sir,” replied General Brown in a stentorion voice,
at the same time advancing a step toward his fat little inquisitor,
“I have lately made a fortune there.”
“Oh!” said Bogle, nimbly jumping back as the General
advanced, “How?”
“By minding my own business, sir!” thundered the
“Lady Maude” in the charms of this conversation, said,
“Give me my key, sir, and the moment a young man calls
here to inquire for me, send him up to my room.”
So saying, and grasping the key extended to him, General
Brown turned away, and, casting a look of fierce malignity
at little Bogle, who tried to conceal his confusion by taking
a pinch of snuff, retired, taking with him as he went, the only
brown japanned candlestick that stood among the numerous
array of those articles, provided for the Tehama's guests.”
“Well,” said Bogle, “of all the Brown—where did you
put him, John?”
“No. 32,” replied that individual, returning to “the
cave.”
“Thirty-two!” exclaimed Bogle, “Goodness! Gracious!
why that joins my room, and the partition is as thin as a
wafer.”
2. CHAPTER II.
Up stairs went Bogle, two steps at a Time. The door of
thirty-two slammed, as he reached the door of his apartment;
it slammed on a brown coat-tail, about half a yard of which
remained on the outside; there was a muttered ejaculation,
then a deep growl, and—rip! went the coat-tail, the fragment
remaining in the door.
“Gracious! Goodness!” said Bogle, “what a passionate
man! he's torn it off! he's like Halley's comet; no! that
apartment.
Here sat his interesting wife, rocking their offspring, and
instilling into its infant mind the first lesson of practical
economy, by singing that popular nursery refrain,
“Buy low, Baby; buy low, buy low.”
“Hush!” said Bogle, as he entered on tip-toe, and, carefully
closing the door of thirty-one, held up a warning finger
to the partner of his joys and sorrows. The lullaby ceased.
It is said that all women become like their husbands after a
certain time, both in appearance and disposition. Mrs.
Bogle, who had been a Miss Artemesia Stackpole before marriage
(Bogle said she was named for an elder sister, Mesia,
who died, and she was called Arter-mesia), certainly did not
at all resemble her husband in appearance. She was of the
thread-paper order; one of those gaunt, bony females of no
particular age, who always have two false eye-teeth, and wear
brown merino dresses and muslin night-caps with a cotton
lace border, in the morning. But in disposition she was his
very counterpart. Curious, meddling, inquisitive, fond of
gossip and indefatigable in “the pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties,” she was an invaluable coadjutor to Bogle, whom
she had materially assisted many times in obtaining information,
that even his prying nature had failed to accomplish.
Eagerly she listened to his tale about the mysterious Brown
and his tail, and, like a good and dutiful wife, all quietly she
to the partition, listened with eager ear, intent, to the
motions of their neighbor.
Three times in as many quarters of an hour did that
mysterious General ring the bell; three times came up the
waiter; three times he replied to the General's anxious
question, “that no one had called for him,” and three times
he went down again. After each interview with the waiter,
Bogle listening at the partition, heard the General mutter to
himself a large word, a scriptural word, but not adapted to
common conversation; it began with a capital D and ended
with a small n. Each time that he heard it, Bogle said
“Gracious! Goodness!” At length his patient exertions
were rewarded. As the clock struck ten, a step was heard
upon the stairs; nearer and nearer it came. Bogle's heart
beat heavily; it stopped in front of “thirty-two;”—he held
his breath;—a knock;—the General's voice, “Come in;”—
he heard the door open, and the stranger commence with
“Good evening, General,” but before he could say “Brown,”
that gentleman exclaimed, “Charles, have you seen Fanny?”
Bogle, his ear glued to the wall, turned his eye toward
his wife and beckoned. Artemesia approached, and seating
herself on his knee, the infant clasped to her breast, listened
with her husband.
The stranger slowly replied, “I have.”
“And who was she with?”
“That Frenchman, as you supposed.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the stricken Brown, as in agony
silence.
“Did you take her from him?”
“Yes, I persuaded her to accompany me to my room at
`The Union.”'
“Why did you not bring her to me at once?”
“I knew your passionate nature, General, and I feared
you would kill her.”
“I will!” growled the General, “By Heaven, I will!—
but not so—not as you think; I'll poison her!”
Bogle, his face pallid with apprehension, his teeth chattering
with fear, looked at Artemesia;”—she met his horror-stricken
gaze, and with a subdued shriek, clasped the baby;
—it awoke.
The General, in a low, deep voice of concentrated passion,
continued;—“I'll poison her, Charles!”
“Oh!” he exclaimed with deep emotion, “how I have
loved that—”
Here the infant Bogle, who had been drawing in his
breath for a cry, broke forth;—“At once there rose so wild
a yell.” Human nature could not stand it longer.
“Smother that little villain!” said Bogle in a fierce
whisper; “I can't hear a word.”
Artemesia, with the look of Lucretia Borgia, withdrew
with the child to the adjoining room, (No. 31, Tehama,
contains two rooms, a small parlor and a bed-chamber), and
administered a punishment that must have astonished it—
thing, that youthful Bogle has not forgotten that bastinado—
applied a little higher up than is customary among the
Turks—to this day. “At length the tumult dwindled to a
calm,” and again Bogle clapped his ear to the wall. He
heard but the concluding words of the murderous General—
“Bring her up with you at ten o'clock to-morrow evening,
and a sack; after it is over, we will put her body in it, and
carry her to Meiggs' wharf, where there are plenty of brick;
we can fill the sack with them and throw her off.”
“Well, sir,” replied the stranger, “if you are determined
to do it, I will; but poor Fanny!”—here emotion choked
his utterance.
“You do as I tell you, sir;” growled the General, “there's
no weakness about me!” Here the door opened and closed.
Bogle rose from his knees, the perspiration was running
down his fat face in streams.—“No weakness,” said he,
“Goodness Gracious! I should say not;—what an awful
affair;—coming so close, too, upon the Meiggs' forgeries,
and the loss of the Yankee Blade;—how providential that
I happened to overhear it all! Gracious Goodness!”
That night, in a whispered consultation with his Artemesia,
Bogle's plan of action was decided upon. But long
after this, and long after the horror-stricken pair had sunk
into a perturbed slumber, the footsteps of the intended murderer
might have been heard, as hour after hour he paced
the floor of his solitary chamber, and his deep voice might
determination—“Yes, sir! I'll-mur-der!!!!—!!!!—
!!!—!
3. CHAPTER III.
The next morning a great change might have been observed
in our friend Bogle. He appeared unusually quiet
and reserved—pallid and nervous;—starting when any one
approached him, he stood alone near the door of the Tehama;
he sought no companionship—he asked no questions. Men
marvelled thereat.
“What has come over Bogle?” said the Judge to the
Major. “I haven't heard him ask a question to-day.”
“Well,” was the unfeeling reply, “he's been asking questions
for the last thirty years, and I reckon he has asked all
there are.”
But Bogle knew what he was about. At three P.M.
precisely, General Brown came majestically down stairs; he
passed Bogle so nearly that he could have touched him; but
he noticed not the latter's shuddering withdrawal; he looked
neither to the right or left, but, gloomy and foreboding, like
an avenging genius, he passed into the apothecary's on the
corner.
“Give me an ounce bottle of strychnine,” said he.
“For rats, sir?” said the polite attendant.
The General started; he gave a fearful scowl. “Yes,”
he said, with a demoniac laugh, “for rats! ha! ha! oh yes—
for—rats!”
Bogle heard this;—he heard no more; he started for the
Police Office.
Who was Fanny?—??—????!—?—??—???
That evening about ten o'clock, Bogle sat alone, or alone
save his Artemesia, in No. 31. The baby had been put to
bed; and silent and solemn in that dark apartment, for the
lamp had been extinguished, sat listening that shuddering
pair. A step was heard on the stairs, and closer drew the
Bogles together, listening to that step, as it sounded fearfully
distinct, from the beating of their own agitated hearts.
As it drew near, it was evident that two persons were
approaching; for, accompanying the first distinct tread, was
a light footfall like that of a young and tender female.
“Poor thing!” said Artemesia, with a suppressed gasp. The
heavy tread of General Brown could be heard distinctly in
No. 32. The parties stopped at his door;—a knock, and
they were silently admitted.
The voice of the General broke the silence—“Oh!
Fanny,” he exclaimed in bitter anguish, how could you
desert me!” There was no articulate reply, but the Bogles
heard from the unhappy female an expression of grief, which
almost broke their hearts.
“Fanny,” continued the General, “you have been faithless
to me—fickle and false as your sex invariably are! I
more be made the sport of falsehood! You must die! Take
this!”
“Hold—wretch!” shouted Bogle. “Let me go, Artemesia;”
and throwing off his coat, the heroic little fellow
threw open his own door, kicked down the door of thirty-two,
and stood in the presence of the murderer and his
victim—pistol in hand! At the same instant the bell of
thirty-one was violently rung, the doors on each side opened,
and the gallery was filled with men. But what caused Bogle
to falter? Why did he not rush forward to snatch the victim
from her destroyer? Near the centre-table, on which
was burning an astral lamp, stood a remarkably fine looking
young man, who gazed on Bogle's short, punchy figure with
an inquiring smile.
On the other side of the table, but nearer the door, his
brow blacker than a thunder-cloud, sat General Brown;
in one hand he held a small piece of meat, the other
retained between his knees a small but exceedingly stanch-looking
dog, of the true bull-terrier breed. Both the General
and the dog showed their teeth;—both were epitomes
of ferocity, but the snarl of the dog was as nothing to the
snarl of the General, as, half-rising from his seat, but still
holding the dog down by the collar, he shouted—“How's
this, sir?”
Bogle staggered back—dashing back from his brow the
perspiration, he dropped the pistol and leaning against the
door, gasped rather than articulated—“It's a dog!”
“Yes, sir!” roared the infuriated General, rising from
his chair—“and a she dog at that! what have you got to
say about it?”
Bogle, almost fainting, stammered painfully forth, “Is
her—name—Fanny?”
“D—n you sir,” screamed the General, “I'll let you
know! Sta-boy! bite him, Fan!”
Like an arrow from a bow, like lightning from the cloud,
like shot off a shovel, like any thing that goes quick, sprang
the female bull-terrier on the unhappy Bogle.
“Man is but mortal,” and Bogle turned to flee. “It was
too late!” Why did he take off his coat?—ah! why wear
such tight pantaloons?
Shrieking like a demon, the ferocious beast clinging to
one extremity, his hair on end with fright, and horror at the
other, Bogle rushed frantically down the passage, overturning
in his mad career police officers, chambermaids, housekeeper
and boarders, who, alarmed at his outcries, thronged tumultuously
into the hall. The first flight of stairs he took at a
jump;—the second he rolled down from top to bottom, the
bull-terrier clinging to him like a steel trap—first the dog
on top, then Bogle;—arrived at the bottom, he sprang forth
into Sansome street, and reckless of Frink's alarmed cry—
“Stop that man—he hasn't paid his bill!” away he went on
the wings of the wind. It was an awful sight to see that little
figure, as, wild with horror, he ran adown the street, the
stanch dog swinging from side to side, as he fled.
It was a fearful race! Never did a short pair of legs get
At length a sailor on Commercial street, taking the
dog for a portmanteau, with which he supposed Bogle was
making off, stretched out a friendly leg and tripped him up.
But his troubles were not ended. When a bull-terrier takes
a hold—a fair hold—to get it off, one of two alternatives
must obtain;—either the animal's teeth must be drawn, or
the piece must come out. They hadn't time to draw Fanny's
teeth—!
They brought Bogle home in a hand-cart, and put him
to bed. He hasn't sat down since. As they took him up
stairs to his room, surrounded by a clamorous throng, the
door of No. 10, at the foot of the first flight of stairs, opened,
and a gentleman of exceeding dignity, made his appearance
in a dressing gown of beautifully embroidered pattern.
“John,” he said to Mr. Duncan, who, with an extensive
grin on his countenance, and “Blood for Blood” (somewhat
dilapidated in the scuffle) in his hand, was bringing up the rear
of the procession with a candle, “what's all this row about?”
John briefly explained.
“I thought it a fire,” said the gentleman, “but, `Parturiunt
montes, nascetur—”'
“A ridiculous muss,” said the classic John Duncan.
The gentleman retired; so did the chambermaid; so did
the boarders generally; so did General Brown, with his dog
under his arm, swearing he would not part with her for five
hundred dollars; so did the policemen, somewhat scandalized
that nobody was murdered after all.
Bogle left the house next day in a baby-jumper, swung
to a pole between two Chinamen. Artemesia and the infant
followed.
I hear that he has lately increased his business, taken a
partner, and attends to the examination of wills, marriage
settlements, and other papers belonging entirely to other
people's business. Sneak is the name of the partner; he or
Bogle may be seen daily at the “Hall of Records,” from ten
until two o'clock, overhauling something or other, that is
no concern of theirs. They furnish all sorts of information
gratis. It is like the wine you get where they advertise “All
sorts of liquors at 12½ cents a glass.”
General Brown has settled in Grass Valley, Nevada
County, and would have appointed every white male inhabitant
of California a member of his staff with the rank of
Lieutenant-colonel, had he not been anticipated.
Fanny killed forty-four rats in thirty seconds, only last
week—so Tom says.
The Tehama House is still there.
| Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques | |