Mrs. Skagg's Husbands and Other Stories Part 4

"I didn't tell you I was married--did I?" he said suddenly, looking up in Islington's face with an unsuccessful attempt at a reckless laugh.

"No," said Islington, more pained at the manner than the words.

"Fact," said Yuba Bill. "Three years ago it was, Tommy,--three years ago!"

He looked so hard at Islington, that, feeling he was expected to say something, he asked vaguely, "Who did you marry?"

"Thet's it!" said Yuba Bill; "I can't ezactly say; partikly, though, a she devil! generally, the wife of half a dozen other men."

Accustomed, apparently, to have his conjugal infelicities a theme of mirth among men, and seeing no trace of amus.e.m.e.nt on Islington's grave face, his dogged, reckless manner softened, and, drawing his chair closer to Islington, he went on: "It all began outer this: we was coming down Watson's grade one night pretty free, when the expressman turns to me and sez, 'There's a row inside, and you'd better pull up!' I pulls up, and out hops, first a woman, and then two or three chaps swearing and cursin', and tryin' to drag some one arter them. Then it 'pear'd, Tommy, thet it was this woman's drunken husband they was going to put out for abusin' her, and strikin' her in the coach; and if it hadn't been for me, my boy, they'd hev left that chap thar in the road. But I fixes matters up by putting her alongside o' me on the box, and we drove on. She was very white, Tommy,--for the matter o' that, she was always one o' these very white women, that never got red in the face,--but she never cried a whimper. Most wimin would have cried. It was queer, but she never cried. I thought so at the time.

"She was very tall, with a lot o' light hair meandering down the back of her head, as long as a deer-skin whip-lash, and about the color. She hed eyes thet'd bore you through at fifty yards, and pooty hands and feet.

And when she kinder got out o' that stiff, narvous state she was in, and warmed up a little, and got chipper, by G-d, sir, she was handsome,--she was that!"

A little flushed and embarra.s.sed at his own enthusiasm, he stopped, and then said, carelessly, "They got off at Murphy's."

"Well," said Islington.

"Well, I used to see her often arter thet, and when she was alone she allus took the box-seat. She kinder confided her troubles to me, how her husband got drunk and abused her; and I didn't see much o' him, for he was away in 'Frisco arter thet. But it was all square, Tommy,--all square 'twixt me and her.

"I got a going there a good deal, and then one day I sez to myself, 'Bill, this won't do,' and I got changed to another route. Did you ever know Jackson Filltree, Tommy?" said Bill, breaking off suddenly.

"No."

"Might have heerd of him, p'r'aps?"

"No," said Islington, impatiently.

"Jackson Filltree ran the express from White's out to Summit, 'cross the North Fork of the Yuba. One day he sez to me, 'Bill, that's a mighty bad ford at the North Fork.' I sez, 'I believe you, Jackson.' 'It'll git me some day, Bill, sure,' sez he. I sez, 'Why don't you take the lower ford?' 'I don't know,' sez he, 'but I can't.' So ever after, when I met him, he sez, 'That North Fork ain't got me yet.' One day I was in Sacramento, and up comes Filltree. He sez, 'I've sold out the express business on account of the North Fork, but it's bound to get me yet, Bill, sure'; and he laughs. Two weeks after they finds his body below the ford, whar he tried to cross, comin' down from the Summit way. Folks said it was foolishness: Tommy, I sez it was Fate! The second day arter I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes outer the hotel above the stage-office. Her husband, she said, was lying sick in Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate. Three months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium tremems, and dies. There's folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it's Fate. A year after that I married her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!

"I lived with her jest three months," he went on, after a long breath,--"three months! It ain't much time for a happy man. I've seen a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that three months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it was a toss-up whether I should kill her or she me. But thar, I'm done. You are a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things thet, old as I am, three years ago I couldn't have believed."

When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington asked where his wife was now.

"Ask me no more, my boy,--no more. I've said my say." With a gesture as of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the window.

"You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud do me good. Ef you can't go with me, well and good. But go I must."

"Not before luncheon, I hope," said a very sweet voice, as Blanche Masterman suddenly stood before them. "Father would never forgive me if in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington's friends to go in this way. You will stay, won't you? Do! And you will give me your arm now; and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will follow us into the dining-room and introduce you."

"I have quite fallen in love with your friend," said Miss Blanche, as they stood in the drawing-room looking at the figure of Bill, strolling, with his short pipe in his mouth, through the distant shrubbery. "He asks very queer questions, though. He wanted to know my mother's maiden name."

"He is an honest fellow," said Islington, gravely.

"You are very much subdued. You don't thank me, I dare say, for keeping you and your friend here; but you couldn't go, you know, until father returned."

Islington smiled, but not very gayly.

"And then I think it much better for us to part here under these frescos, don't you? Good by."

She extended her long, slim hand.

"Out in the sunlight there, when my eyes were red, you were very anxious to look at me," she added, in a dangerous voice.

Islington raised his sad eyes to hers. Something glittering upon her own sweet lashes trembled and fell.

"Blanche!"

She was rosy enough now, and would have withdrawn her hand, but Islington detained it. She was not quite certain but that her waist was also in jeopardy. Yet she could not help saying, "Are you sure that there isn't anything in the way of a young woman that would keep you?"

"Blanche!" said Islington in reproachful horror.

"If gentlemen will roar out their secrets before an open window, with a young woman lying on a sofa on the veranda, reading a stupid French novel, they must not be surprised if she gives more attention to them than her book."

"Then you know all, Blanche?"

"I know," said Blanche, "let's see--I know the partiklar style of--ahem!--fool you was, and expected no better. Good by." And, gliding like a lovely and innocent milk snake out of his grasp, she slipped away.

To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light voices, the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport. It looked upon formless ma.s.ses of rock and shrubbery, wide s.p.a.ces of lawn and beach, and a s.h.i.+mmering expanse of water. It singled out particular objects,--a white sail in sh.o.r.e, a crystal globe upon the lawn, and flashed upon something held between the teeth of a crouching figure scaling the low wall of Cliffwood Lodge. Then, as a man and woman pa.s.sed out from under the shadows of the foliage into the open moonlight of the garden path, the figure leaped from the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the shadow.

It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more pathetic than terrible. But the next moment the knife was stricken from his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that apparently sprang from the wall beside him.

"D--n you, Masterman!" cried the old man, hoa.r.s.ely; "give me fair play, and I'll kill you yet!"

"Which my name is Yuba Bill," said Bill, quietly, "and it's time this d--n fooling was stopped."

The old man glared in Bill's face savagely. "I know you. You're one of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his heart out,--let me go! Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there she is!

there!--there!--there! Mary!" He would have screamed, but Bill placed his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the old man's glance. Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path.

"Give me my wife!" muttered the old man hoa.r.s.ely, between Bill's fingers. "Where is she?"

A sudden fury pa.s.sed over Yuba Bill's face. "Where is your wife?" he echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding him there as in a vice. "Where is your wife?" he repeated, thrusting his grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face.

"Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil that drove one man mad, that sent another to h.e.l.l by his own hand, that eternally broke and ruined me? Where! Where! Do you ask where? In jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you hear?--in jail for murder, Johnson,--murder!"

The old man gasped, stiffened, and then, relaxing, suddenly slipped, a mere inanimate ma.s.s, at Yuba Bill's feet. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, Yuba Bill dropped at his side, and, lifting him tenderly in his arms, whispered, "Look up, old man, Johnson! look up, for G.o.d's sake!--it's me,--Yuba Bill! and yonder is your daughter, and--Tommy!--don't you know--Tommy, little Tommy Islington?"

Johnson's eyes slowly opened. He whispered, "Tommy! yes, Tommy! Sit by me, Tommy. But don't sit so near the bank. Don't you see how the river is rising and beckoning to me,--hissing, and boilin' over the rocks?

It's gittin higher!--hold me, Tommy,--hold me, and don't let me go yet.

We'll live to cut his heart out, Tommy,--we'll live--we'll--" His head sank, and the rus.h.i.+ng river, invisible to all eyes save his, leaped toward him out of the darkness, and bore him away, no longer to the darkness, but through it to the distant, peaceful s.h.i.+ning sea.

HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR.