The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 24

"I cannot tell what he will do,"--her brief answer rounded by an expressive silence.

"You might help him: shall I point out the way to you?"--watching her intently.

"Can you? _can_ I help him?"--her whole form suddenly inspired with fresh life.

Dr. Earle looked into her eager face with a pa.s.sion of jealous inquiry that made her cast down her eyes:

"Alice, do you _love_ this Hastings?"

He called her Alice; he used a tone and asked a question which could not be misunderstood. Mrs. Hastings dropped her face into her hands, her hands upon her knees. She felt like a wild creature which the dogs hold at bay. She knew now what the man meant, and the temptation he used.

"Alice," he said again, "this man, your husband, possesses a prize he does not value; or does not know how to care for. Shall you stay here and starve with him? Is he worth it?"

"He is my husband," she answered simply, lifting up her face, calm, if mortally pale.

"And I might be your husband, after a brief interval," he said quickly.

"There would have to be a divorce;--it could be conducted quietly. I do not ask you to commit yourself to dishonor. I will s.h.i.+eld you; no care shall fall upon you, nor any reproach. Consider this well, dearest darling Alice! and what will be your fate if you depend upon him."

"Will it help _him_ then, to desert him?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, unless by remaining with him you can insure his support. Maintain you he cannot. Suppose his mine were sold, he would waste that money as he wasted what he brought here. I don't want his mine, yet I will buy it tomorrow if that will satisfy you, and I have your promise to go with me. I told you once that I wanted to run away with you, and now I mean to. Shall I tell you my plan?"

"No, not to-day," Mrs. Hastings answered, struggling with her pain and embarra.s.sment; "I could not bear it to-day, I think."

"How cruel I am while meaning to be kind! You are agitated as you ought not to be in your weak state. Shall I see you to-morrow--a professional visit, you know?"

"You will buy the mine?"--faintly, with something like a blush.

"Certainly; I swear I will--on what conditions, you know."

"On none other?"

"Shall I rob myself, not of money only, but of what is far dearer?--On _none other_." He rose, took her cold hand, clasped it fervently, and went away.

When Jack came home to his very meagre dinner, he brought a can of peaches, which, being opened, looked so deliciously cool and tempting that Alice could not refrain from volubly exulting over them. "But how did you get them, Jack?" she asked; "not by going into debt, I hope."

"No. I was in Scott's store, and Earle, happening to come in just as Scott was selling some, and praising them highly, paid for a can, and asked me to take them to you and get your opinion. They are splendid, by Jove!"

"I do not fancy them," said Alice, setting down her plate; "but don't tell the Doctor," she added hastily.

"You don't fancy anything, lately, Alice," Mr. Hastings replied, rather crossly.

"Never mind, Jack; my appet.i.te will come when you have sold your mine;"

and upon that the unreasonably fastidious woman burst into tears.

"As if my position is not trying enough without seeing you cry!" said Jack, pausing from eating long enough to look injured. Plastic Jack!

your surroundings were having their effect on you.

The _Mining News_ of the second of September had a notice of the sale of Mr. Hastings' mine, the "Sybil," bearing chloride of silver, to Dr.

Eustance Earle, all of Deep Canon. The papers to be handed over and cash paid down at Chloride Hill on the seventh; at which time Dr. Earle would start for San Francisco on the business of the mining firm to which he belonged. Mr. Hastings, it was understood, would go east about the same time.

All the parties were at Chloride Hill on the morning of the seventh, promptly. By eleven o'clock, the above-mentioned transaction was completed. Shortly after, one of the Opposition Line's stages stopped at Mrs. Robb's boarding-house, and a lady, dressed for traveling, stepped quickly into it. Having few acquaintances, and being closely veiled, the lady pa.s.sed unrecognized at the stage-office, where the other pa.s.sengers got in.

Half an hour afterwards Mr. Jack Hastings received the following note:

"DEAR JACK: I sold your mine for you. Dr. Earle is running away with me, per agreement; but if you take the express this afternoon, you will reach Elko before the train leaves for San Francisco to-morrow.

There is nothing worth going back for at Deep Canon. If you love me, save me.

"Devotedly,

"ALICE."

It is superfluous to state that Jack took the express, which, arriving at Elko before the Opposition, made him master of the situation. Not that he felt very masterful; he didn't. He was thinking of many things that it hurt him to remember; but he was meaning to do differently in future. He had at last sold his mine--no, he'd be d----d if _he_ had sold it; but--Hallo! there's a big dust out on the road there!--it must be the other stage. Think what you'll do and say, Jack Hastings!

What he did say was: "Ah, Doctor! you here? It was lucky for my wife, wasn't it, since I got left, to have you to look after her? Thanks, old fellow; you are just in time for the train. Alice and I will stop over a day to rest. A thousand times obliged: good-bye! Alice, say good-bye to Doctor Earle! you will not see him again."

Their hands and eyes met. He was pale as marble: she flushed one instant, paled the next, with a curious expression in her eyes which the Doctor never forgot and never quite understood. It was enough to know that the game was up. He had another mine on his hands, and an ugly pain in his heart which he told himself bitterly would be obstinate of cure.

If he only could be sure what that look in her eyes had meant!

WHAT THEY TOLD ME AT WILSON'S BAR.

The mining season was ended in the narrow valley of one of the Sacramento's northern tributaries, as, in fact, it was throughout the whole region of "placer diggings;" for it was October of a dry year, and water had failed early in all the camps. The afternoon of a long, idle day at Wilson's Bar was drawing to a close. The medium through which the sun's hot rays reached the parched earth was one of red dust, the effect of which was that of a mellow Indian summer haze, pleasing to the eye, if abhorred by the skin and lungs, compelled to take it in, whether brute or human. In the landscape was an incongruous mingling of beauty and deformity; the first, the work of nature; the last, the marring of man.

To the east and to the west rose hills, whose ruggedness was softened by distance to outlines of harmonious grandeur. Scattered over the valley between them, the stately "digger," or nut-pines, grew at near intervals, singly or in groups of three or five, harmonizing by their pale gray-green with the other half-tints of earth, air, and sky.

Following the course of the dried up river was a line, more or less continuous, of the evergreen oaks, whose round, spreading tops are such a grateful relief to the eye in the immense levels of the lower Sacramento and upper San Joaquin valleys. Depending from these, hung long, venerable-looking beards of gray moss, as devoid of color as everything else in the landscape; everything else, except the California wild grape, which, so far from being devoid of color, was gorgeous enough in itself to lighten up the whole foreground of the picture.

Growing in clumps upon the ground, it was gay as a bed of tulips.

Clambering up occasional tall trees, it flaunted its crimson and party-colored foliage with true baccha.n.a.lian jollity, each leaf seeming drunk with its own red wine. There is truly nothing that grows in the Golden State more beautiful than the _Vitus Californica_ in October.

That was Nature's side of the picture. The reverse was this: the earth everywhere torn and disfigured by prospectors, whose picks had produced the effect of some huge snout of swine, applied with the industry characteristic of that animal in forbidden grounds. Rude cabins were scattered about, chiefly in the neighborhood of the stream. Rockers, sluice-boxes, and sieves strewed its borders. Along the dusty road which led to Wilson's Bar toiled heavily laden trains of freight-wagons, carrying supplies for the coming winter. At each little deviation from the general level, the eight-mule teams strained every muscle; the dust-enswathed drivers swore frantically and whipped mercilessly; the immense wagons groaned and creaked, and--the world moved on, however much the pained observer might wish to bring it to a stand-still.

A rosy sunset beyond the western mountains was casting its soft glamour over the scene--happily not without one appreciative beholder--when Bob Matheny's wagon drew up in front of the Traveler's Rest, the princ.i.p.al hotel of Wilson's Bar. From the commotion which ensued immediately thereupon, it would appear that Matheny was a person widely and also somewhat favorably known; such e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns as "Hulloa! thar's Bob Matheny," "How-dy, old feller!" and many other similar expressions of welcome greeting him on all sides, as he turned from blocking the wheels of his wagon, which else might have backed down the slight incline that led to Traveler's Rest.

At the same moment that the hand-shaking was progressing, a young woman, mounted on a handsome filly, rode up to the rude steps of the hotel and prepared to dismount; and Bob Matheny instantly broke away from his numerous friends, to lift her from the saddle, which act occasioned a sympathetic smile in that same numerous circle, and a whisper ran round it, half audible, to the effect that Bob had "bin gittin' married," "A dog-goned purty gal," "The old c.o.c.k's puttin' on frills," and similar appropriate remarks, _ad infinitum_. In the meantime--the young woman disappearing within the hotel, and Matheny occupying himself firstly with the wants of his team, and lastly with his own and those of his traveling companion--gossip had busily circulated the report among the idlers of Wilson's Bar that Bob Matheny had taken to himself a young wife, who was accompanying him on his monthly trip to the mountains.

This report was published with the usual verbal commentaries, legends, and annotations; as relevant and piquant as that sort of gossip usually is, and as elegant as, from the dialect of Wilson's Bar, might be expected.

Late that evening, a group of honest miners discussed the matter in the Star Empire Saloon.

"He's the last man I'd a-suspected ov doin' sech a act," said Tom Davis, with a manly grief upon his honest countenance, as he hid the ace and right-bower under the brim of his ragged old _sombrero_, and proceeded to play the left upon the remainder of that suit--with emphasis, "the very last man!"

"It's a powerful temptation to a feller in _his_ shoes," remarked the tall Kentuckian on his right. "A young gal is a mighty purty thing to look at, and takes a man's mind off from his misfortin's. You mind the verse, don't ye:

'Sorrows I divide, and joys I double?'"

"And give this world a world o' trouble," subjoined Davis's partner, with a good natured laugh at his own wit. "It's your deal, Huxly. Look and see if all the cards are in the pack. Deuced if I don't suspect somebody's hidin' them."