WHICH HAS A GOOD MORAL TENDENCY
Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with the other scholars, M’liss still retained an offensive attitude toward Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely stilled in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was that Clytemnestra’s round curves and plump outlines afforded an extensive pinching surface. But while these ebullitions were under the master’s control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irresponsible form.
In his first estimate of the child’s character he could not conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many other professed readers of character, was safer ina posteriorithana priorireasoning, for M’liss had a doll. But then it was a peculiar doll,—a frightful perversion of wax and sawdust,—a doll fearfully and wonderfully made,—a smaller edition of M’liss. Its unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the oldtime companion of M’liss’s wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering. Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather, and anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as M’liss had in days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged as hers had been. M’liss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during M’liss’s rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll—as she would to herself—it knew no luxuries.
Now, Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll and gave it to M’liss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The master, on looking at it one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident before long that M’liss had also noticed the same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie’s excellencies upon her; or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens, and indulging in that “fetich” ceremony imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.
In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing in her different tasks the workings of a quick, restless, and vigorous perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood. Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in venturing beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are no better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and judgment.
Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained his fancy began to affect him with grave doubts. He could not but see that M’liss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. But there was one better quality which pertained to her semi-savage disposition—the faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another—though not always an attribute of the noble savage—truth. M’liss was both fearless and sincere—perhaps in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.
The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined to call on the Rev. Mr. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he thought of M’liss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to McSnagley.
The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed that the master was looking “peartish” and hoped he had got over the “neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb “ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”
Pausing a moment to enable the master to write this certain method of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an adornment to Christewanity, and has a likely, growin’ young family,” added Mr. McSnagley; “and there is that mannerly young gal—so well behaved—Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie’s perfections seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor M’liss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Morpher’s earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another engagement and left without asking the information required, but in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.
But the master obtained the advice in another and unexpected direction.
The resident physician of Smith’s Pocket was a Dr. Duchesne, or as he was better known to the locality, “Dr. Doochesny.” Of a naturally refined nature and liberal education, he had steadily resisted the aggressions and temptations of Smith’s Pocket, and represented to the master a kind of connecting link between his present life and the past. So that an intimacy sprang up between the two men, involving prolonged interviews in the doctor’s little back shop, often to the exclusion of other suffering humanity and their physical ailments. It was in one of these interviews that the master mentioned the coincidence of the date of the memoranda on the back of M’liss’s letter and the day of Smith’s suicide.
“If it were Smith’s own handwriting, as the child says it is,” said the master, “it shows a queer state of mind that could contemplate suicide and indite private memoranda within the same twenty-four hours.”
Dr. Duchesne removed his cigar from his lips and looked attentively at his friend.
“The only hypothesis,” continued the master, “is that Smith was either drunk or crazy, and the fatal act was in a measure unpremeditated.”
“Every man who commits suicide,” returned the doctor gravely, “is in my opinion insane, or, what is nearly the same thing, becomes through suffering an irresponsible agent. In my professional experience I have seen most of the forms of mental and physical agony, and know what sacrifices men will make to preserve even an existence that to me seemed little better than death, so long as their intellect remained unclouded. When you come to reflect on the state of mind that chooses death as a preferable alternative, you generally find an exaltation and enthusiasm that differs very little from the ordinary diagnosis of delirium. Smith was not drunk,” added the doctor in his usual careless tone; “I saw his body.”
The master remained buried in reflection. Presently the doctor removed his cigar.
“Perhaps I might help you to explain the coincidence you speak of.”
“How?”
“Very easily. But this is a professional secret, you understand.”
“Yes, I understand,” said the master hastily, with an ill-defined uneasiness creeping over him.
“Do you know anything of the phenomena of death by gunshot wounds?”
“No!”
“Then you must take certain facts as granted. Smith, you remember, was killedinstantly!The nature of his wound and the manner of his death were such as would have caused an instantaneous and complete relaxation ofallthe muscles. Rigidity and contraction would have supervened of course, but only after life was extinct and consciousness fled. Now Smith was found with his hand tightly grasping a pistol.”
“Well?”
“Well, my dear boy, he must have grasped it after he was dead, or have prevailed on some friend to stiffen his fingers round it.”
“Do you mean that he was murdered?”
Dr. Duchesne rose and closed the door. “We have different names for these things in Smith’s Pocket. I mean to say that he didn’t kill himself—that’s all.”
“But, doctor,” said the master earnestly; “do you think you have done right in concealing this fact? Do you think it just—do you think it consistent with your duty to his orphan child?”
“That’s why I have said nothing about it,” replied the doctor coolly,—“because of my consideration for his orphan child.”
The master breathed quickly, and stared at the doctor.
“Doctor! you don’t think that M’liss”—
“Hush!—don’t get excited, my young friend. Remember I am not a lawyer—only a doctor.”
“But M’liss was with me the very night he must have been killed. We were walking together when we heard the report—that is—a report—which must have been the one”—stammered the master.
“When was that?”
“At half past eleven. I remember looking at my watch.”
“Humph!—when did you meet her first?”
“At half past eight. Come, doctor, you have made a mistake here at least,” said the young man with an assumption of ease he was far from feeling. “Give M’liss the benefit of the doubt.”
Dr. Duchesne replied by opening a drawer of his desk. After rummaging among the powders and mysterious looking instruments with which it was stored, he finally brought forth a longitudinal slip of folded white paper. It was appropriately labeled “Poison.”
“Look here,” said the doctor, opening the paper. It contained two or three black coarse hairs. “Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Look again!”
“It looks something like Melissa’s hair,” said the master, with a fathomless sinking of the heart.
“When I was called to look at the body,” continued the doctor with the deliberate cautiousness of a professional diagnosis, “my suspicions were aroused by the circumstance I told you of. I managed to get possession of the pistol, and found these hairs twisted around the lock as though they had been accidentally caught and violently disentangled. I don’t think that any one else saw them. I removed them without observation, and—they are at your service.”
The master sank back in his seat and pressed his hand to his forehead. The image of M’liss rose before him with flashing eye and long black hair, and seemed to beat down and resist defiantly the suspicion that crept slowly over his heart.
“I forbore to tell you this, my friend,” continued the doctor slowly and gravely, “because when I learned that you had taken this strange child under your protection I did not wish to tell you that which—though I contend does not alter her claims to man’s sympathy and kindness—still might have prejudiced her in your eyes. Her improvement under your care has proven my position correct. I have, as you know, peculiar ideas of the extent to which humanity is responsible. I find in my heart—looking back over that child’s career—no sentiment but pity. I am mistaken in you if I thought this circumstance aroused any other feeling in yours.”
Still the figure of M’liss stood before the master as he bent before the doctor’s words, in the same defiant attitude, with something of scorn in the great dark eyes, that made the blood tingle in his cheeks, and seemed to make the reasoning of the speaker but meaningless and empty words. At length he rose. As he stood with his hand on the latch he turned to Dr. Duchesne, who was watching him with careful solicitude.
“I don’t know but that you have done well to keep this from me. At all events it has not—cannot, and should not alter my opinion toward M’liss. You will of course keep it a secret. In the mean time you must not blame me if I cling to my instincts in preference to your judgment. I still believe that you are mistaken in regard to her.”
“Stay, one moment,” said the doctor; “promise me you will not say anything of this, nor attempt to prosecute the matter further till you have consulted with me.”
“I promise. Good-night.”
“Good-night;” and so they parted.
True to that promise and his own instinctive promptings the master endeavored to atone for his momentary disloyalty by greater solicitude for M’liss. But the child had noticed some change in the master’s thoughtful manner, and in one of their long post-prandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked full in his face with big searching eyes.
“You ain’t mad?” said she, with an interrogative shake of the black braids.
“No.”
“Nor bothered?”
“No.”
“Nor hungry?” (Hunger was to M’liss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)
“No.”
“Nor thinking of her?”
“Of whom, Lissy?”
“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet invented by M’liss, who was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)
“No.”
“Upon your word?” (A substitute for “Hope you’ll die!” proposed by the master.)
“Yes.”
“And sacred honor?”
“Yes.”
Then M’liss gave him a fierce little kiss, and hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after that she condescended to appear like other children and be, as she expressed it, “good.”
When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or Examination. So the savans and professionals of Smith’s Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children in a constrained position, and bullying them as in a witness-box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the present instance M’liss and Clytie were preeminent and divided public attention: M’liss with her clearness of material perception and self-reliance, and Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and blundering. M’liss’s readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number, and provoked the greatest applause, and M’liss’s antecedents had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of the miners, whose athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces looked in at the window. But M’liss’s popularity was overthrown by an unexpected circumstance.
McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most ambiguous questions, delivered in an impressive, funereal tone; and M’liss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our “spotted ball” through space, and defining the “tethered orbits” of the planets, when McSnagley deliberately arose.
“Meelissy, ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yer yearth, and its movements with regard to the sun, and I think you said it had been a-doin’ of it since the creation, eh?”
M’liss nodded a scornful affirmative.
“Well, was that the truth?” said McSnagley, folding his arms.
“Yes,” said M’liss, shutting up her little red lips tightly.
The handsome outlines at the windows peered further into the schoolroom, and a saintly, Raphael-like face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and whispered:—
“Stick to it, M’liss! It’s only a big bluff of the parson.”
The reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his eye on Clytemnestra. That young woman softly elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary pause. Clytie’s round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie’s big eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie’s low-necked white book-muslin rested softly on Clytie’s white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:
“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him.”
There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on McSnagley’s face, a grave shadow on the master’s, and a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows. M’liss skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, and a yell from the windows, as M’liss brought her red fist down on the desk, with the emphatic declaration:—
“It’s a d—n lie. I don’t believe it!”
“OPEN SESAME”
The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests exhaled a fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding; the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland which climbed the Red Mountain at its southern aspect, the long spike of the monk’s-hood shot up from its broad-leaved stool and once more shook its dark blue bells. Again the billow above Smith’s grave was soft and green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they reached Smith’s grave, and there, there was but one. General superstition had shunned the enforced companionship. The plot beside Smith was vacant.
It was the custom of the driver of the great Wingdam stage to whip up his horses at the foot of the hill, and soenter Smith’s Pocket at that remarkable pace which the woodcuts in the hotel bar-room represented to credulous humanity as the usual rate of speed of that conveyance. At least, Aristides Morpher thought so as he stood one Sunday afternoon, uneasily conscious of his best jacket and collar, waiting its approach. Nor could anything shake his belief that regularly on that occasion the horses ran away with the driver, and that that individual from motives of deep policy pretended not to notice it until they were stopped.
“Anybody up from below, Bill?” said the landlord as the driver slowly descended from his perch.
“Nobody for you,” responded Bill shortly. “Dusenberry kem up as usual, and got off at the old place. You can’t make a livin’ off him, I reckon.”
“Have you found out what his name is yet?” continued the landlord, implying that “Dusenberry” was simply a playful epithet of the driver.
“He says his name is Waters,” returned Bill. “Jake said he saw him at the North Fork in ’50—called himself Moore then. Guess he ain’t no good, nowhow. What’s he doin’ round here?”
“Says he’s prospectin’,” replied the landlord. “He has a claim somewhere in the woods. Gambles a little too, I reckon. He don’t travel on his beauty anyhow.”
“If you had seen him makin’ up to a piece of calico inside, last trip, and she a-makin’ up to him quite confidential-like, I guess you’d think he was a lady-killer. My eye, but wasn’t she a stunner! Clytie Morpher wasn’t nowhere to begin with her.”
“Who was she, Bill?” asked half a dozen masculine voices.
“Don’t know. We picked her up this side of ‘Coyote.’ Fancy? I tell you!—pretty little hat and pink ribbings—eyes that ud bore you through at a hundred yards—white teeth—brown gaiters, and such an ankle! She didn’t want to show it,—oh, no!” added the sarcastic Bill with deep significance.
“Where did you leave her, Bill?” asked a gentle village swain who had been fired by the glowing picture of the fair unknown.
“That’s what’s the matter. You see after we picked her up, she said she was goin’ through to Wingdam. Of course there wasn’t anything in the stage or on the road too good to offer her. Old Major Spaffler wanted to treat her to lemonade at every station. Judge Plunkett kep’ a-pullin’ down the blinds and a-h’istin’ of them up to keep out the sun and let in the air. Blest if old McSnagley didn’t want to carry her travelin’-bag. There wasn’t any attention, boys, she didn’t get—but it wasn’t no use—bless you! She never so much as passed the time of day with them.”
“But where did she go?” inquired another anxious auditor.
“Keep your foot off the drag, and I’ll tell you. Arter we left Ring Tail Canon, Dusenberry, as usual, got on. Presently one of the outsides turned round to me, and says he, ‘D—d if Ugly Mug ain’t got the inside track of all of you this time!’ I looked down, and dern my skin if there wasn’t Dusenberry a-sittin’ up alongside of the lady, quite comfortable, as if they had ben children together. At the next station Dusenberry gets off. So does the lady. ‘Ain’t you goin’ on to Wingdam,’ says I. ‘No,’ says she. ‘Mayn’t we have the pleasure of your kempany further?’ says the judge, taking off his hat. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind,’ says she, and off she got, and off she walked arm in arm with him as cool as you please.”
“Wonder if that wa’n’t the party that passed through here last July?” asked the blacksmith, joining the loungers in front of the stage-office. “Waters brought up a buggy to get the axle bolted. There was a woman setting in the buggy, but the hood was drawn down, and I didn’t get to see her face.” During this conversation Aristides, after a long, lingering glance at the stage, had at last torn himself away from its fascinations, and was now lounging down the long straggling street in a peculiarly dissipated manner, with his hat pushed on the back part of his head, his right hand and a greater portion of his right arm buried in his trousers pocket. This might have been partly owing to the shortness of his legs and the comparative amplitude of his trousers, which to the casual observer seemed to obviate the necessity of any other garment. But when he reached the bottom of the street, and further enlivened his progress by whistling shrilly between his fingers, and finally drew a fragment of a cigar from his pocket and placed it between his teeth, it was evident that there was a moral as well as physical laxity in his conduct. The near fact was that Aristides had that afternoon evaded the Sunday-school, and was open to any kind of infant iniquity.
The main street of Smith’s Pocket gradually lost its civilized character, and after one or two futile attempts at improvement at its lower extremity, terminated impotently in a chaos of ditches, races, and trailings. Out of this again a narrow trail started along the mountain side, and communicated with that vast amphitheatre which still exhibited the pioneer efforts of the early settlers. It was this trail that Aristides took that Sunday afternoon, and which he followed until he reached the hillside a few rods below the yawning fissure of Smith’s Pocket. After a careful examination of the vicinity, he cleared away the underbrush beside a fallen pine that lay near, and sat down in the attitude of patient and deliberate expectancy.
Five minutes passed—ten, twenty—and finally a half-hour was gone. Aristides threw away his cigar, which he had lacked determination to light, and peeled small slips from the inner bark of the pine-tree, and munched them gravely. Another five, ten, and twenty minutes passed, and the sun began to drop below the opposite hillside. Another ten minutes, and the whole of the amphitheatre above was in heavy shadow. Ten minutes more, and the distant windows in the settlement flamed redly. Five minutes, and the spire of the Methodist church caught the glow—and then the underbrush crackled.
Aristides, looking up, saw the trunk of the prostrate pine slowly lifting itself before him.
A second glance showed the fearless and self-possessed boy that the apparent phenomenon was simply and easily explained. The tree had fallen midway and at right angles across the trunk of another prostrate monarch. So accurately and evenly was it balanced that the child was satisfied, from a liberal experience of the application of these principles to the game of “seesaw,” that a very slight impulse to either end was sufficient to destroy the equilibrium. That impulse proceeded from his end of the tree, as he saw when the uplifted trunk disclosed an opening in the ground beneath it, and the head and shoulders of a man emerging therefrom.
Aristides threw himself noiselessly on his stomach. The thick clump of an azalea hid him from view, though it did not obstruct his survey of the stranger, whom he at once recognized as his former enemy,—the man with the red handkerchief,—the hopeful prospector of Red Mountain, and the hypothetical “Dusenberry” of the stage-driver.
The stranger looked cautiously round, and Aristides shrank close behind the friendly azalea.
Satisfied that he was unobserved, the subterranean proprietor returned to the opening and descended, reappearing with a worn black enameled traveling-bag which he carried with difficulty. This he again enveloped in a blanket and strapped tightly on his back, and a long-handled shovel, brought up from the same mysterious storehouse, completed his outfit. As he stood for a moment leaning on the shovel, it was the figure of the hopeful prospector in the heart of the forest. A very slight effort was sufficient to replace the fallen tree in its former position. Raising the shovel to his shoulder, he moved away, brushing against the azalea bush which hid the breathless Aristides. The sound of his footsteps retreating through the crackling brush presently died out, and a drowsy Sabbath stillness succeeded.
Aristides rose. There was a wonderful brightness in his gray eyes, and a flush on his sunburned cheek. Seizing a root of the fallen pine he essayed to move it. But it defied his endeavors. Aristides looked round.
“There’s some trick about it, but I’ll find it yet,” said that astute child. Breaking off the limb of a buckeye, he extemporized a lever. The first attempt failed. The second succeeded, and the long roots of the tree again, ascended. But as it required prolonged effort to keep the tree up, before the impetus was lost Aristides seized the opportunity to jump into the opening. At the same moment the tree slowly returned to its former position.
In the sudden change from the waning light to complete darkness, Aristides was for a moment confounded. Recovering himself, he drew a match from his capacious pocket, and striking it against the sole of his shoe, by the upspringing flash perceived a candle stuck in the crevices of the rock beside him. Lighting it, he glanced curiously around him. He was at the entrance of a long gallery at the further extremity of which he could faintly see the glimmering of the outer daylight. Following this gallery cautiously he presently came to an antechamber, and by the glimmering of the light above him at once saw that it was the same he had seen in his wonderful dream.
The antechamber was about fourteen feet square, with walls of decomposed quartz, mingling with flaky mica that reflected here and there the gleam of Aristides’s candle with a singular brilliancy. It did not need much observation on his part to determine the reason of the stranger’s lonely labors. On a rough rocker beside him were two fragments of ore taken from the adjacent wall, the smallest of which the two arms of Aristides could barely clasp. To his dazzled eyes they seemed to be almost entirely of pure gold. The great strike of ’56 at Ring Tail Canon had brought to the wonderful vision of Smith’s Pocket no such nuggets as were here.
Aristides turned to the wall again, which had been apparently the last scene of the stranger’s labors, and from which the two masses of ore were taken. Even to his inexperienced eye it represented a wealth almost incalculable. Through the loose, red soil everywhere glittering star points of the precious metal threw back the rays of his candle. Aristides turned pale and trembled.
Here was the realization of his most extravagant fancy. Ever since his strange dream and encounter with the stranger, he had felt an irresistible desire to follow up his adventure, and discover the secrets of the second cavern. But when he had returned to Smith’s Pocket, a few days after, the wreck of the fallen roof had blocked up that part of the opening from which he had caught sight of the hidden workman below. During his visit he had picked up from among the rubbish the memorandum book which had supplied M’liss with letter paper. Still haunting the locality after school hours, he had noticed that regularly at sunset the man with the red handkerchief appeared in some mysterious way from the hillside below Smith’s Pocket, and went away in the direction of the settlement. By careful watching, Aristides had fixed the location of his mysterious appearance to a point a few rods below the opening of Smith’s Pocket. Flushed by this discovery, he had been betrayed from his usual discretion so far as to intimate a hinting of the suspicion that possessed him in the few mysterious words he had whispered to M’liss at school. The accident we have described above determined the complete discovery of the secret.
Who was the stranger, and why did he keep the fact of this immense wealth hidden from the world? Suppose he, Aristides, were to tell? Wouldn’t the schoolboys look up at him with interest as the hero and discoverer of this wonderful cavern, and wouldn’t the stage-driver feel proud of his acquaintance and offer him rides for nothing?
Why hadn’t Smith discovered it—who was poor and wanted money, whom Aristides had liked, who was the father of M’liss, for whom Aristides confessed a secret passion, who belonged to the settlement and helped to build it up—instead of the stranger? Had Smith never a suspicion that gold was so near him, and if so, why had he killed himself? But did Smith kill himself? And at this thought and its correlative fancy, again the cheek of Aristides blanched, and the candle shook in his nerveless fingers.
Apart and distinct from these passing conjectures one idea remained firm and dominant in his mind: the man with the red handkerchief had no right to this treasure! The mysterious instinct which directed this judicial ruling of Aristides had settled this fact as indubitably as though proven by the weight of the strongest testimony. For an instant a wild thought sprang up in his heart, and he seized the nearest mass of ore with the half-formed intention of bearing it directly to the feet of M’liss as her just and due inheritance. But Aristides could not lift it, and the idea passed out of his mind with the frustrated action.
At the further end of the gallery a few blankets were lying, and with some mining implements, a kettle of water, a few worn flannel shirts, were the only articles which this subterranean habitation possessed. In turning over one of the blankets Aristides picked up a woman’s comb. It was a tortoise-shell, and bright with some fanciful ornamentation. Without a moment’s hesitation Aristides pocketed it as the natural property of M’liss. A pocketbook containing a few old letters in the breast pocket of one of the blue shirts was transferred to that of Aristides with the same coolness and sentiment of instinctive justice.
Aristides wisely reflected that these unimportant articles would excite no suspicion if found in his possession. A fragment of the rock, which, if he had taken it as he felt impelled, would have precipitated the discovery that Aristides had decided to put off until he had perfected a certain plan. The light from the opening above had gradually faded, and Aristides knew that night had fallen. To prevent suspicion he must return home. He reentered the gallery and reached the opening of the egress. One of the roots of the tree projected into the opening.
He seized it and endeavored to lift it, but in vain. Panting with exertion, he again and again exerted the fullest power of his active sinews, but the tree remained immovable—the opening remained sealed as firmly as with Solomon’s signet. Raising his candle towards it, Aristides saw the reason of its resistance. In his hurried ingress he had allowed the tree to revolve sufficiently to permit one of its roots to project into the opening, which held it firmly down. In the shock of the discovery the excitement which had sustained him gave way, and with a hopeless cry the just Aristides fell senseless on the floor of the gallery.
THE TRIALS OF MRS. MORPHER
“Now, where on earth can that child be?” said Mrs. Morpher, shading her eyes with her hand, as she stood at the door of the “Mountain Ranch,” looking down the Wingdam road at sunset. “With his best things on; too. Goodness!—whatwereboys made for?”
Mr. Morpher, without replying to this question, apparently addressed to himself as an adult representative of the wayward species, appeared at the door, and endeavored to pour oil on the troubled waters.
“Oh,he’sall right, Sue! Don’t fuss abouthim,” said Mr. Morpher with an imbecile sense of conveying comfort in the emphasized pronoun. “He’s down the gulch, or in the tunnel, or over to the claim. He’ll turn up by bedtime. Don’t you worry abouthim.I’ll look him up in a minit,” and Mr. Morpher, taking his hat, sauntered down the road in the direction of the National Hotel.
Mrs. Morpher gazed doubtfully after her liege. “Looking up” Aristides, in her domestic experience, implied a prolonged absence in the bar-room of the hotel, the tedium whereof was beguiled by seven-up or euchre. But she only said: “Don’t be long, James,” and sighed hopelessly as she turned back into the house.
Once again within her own castle walls Mrs. Morpher dropped her look of patient suffering and glanced defiantly around for a fresh grievance.
The decorous little parlor offered nothing to provoke the hostility of her peculiar instincts. Spotless were the white curtains; the bright carpet guiltless of stain or dust. The chairs were placed arithmetically in twos, and added up evenly on the four sides with nothing to carry over. Two bunches of lavender and fennel breathed an odor of sanctified cleanliness through the room. Five daguerreotypes on the mantelpiece represented the Morpher family in the progressive stages of petrifaction, and had the Medusa-like effect of freezing visitors into similar attitudes in their chairs. The walls were further enlivened with two colored engravings of scenes in the domestic history of George Washington, in which the Father of his Country seemed to look blandly from his own correct family circle into Morpher’s, and to breathe quite audibly from his gilt frame a dignified blessing.
Lingering a moment in this sacred inclosure to readjust the tablecloth, Mrs. Morpher passed into the dining-room, where the correct Clytie presided at the supper-table, at which the rest of the family were seated. Mrs. Morpher’s quick eyes caught the spectacle of M’liss with her chin resting on her hands, and her elbows on the table, sardonically surveying the model of deportment opposite to her.
“M’liss!”
“Well?”
“Where’s your elbows?”
“Here’s one and there’s the other,” said M’liss quietly, indicating their respective localities by smartly tapping them with the palm of her hand.
“Take them off the table, instantly, you bold, forward girl—and you, sir, quit that giggling and eat your supper, if you don’t want to be put to bed without it!” added Mrs. Morpher to Lycurgus, to whom M’liss’s answer had afforded boundless satisfaction. “You’re getting to be just as bad as her, and mercy knows you never were a seraphim!”
“What’s a seraphim, mother, and what do they do?” asked Lycurgus, with growing interest.
“They don’t ask questions when they should be eating their supper, and thankful for it,” interposed Clytie, authoritatively, as one to whom the genteel attributes and social habits of the seraphim had been a privileged revelation.
“But, mother”—
“Hush—and don’t be a heathen—run and see who is coming in,” said Mrs. Morpher, as the sound of footsteps was heard in the passage.
The door opened and McSnagley entered.
“Why, bless my soul—how do you do?” said Mrs. Morpher, with genteel astonishment. “Quite a stranger, I declare.”
This was a polite fiction. M’liss knew the fact to be that Mrs. Morpher was reputed to “set the best table” in Smith’s Pocket, and McSnagley always called in on Sunday evenings at supper to discuss the current gossip, and “nag” M’liss with selected texts. The verbal McSnagley as usual couldn’t stop a moment—and just dropped in “in passin’.” The actual McSnagley deposited his hat in the corner, and placed himself, in the flesh, on a chair by the table.
“And how’s Brother James, and the fammerly?”
“They’re all well—except ‘Risty;’ he’s off again,—as if my life weren’t already pestered out with one child,” and Mrs. Morpher glanced significantly at M’liss.
“Ah, well, we all of us have our trials,” said McSnagley. “I’ve been ailin’ again. That ager must be in my bones still. I’ve been rather onsettled myself to-day.”
There was the appearance of truth in this statement; Mr. McSnagley’s voice had a hollow resonant sound, and his eyes were nervous and fidgety. He had an odd trick, too, of occasionally stopping in the middle of a sentence, and listening as though he heard some distant sound. These things, which Mrs. Morpher recalled afterwards, did not, in the undercurrent of uneasiness about Aristides which she felt the whole of that evening, so particularly attract her notice.
“I know something,” said Lycurgus, during one of these pauses, from the retirement of his corner.
“If you dare to—Kerg!” said M’liss.
“M’liss says she knows where Risty is, but she won’t tell,” said the lawgiver, not heeding the warning. The words were scarcely uttered before M’liss’s red hand flashed in the air and descended with a sounding box on the traitor’s ear. Lycurgus howled, Mrs. Morpher darted into the corner, and M’liss was dragged defiant and struggling to the light.
“Oh, you wicked, wicked child—why don’t you say where, if you know?” said Mrs. Morpher, shaking her, as if the information were to be dislodged from some concealed part of her clothing.
“I didn’t say I knew for sure,” at last responded M’liss. “I said I thought I knew.”
“Well, where do you think he is?”
But M’liss was firm. Even the gloomy picture of the future state devised by McSnagley could not alter her determination. Mrs. Morpher, who had a wholesome awe for this strange child, at last had recourse to entreaty. Finally M’liss offered a compromise.
“I’ll tell the master, but I won’t tell you—partikerly him,” said M’liss, indicating the parson with a bodkin-like dart of her forefinger.
Mrs. Morpher hesitated. Her maternal anxiety at length overcame her sense of dignity and discipline.
“Who knows where the master is, or where he is to be found to-night?” she asked hastily.
“He’s over to Dr. Duchesne’s,” said Clytie eagerly; “that is,” she stammered, a rich color suddenly flushing from her temples to her round shoulders, “he’s usually there in the evenings, I mean.”
“Run over, there’s a dear, and ask him to come here,” said Mrs. Morpher, without noticing a sudden irregularity of conduct in her firstborn. “Run quick!”
Clytie did not wait for a second command. Without availing herself of the proffered company of McSnagley she hastily tied the strings of her school hat under her plump chin, and slipped out of the house. It was not far to the doctor’s office, and Clytie walked quickly, overlooking in her haste and preoccupation the admiring glances which several of the swains of Smith’s Pocket cast after her as she passed. But on arriving at the doctor’s door, so out of breath and excited was this usual model of deportment that, on finding herself in the presence of the master and his friend, she only stood in embarrassed silence, and made up for her lack of verbal expression by a succession of eloquent blushes.
Let us look at her for a moment as she stands there. Her little straw hat, trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons, rests on the waves of her blonde hair. There are other gay ribbons on her light summer dress, clasping her round waist, girdling her wrist, and fastening her collar about her white throat. Her large blue eyes are very dark and moist—it may be with excitement or a tearful thought of the lost Aristides—or the tobacco smoke, with which I regret to say the room is highly charged. But certainly as she stands leaning against the doorway, biting her moist scarlet lip, and trying to pull down the broad brim of her hat over the surging waves of color thatwillbeat rhythmically up to her cheeks and temples, she is so dangerously pretty that I am glad for the masters sake he is the philosopher he has just described himself to his friend the doctor, and that he prefers to study human physiology from the inner surfaces.
When Clytie had recovered herself sufficiently to state her message, the master offered to accompany her back. As Clytie took his arm with some slight trepidation Dr. Duchesne, who had taken sharp notes of these “febrile” symptoms, uttered a prolonged whistle and returned thoughtfully to his office.
Although Clytie found the distance returning no further than the distance going, with the exhaustion of her first journey it was natural that her homeward steps should be slower, and that the master should regulate his pace to accommodate her. It was natural, too, that her voice should be quite low and indistinct, so that the master was obliged to bring his hat nearer the cherry-colored ribbons in the course of conversation. It was also natural that he should offer the sensitive young girl such comfort as lay in tenderly modulated tones and playful epithets. And if in the irregularities of the main street it was necessary to take Clytie’s hand or to put his arm around her waist in helping her up declivities, that the master saw no impropriety in the act was evident from the fact that he did not remove his arm when the difficulty was surmounted. In this way Clytie’s return occupied some moments more than her going, and Mrs. Morpher was waiting anxiously at the door when the young people arrived. As the master entered the room, M’liss called him to her. “Bend down your head” she said, “and I’ll whisper. But mind, now, I don’t say I know for truth where Risty is, I only reckon.”
The master bent down his head. As usual in such cases, everybody else felt constrained to listen, and McSnagley’s curiosity was awakened to its fullest extent. When the master had received the required information, he said quietly:—
“I think I’ll go myself to this place which M’liss wishes to make a secret of and see if the boy is there. It will save trouble to any one else, if she should be mistaken.”
“Hadn’t you better take some one with you?” said Mrs. Morpher.
“By all means. I’ll go!” said Mr. McSnagley, with feverish alacrity.
The master looked inquiringly at M’liss.
“He can go if he wants to, but he’d better not,” said M’liss, looking directly into McSnagley’s eyes.
“What do you mean by that, you little savage?” said McSnagley quickly.
M’liss turned scornfully away. “Go,” she said,—“go if you want to,” and resumed her seat in the corner.
The master hesitated. But he could not withstand the appeal in the eyes of the mother and daughter, and after a short inward struggle he turned to McSnagley and bade him briefly “Come.”
When they had left the house and stood in the road together, McSnagley stopped.
“Where are you goin’?”
“To Smith’s Pocket.”
McSnagley still lingered. “Do you ever carry any weppings?” he at length asked.
“Weapons? No. What do you want with weapons to go a mile on a starlit road to a deserted claim. Nonsense, man, what are you thinking of? We’re hunting a lost child, not a runaway felon. Come along,” and the master dragged him away.
Mrs. Morpher watched them from the door until their figures were lost in the darkness. When she returned to the dining-room, Clytie had already retired to her room, and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M’liss’s desire to sit up until the master returned, bade her follow that correct example. “There’s Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and do you do like her,” and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop of balm in the midst of her trials, trimmed the light and sat down in patience to wait for Aristides, and console herself with the reflection of Clytie’s excellence. “Poor Clytie!” mused that motherly woman; “how excited and worried she looks about her brother. I hope she’ll be able to get to sleep.”
It did not occur to Mrs. Morpher that there were seasons in the life of young girls when younger brothers ceased to become objects of extreme solicitude. It did not occur to her to go upstairs and see how her wish was likely to be gratified. It was well in her anxiety that she did not, and that the crowning trial of the day’s troubles was spared her then. For at that moment Clytie was lying on the bed where she had flung herself without undressing, the heavy masses of her blond hair tumbled about her neck, and her hot face buried in her hands.
Of what was the correct Clytie thinking?
She was thinking, lying there with her burning cheeks pressed against the pillow, that she loved the master! She was recalling step by step every incident that had occurred in their lonely walk. She was repeating to herself his facile sentences, wringing and twisting them to extract one drop to assuage the strange thirst that was growing up in her soul. She was thinking—silly Clytie!—that he had never appeared so kind before, and she was thinking—sillier Clytie!—that no one had ever before felt as she did then.
How soft and white his hands were! How sweet and gentle were the tones of his voice! How easily he spoke—so unlike her father, McSnagley, or the young men whom she met at church or on picnics! How tall and handsome he looked as he pressed her hand at the door! Did he press her hand, or was it a mistake? Yes, he must have pressed her hand, for she remembers now to have pressed his in return. And he put his arm around her waist once, and she feels it yet, and the strange perfume as he drew her closer to him. (Mem.—The master had been smoking. Poor Clytie!)
When she had reached this point she raised herself and sat up, and began the process of undressing, mechanically putting each article away in the precise, methodical habit of her former life. But she found herself soon sitting again on the bed, twisting her hair, which fell over her plump white shoulders, idly between her fingers, and patting the carpet with her small white foot. She had been sitting thus some minutes when she heard the sound of voices without, the trampling of many feet, and a loud rapping at the door below. She sprang to the door and looked out in the passage. Something white passed by her like a flash and crouched down at the head of the stairs. It was M’liss.
Mrs. Morpher opened the door.
“Is Mr. Morpher in?” said a half dozen strange, hoarse voices.
“No!”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at some of the saloons. Oh, tell me, has anything happened? Is it about Aristides? Where is he—is he safe?” said Mrs. Morpher, wringing her hands in agony.
“He’s all right,” said one of the men, with Mr. Morpher’s old emphasis; “but”—
“But what?”
M’liss moved slowly down the staircase, and Clytie from the passage above held her breath.
“There’s been a row down to Smith’s old Pocket—a fight—a man killed.”
“Who?” shouted M’liss from the stairs.
“McSnagley—shot dead.”