The house that Royal Thatcher so informally quitted in his exodus to the promised land of Biggs was one of those oversized, under-calculated dwellings conceived and erected in the extravagance of the San Francisco builder's hopes, and occupied finally in his despair. Intended originally as the palace of some inchoate California Aladdin, it usually ended as a lodging house in which some helpless widow or hopeless spinster managed to combine respectability with the hard task of bread getting.
Thatcher's landlady was one of the former class. She had unfortunately survived not only her husband but his property, and, living in some deserted chamber, had, after the fashion of the Italian nobility, let out the rest of the ruin. A tendency to dwell upon these facts gave her conversation a peculiar significance on the first of each month. Thatcher had noticed this with the sensitiveness of an impoverished gentleman. But when, a few days after her lodger's sudden disappearance, a note came from him containing a draft in noble excess of all arrears and charges, the widow's heart was lifted, and the rock smitten with the golden wand gushed beneficence that shone in a new gown for the widow and a new suit for “Johnny,” her son, a new oil cloth in the hall, better service to the lodgers, and, let us be thankful, a kindlier consideration for the poor little black-eyed painter from Monterey, then dreadfully behind in her room rent. For, to tell the truth, the calls upon Miss De Haro's scant purse by her uncle had lately been frequent, perjury having declined in the Monterey market, through excessive and injudicious supply, until the line of demarcation between it and absolute verity was so finely drawn that Victor Garcia had remarked that “he might as well tell the truth at once and save his soul, since the devil was in the market.”
Mistress Plodgitt, the landlady, could not resist the desire to acquaint Carmen De Haro with her good fortune. “He was always a friend of yours, my dear,—and I know him to be a gentleman that would never let a poor widow suffer; and see what he says about you!” Here she produced Thatcher's note and read: “Tell my little neighbor that I shall come back soon to carry her and her sketching tools off by force, and I shall not let her return until she has caught the black mountains and the red rocks she used to talk about, and put the 'Blue Mass' mill in the foreground of the picture I shall order.”
What is this, little one? Surely, Carmen, thou needst not blush at this, thy first grand offer. Holy Virgin! is it of a necessity that thou shouldst stick the wrong end of thy brush in thy mouth, and then drop it in thy lap? Or was it taught thee by the good Sisters at the convent to stride in that boyish fashion to the side of thy elders and snatch from their hands the missive thou wouldst read? More of this we would know, O Carmen,—smallest of brunettes,—speak, little one, even in thine own melodious speech, that I may commend thee and thy rare discretion to my own fair countrywomen.
Alas, neither the present chronicler nor Mistress Plodgitt got any further information from the prudent Carmen, and must fain speculate upon certain facts that were already known.
Mistress Carmen's little room was opposite to Thatcher's, and once or twice, the doors being open, Thatcher had a glimpse across the passage of a black-haired and a sturdy, boyish little figure in a great blue apron, perched on a stool before an easel, and on the other hand, Carmen had often been conscious of the fumes of a tobacco pipe penetrating her cloistered seclusion, and had seen across the passage, vaguely enveloped in the same nicotine cloud, an American Olympian, in a rocking chair, with his feet on the mantel shelf. They had once or twice met on the staircase, on which occasion Thatcher had greeted her with a word or two of respectful yet half-humorous courtesy,—a courtesy which never really offends a true woman, although it often piques her self-aplomb by the slight assumption of superiority in the humorist. A woman is quick to recognize the fact that the great and more dangerous passions are always SERIOUS, and may be excused if in self-respect she is often induced to try if there be not somewhere under the skin of this laughing Mercutio the flesh and blood of a Romeo. Thatcher was by nature a defender and protector; weakness, and weakness alone, stirred the depths of his tenderness,—often, I fear, only through its half-humorous aspects,—and on this plane he was pleased to place women and children. I mention this fact for the benefit of the more youthful members of my species, and am satisfied that an unconditional surrender and the complete laying down at the feet of Beauty of all strong masculinity is a cheap Gallicism that is untranslatable to most women worthy the winning. For a woman MUST always look up to the man she truly loves,—even if she has to go down on her knees to do it.
Only the masculine reader will infer from this that Carmen was in love with Thatcher; the more critical and analytical feminine eye will see nothing herein that might not have happened consistently with friendship. For Thatcher was no sentimentalist; he had hardly paid a compliment to the girl,—even in the unspoken but most delicate form of attention. There were days when his room door was closed; there were days succeeding these blanks when he met her as frankly and naturally as if he had seen her yesterday. Indeed, on those days following his flight the simple-minded Carmen, being aware—heaven knows how—that he had not opened his door during that period, and fearing sickness, sudden death, or perhaps suicide, by her appeals to the landlady, assisted unwittingly in discovering his flight and defection. As she was for a few moments as indignant as Mrs. Plodgitt, it is evident that she had but little sympathy with the delinquent. And besides, hitherto she had known only Concho, her earliest friend, and was true to his memory, as against all Americanos, whom she firmly believed to be his murderers.
So she dismissed the offer and the man from her mind, and went back to her painting,—a fancy portrait of the good Padre Junipero Serra, a great missionary, who, haply for the integrity of his bones and character, died some hundred years before the Americans took possession of California. The picture was fair but unsaleable, and she began to think seriously of sign painting, which was then much more popular and marketable. An unfinished head of San Juan de Bautista, artificially framed in clouds, she disposed of to a prominent druggist for $50, where it did good service as exhibiting the effect of four bottles of “Jones's Freckle Eradicator,” and in a pleasant and unobtrusive way revived the memory of the saint. Still, she felt weary and was growing despondent, and had a longing for the good Sisters and the blameless lethargy of conventual life, and then—
He came!
But not as the Prince should come, on a white charger, to carry away this cruelly-abused and enchanted damsel. He was sunburned, he was bearded like “the pard”; he was a little careless as to his dress, and pre-occupied in his ways. But his mouth and eyes were the same; and when he repeated in his old frank, half-mischievous way the invitation of his letter, poor little Carmen could only hesitate and blush.
A thought struck him and sent the color to his face. Your gentleman born is always as modest as a woman. He ran down stairs, and seizing the widowed Plodgitt, said hastily:
“You're just killing yourself here. Take a change. Come down to Monterey for a day or two with me, and bring miss De Haro with you for company.”
The old lady recognized the situation. Thatcher was now a man of vast possibilities. In all maternal daughters of Eve there is the slightest bit of the chaperone and match-maker. It is the last way of reviving the past.
She consented, and Carmen De Haro could not well refuse.
The ladies found the “Blue Mass” mills very much as Thatcher had previously delivered it to them, “a trifle rough and mannish.” But he made over to them the one tenement reserved for himself, and slept with his men, or more likely under the trees. At first Mrs. Plodgitt missed gas and running water, and these several conveniences of civilization, among which I fear may be mentioned sheets and pillow cases; but the balsam of the mountain air soothed her neuralgia and her temper. As for Carmen, she rioted in the unlimited license of her absolute freedom from conventional restraint and the indulgence of her child-like impulses. She scoured the ledges far and wide alone; she dipped into dark copses, and scrambled over sterile patches of chemisal, and came back laden with the spoil of buckeye blossoms, manzanita berries and laurel. But she would not make a sketch of the “Blue Mass Company's” mills on a Mercator's projection—something that could be afterwards lithographed or chromoed, with the mills turning out tons of quicksilver through the energies of a happy and picturesque assemblage of miners—even to please her padrone, Don Royal Thatcher. On the contrary, she made a study of the ruins of the crumbled and decayed red-rock furnace, with the black mountain above it, and the light of a dying camp fire shining upon it, and the dull-red excavations in the ledge. But even this did not satisfy her until she had made some alterations; and when she finally brought her finished study to Don Royal, she looked at him a little defiantly. Thatcher admired honestly, and then criticised a little humorously and dishonestly. “But couldn't you, for a consideration, put up a sign-board on that rock with the inscription, 'Road to the Blue Mass Company's new mills to the right,' and combine business with art? That's the fault of you geniuses. But what's this blanketed figure doing here, lying before the furnace? You never saw one of my miners there,—and a Mexican, too, by his serape.” “That,” quoth Mistress Carmen, coolly, “was put in to fill up the foreground,—I wanted something there to balance the picture.” “But,” continued Thatcher, dropping into unconscious admiration again, “it's drawn to the life. Tell me, Miss De Haro, before I ask the aid and counsel of Mrs. Plodgitt, who is my hated rival, and your lay figure and model?” “Oh,” said Carmen, with a little sigh, “It's only poor Coucho.” “And where is Concho?” (a little impatiently.) “He's dead, Don Royal.” “Dead?” “Of a verity,—very dead,—murdered by your countrymen.” “I see,—and you know him?” “He was my friend.”
“Oh!”
“Truly.”
“But” (wickedly), “isn't this a rather ghastly advertisement—outside of an illustrated newspaper—of my property?”
“Ghastly, Don Royal. Look you, he sleeps.”
“Ay” (in Spanish), “as the dead.”
Carmen (crossing herself hastily), “After the fashion of the dead.”
They were both feeling uncomfortable. Carmen was shivering. But, being a woman, and tactful, she recovered her head first. “It is a study for myself, Don Royal; I shall make you another.”
And she slipped away, as she thought, out of the subject and his presence.
But she was mistaken; in the evening he renewed the conversation. Carmen began to fence, not from cowardice or deceit, as the masculine reader would readily infer, but from some wonderful feminine instinct that told her to be cautious. But he got from her the fact, to him before unknown, that she was the niece of his main antagonist, and, being a gentleman, so redoubled his attentions and his courtesy that Mrs. Plodgitt made up her mind that it was a foregone conclusion, and seriously reflected as to what she should wear on the momentous occasion. But that night poor Carmen cried herself to sleep, resolving that she would hereafter cast aside her wicked uncle for this good-hearted Americano, yet never once connected her innocent penmanship with the deadly feud between them. Women—the best of them—are strong as to collateral facts, swift of deduction, but vague as children are to the exact statement or recognition of premises. It is hardly necessary to say that Carmen had never thought of connecting any act of hers with the claims of her uncle, and the circumstance of the signature she had totally forgotten.
The masculine reader will now understand Carmen's confusion and blushes, and believe himself an ass to have thought them a confession of original affection. The feminine reader will, by this time, become satisfied that the deceitful minx's sole idea was to gain the affections of Thatcher. And really I don't know who is right.
Nevertheless she painted a sketch of Thatcher,—which now adorns the Company's office in San Francisco,—in which the property is laid out in pleasing geometrical lines, and the rosy promise of the future instinct in every touch of the brush. Then, having earned her “wage,” as she believed, she became somewhat cold and shy to Thatcher. Whereat that gentleman redoubled his attentions, seeing only in her presence a certain meprise, which concerned her more than himself. The niece of his enemy meant nothing more to him than an interesting girl,—to be protected always,—to be feared, never. But even suspicion may be insidiously placed in noble minds.
Mistress Plodgitt, thus early estopped of matchmaking, of course put the blame on her own sex, and went over to the stronger side—the man's.
“It's a great pity gals should be so curious,” she said, sotto voce, to Thatcher, when Carmen was in one of her sullen moods. “Yet I s'pose it's in her blood. Them Spaniards is always revengeful,—like the Eyetalians.”
Thatcher honestly looked his surprise.
“Why, don't you see, she's thinking how all these lands might have been her uncle's but for you. And instead of trying to be sweet and—” here she stopped to cough.
“Good God!” said Thatcher in great concern, “I never thought of that.” He stopped for a moment, and then added with decision, “I can't believe it; it isn't like her.”
Mrs. P. was piqued. She walked away, delivering, however, this Parthian arrow: “Well, I hope 'TAINT NOTHING WORSE.”
Thatcher chuckled, then felt uneasy. When he next met Carmen, she found his grey eyes fixed on hers with a curious, half-inquisitorial look she had never noticed before. This only added fuel to the fire. Forgetting their relations of host and guest, she was absolutely rude. Thatcher was quiet but watchful; got the Plodgitt to bed early, and, under cover of showing a moonlight view of the “Lost Chance Mill,” decoyed Carmen out of ear-shot, as far as the dismantled furnace.
“What is the matter, Miss De Haro; have I offended you?”
Miss Carmen was not aware that anything was the matter. If Don Royal preferred old friends, whose loyalty of course he knew, and who were above speaking ill against a gentleman in his adversity—(oh, Carmen! fie!) if he preferred THEIR company to LATER FRIENDS—why—(the masculine reader will observe this tremendous climax and tremble)—why she didn't know why HE should blame HER.
They turned and faced each other. The conditions for a perfect misunderstanding could not have been better arranged between two people. Thatcher was a masculine reasoner, Carmen a feminine feeler,—if I may be pardoned the expression. Thatcher wanted to get at certain facts, and argue therefrom. Carmen wanted to get at certain feelings, and then fit the facts to THEM.
“But I am NOT blaming you, Miss Carmen,” he said gravely. “It WAS stupid in me to confront you here with the property claimed by your uncle and occupied by me, but it was a mistake,—no!” he added hastily, “it was not a mistake. You knew it, and I didn't. You overlooked it before you came, and I was too glad to overlook it after you were here.”
“Of course,” said Carmen pettishly, “I am the only one to be blamed. It's like you MEN!” (Mem. She was just fifteen, and uttered this awful 'resume' of experience just as if it hadn't been taught to her in her cradle.)
Feminine generalities always stagger a man. Thatcher said nothing. Carmen became more enraged.
“Why did you want to take Uncle Victor's property, then?” she asked triumphantly.
“I don't know that it is your uncle's property.”
“You—don't—know? Have you seen the application with Governor Micheltorena's indorsement? Have you heard the witnesses?” she said passionately.
“Signatures may be forged and witnesses lie,” said Thatcher quietly.
“What is it you call 'forged'?”
Thatcher instantly recalled the fact that the Spanish language held no synonym for “forgery.” The act was apparently an invention of el Diablo Americano. So he said, with a slight smile in his kindly eyes:
“Anybody wicked enough and dexterous enough can imitate another's handwriting. When this is used to benefit fraud, we call it 'forgery.' I beg your pardon,—Miss De Haro, Miss Carmen,—what is the matter?”
She had suddenly lapsed against a tree, quite helpless, nerveless, and with staring eyes fixed on his. As yet an embryo woman, inexperienced and ignorant, the sex's instinct was potential; she had in one plunge fathomed all that his reason had been years groping for.
Thatcher saw only that she was pained, that she was helpless: that was enough. “It is possible that your uncle may have been deceived,” he began; “many honest men have been fooled by clever but deceitful tricksters, men and women—”
“Stop! Madre de Dios! WILL YOU STOP?”
Thatcher for an instant recoiled from the flashing eyes and white face of the little figure that had, with menacing and clenched baby fingers, strode to his side. He stopped. “Where is this application,—this forgery?” she asked. “Show it to me!”
Thatcher felt relieved, and smiled the superior smile of our sex over feminine ignorance. “You could hardly expect me to be trusted with your uncle's vouchers. His papers of course are in the hands of his counsel.”
“And when can I leave this place?” she asked passionately.
“If you consult my wishes you will stay, if only long enough to forgive me. But if I have offended you unknowingly, and you are implacable—”
“I can go to-morrow at sunrise if I like?”
“As you will,” returned Thatcher gravely.
“Gracias, Senor.”
They walked slowly back to the house, Thatcher with a masculine sense of being unreasonably afflicted, Carmen with a woman's instinct of being hopelessly crushed. No word was spoken until they reached the door. Then Carmen suddenly, in her old, impulsive way, and in a childlike treble, sang out merrily, “Good night, O Don Royal, and pleasant dreams. Hasta manana.”
Thatcher stood dumb and astounded at this capricious girl. She saw his mystification instantly. “It is for the old Cat!” she whispered, jerking her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sleeping Mrs. P. “Good night,—go!”
He went to give orders for a peon to attend the ladies and their equipage the next day. He awoke to find Miss De Haro gone, with her escort, towards Monterey. And without the Plodgitt.
He could not conceal his surprise from the latter lady. She, left alone,—a not altogether unavailable victim to the wiles of our sex,—was embarrassed. But not so much that she could not say to Thatcher: “I told you so,—gone to her uncle. . . . To tell him ALL!”
“All. D—n it, WHAT can she tell him?” roared Thatcher, stung out of his self-control.
“Nothing, I hope, that she should not,” said Mrs. P., and chastely retired.
She was right. Miss Carmen posted to Monterey, running her horse nearly off its legs to do it, and then sent back her beast and escort, saying she would rejoin Mrs. Plodgitt by steamer at San Francisco. Then she went boldly to the law office of Saponaceous Wood, District Attorney and whilom solicitor of her uncle.
With the majority of masculine Monterey Miss Carmen was known and respectfully admired, despite the infelix reputation of her kinsman. Mr. Wood was glad to see her, and awkwardly gallant. Miss Carmen was cool and business-like; she had come from her uncle to “regard” the papers in the “Red-Rock Rancho” case. They were instantly produced. Carmen turned to the application for the grant. Her cheek paled slightly. With her clear memory and wonderful fidelity of perception she could not be mistaken. THE SIGNATURE OF MICHELTORENA WAS IN HER OWN HANDWRITING!
Yet she looked up to the lawyer with a smile: “May I take these papers for an hour to my uncle?”
Even an older and better man than the District Attorney could not have resisted those drooping lids and that gentle voice.
“Certainly.”
“I will return them in an hour.”
She was as good as her word, and within the hour dropped the papers and a little courtesy to her uncle's legal advocate, and that night took the steamer to San Francisco.
The next morning Victor Garcia, a little the worse for the previous night's dissipation, reeled into Wood's office. “I have fears for my niece Carmen. She is with the enemy,” he said thickly. “Look you at this.”
It was an anonymous letter (in Mrs. Plodgitt's own awkward fist) advising him of the fact that his niece was bought by the enemy, and cautioning him against her.
“Impossible,” said the lawyer; “it was only last week she sent thee $50.”
Victor blushed, even through his ensanguined cheeks, and made an impatient gesture with his hand.
“Besides,” added the lawyer coolly, “she has been here to examine the papers at thy request, and returned them of yesterday.”
Victor gasped: “And-you-you-gave them to her?”
“Of course!”
“All? Even the application and the signature?”
“Certainly,—you sent her.”
“Sent her? The devil's own daughter?” shrieked Garcia. “No! A hundred million times, no! Quick, before it is too late. Give to me the papers.”
Mr. Wood reproduced the file. Garcia ran over it with trembling fingers until at last he clutched the fateful document. Not content with opening it and glancing at its text and signature, he took it to the window.
“It is the same,” he muttered with a sigh of relief.
“Of course it is,” said Mr. Wood sharply. “The papers are all there. You're a fool, Victor Garcia!”
And so he was. And, for the matter of that, so was Mr. Saponaceous Wood, of counsel.
Meanwhile Miss De Haro returned to San Francisco and resumed her work. A day or two later she was joined by her landlady. Mrs. P. had too large a nature to permit an anonymous letter, written by her own hand, to stand between her and her demeanor to her little lodger. So she coddled her and flattered her and depicted in slightly exaggerated colors the grief of Don Royal at her sudden departure. All of which Miss Carmen received in a demure, kitten-like way, but still kept quietly at her work. In due time Don Royal's order was completed; still she had leisure and inclination enough to add certain touches to her ghastly sketch of the crumbling furnace.
Nevertheless, as Don Royal did not return, through excess of business, Mrs. Plodgitt turned an honest penny by letting his room, temporarily, to two quiet Mexicans, who, but for a beastly habit of cigarrito smoking which tainted the whole house, were fair enough lodgers. If they failed in making the acquaintance of their fair countrywoman, Miss De Haro, it was through the lady's pre-occupation in her own work, and not through their ostentatious endeavors.
“Miss De Haro is peculiar,” explained the politic Mrs. Plodgitt to her guests; “she makes no acquaintances, which I consider bad for her business. If it had not been for me, she would not have known Royal Thatcher, the great quicksilver miner,—and had his order for a picture of his mine!”
The two foreign gentlemen exchanged glances. One said, “Ah, God! this is bad,” and the other, “It is not possible;” and then, when the landlady's back was turned, introduced themselves with a skeleton key into the then vacant bedroom and studio of their fair countrywoman, who was absent sketching. “Thou observest,” said Mr. Pedro, refugee, to Miguel, ex-ecclesiastic, “that this Americano is all-powerful, and that this Victor, drunkard as he is, is right in his suspicions.”
“Of a verity, yes,” replied Miguel, “thou dost remember it was Jovita Castro who, for her Americano lover, betrayed the Sobriente claim. It is only with us, my Pedro, that the Mexican spirit, the real God and Liberty, yet lives!”
They shook hands nobly and with sentimental fervor, and then went to work, i. e., the rummaging over the trunks, drawers, and portmanteaus of the poor little painter, Carmen de Haro, and even ripped up the mattress of her virginal cot. But they found not what they sought.
“What is that yonder on the easel, covered with a cloth?” said Miguel: “it is a trick of these artists to put their valuables together.”
Pedro strode to the easel and tore away the muslin curtain that veiled it; then uttered a shriek that appalled his comrade and brought him to his side.
“In the name of God,” said Miguel hastily, “are you trying to alarm the house?”
The ex-vaquero was trembling like a child. “Look,” he said hoarsely, “look, do you see? It is the hand of God,” and fainted on the floor!
Miguel looked. It was Carmen's partly-finished sketch of the deserted furnace. The figure of Concho, thrown out strongly by the camp fire, occupied the left foreground. But to balance her picture she had evidently been obliged to introduce another,—the face and figure of Pedro, on all fours, creeping towards the sleeping man.
It was a midsummer's day in Washington. Even at early morning, while the sun was yet level with the faces of pedestrians in its broad, shadeless avenues, it was insufferably hot. Later the avenues themselves shone like the diverging rays of another sun,—the Capitol,—a thing to be feared by the naked eye. Later yet it grew hotter, and then a mist arose from the Potomac, and blotted out the blazing arch above, and presently piled up along the horizon delusive thunder clouds, that spent their strength and substance elsewhere, and left it hotter than before. Towards evening the sun came out invigorated, having cleared the heavenly brow of perspiration, but leaving its fever unabated.
The city was deserted. The few who remained apparently buried themselves from the garish light of day in some dim, cloistered recess of shop, hotel, or restaurant; and the perspiring stranger, dazed by the outer glare, who broke in upon their quiet, sequestered repose, confronted collarless and coatless specters of the past, with fans in their hands, who, after dreamily going through some perfunctory business, immediately retired to sleep after the stranger had gone. Congressmen and Senators had long since returned to their several constituencies with the various information that the country was going to ruin, or that the outlook never was more hopeful and cheering, as the tastes of their constituency indicated. A few Cabinet officers still lingered, having by this time become convinced that they could do nothing their own way, or indeed in any way but the old way, and getting gloomily resigned to their situation. A body of learned, cultivated men, representing the highest legal tribunal in the land, still lingered in a vague idea of earning the scant salary bestowed upon them by the economical founders of the Government, and listened patiently to the arguments of counsel, whose fees for advocacy of claims before them would have paid the life income of half the bench. There was Mr. Attorney-General and his assistants still protecting the Government's millions from rapacious hands, and drawing the yearly public pittance that their wealthier private antagonists would have scarce given as a retainer to their junior counsel. The little standing army of departmental employes,—the helpless victims of the most senseless and idiotic form of discipline the world has known,—a discipline so made up of caprice, expediency, cowardice, and tyranny that its reform meant revolution, not to be tolerated by legislators and lawgivers, or a despotism in which half a dozen accidentally-chosen men interpreted their prejudices or preferences as being that Reform. Administration after administration and Party after Party had persisted in their desperate attempts to fit the youthful colonial garments, made by our Fathers after a by-gone fashion, over the expanded limits and generous outline of a matured nation. There were patches here and there; there were grievous rents and holes here and there; there were ludicrous and painful exposures of growing limbs everywhere; and the Party in Power and the Party out of Power could do nothing but mend and patch, and revamp and cleanse and scour, and occasionally, in the wildness of despair, suggest even the cutting off the rebellious limbs that persisted in growing beyond the swaddling clothes of its infancy.
It was a capital of Contradictions and Inconsistencies. At one end of the Avenue sat the responsible High Keeper of the military honor, valor, and war-like prestige of a great nation, without the power to pay his own troops their legal dues until some selfish quarrel between Party and Party was settled. Hard by sat another Secretary, whose established functions seemed to be the misrepresentation of the nation abroad by the least characteristic of its classes, the politicians,—and only then when they had been defeated as politicians, and when their constituents had declared them no longer worthy to be even THEIR representatives. This National Absurdity was only equaled by another, wherein an ex-Politician was for four years expected to uphold the honor of a flag of a great nation over an ocean he had never tempted, with a discipline the rudiments of which he could scarcely acquire before he was removed, or his term of office expired, receiving his orders from a superior officer as ignorant of his special duties as himself, and subjected to the revision of a Congress cognizant of him only as a politician. At the farther end of the Avenue was another department so vast in its extent and so varied in its functions that few of the really great practical workers of the land would have accepted its responsibility for ten times its salary, but which the most perfect constitution in the world handed over to men who were obliged to make it a stepping stone to future preferment. There was another department, more suggestive of its financial functions from the occasional extravagances or economies exhibited in its payrolls,—successive Congresses having taken other matters out of its hands,—presided over by an official who bore the title and responsibility of the Custodian and Disburser of the Nation's Purse, and received a salary that a bank-President would have sniffed at. For it was part of this Constitutional Inconsistency and Administrative Absurdity that in the matter of honor, justice, fidelity to trust, and even business integrity, the official was always expected to be the superior of the Government he represented. Yet the crowning Inconsistency was that, from time to time, it was submitted to the sovereign people to declare if these various Inconsistencies were not really the perfect expression of the most perfect Government the world had known. And it is to be recorded that the unanimous voices of Representative, Orator, and Unfettered Poetry were that it was!
Even the public press lent itself to the Great Inconsistency. It was as clear as crystal to the journal on one side of the Avenue that the country was going to the dogs unless the SPIRIT of the Fathers once more reanimated the public; it was equally clear to the journal on the other side of the Avenue that only a rigid adherence to the LETTER of the Fathers would save the nation from decline. It was obvious to the first-named journal that the “letter” meant Government patronage to the other journal; it was patent to that journal that the “shekels” of Senator X really animated the spirit of the Fathers. Yet all agreed it was a great and good and perfect government,—subject only to the predatory incursions of a Hydra-headed monster known as a “Ring.” The Ring's origin was wrapped in secrecy, its fecundity was alarming; but although its rapacity was preternatural, its digestion was perfect and easy. It circumvolved all affairs in an atmosphere of mystery; it clouded all things with the dust and ashes of distrust. All disappointment of place, of avarice, of incompetency or ambition, was clearly attributable to it. It even permeated private and social life; there were Rings in our kitchen and household service; in our public schools, that kept the active intelligences of our children passive; there were Rings of engaging, handsome, dissolute young fellows, who kept us moral but unengaging seniors from the favors of the fair; there were subtle, conspiring Rings among our creditors, which sent us into bankruptcy and restricted our credit. In fact it would not be hazardous to say that all that was calamitous in public and private experience was clearly traceable to that combination of power in a minority over weakness in a majority—known as a Ring.
Haply there was a body of demigods, as yet uninvoked, who should speedily settle all that. When Smith of Minnesota, Robinson of Vermont, and Jones of Georgia returned to Congress from these rural seclusions so potent with information and so freed from local prejudices, it was understood, vaguely, that great things would be done. This was always understood. There never was a time in the history of American politics when, to use the expression of the journals before alluded to, “the present session of Congress” did not “bid fair to be the most momentous in our history,” and did not, as far as the facts go, leave a vast amount of unfinished important business lying hopelessly upon its desks, having “bolted” the rest as rashly and with as little regard to digestion or assimilation as the American traveller has for his railway refreshment.
In this capital, on this languid midsummer day, in an upper room of one of its second-rate hotels, the Honorable Pratt C. Gashwiler sat at his writing-table. There are certain large, fleshy men with whom the omission of even a necktie or collar has all the effect of an indecent exposure. The Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, in his trousers and shirt, was a sight to be avoided by the modest eye. There were such palpable suggestions of vast extents of unctuous flesh in the slight glimpse offered by his open throat that his dishabille should have been as private as his business. Nevertheless, when there was a knock at his door he unhesitatingly said, “Come in!”—pushing away a goblet crowned with a certain aromatic herb with his right hand, while he drew towards him with his left a few proof slips of his forthcoming speech. The Gashwiler brow became, as it were, intelligently abstracted.
The intruder regarded Gashwiler with a glance of familiar recognition from his right eye, while his left took in a rapid survey of the papers on the table, and gleamed sardonically.
“You are at work, I see,” he said apologetically.
“Yes,” replied the Congressman, with an air of perfunctory weariness,—“one of my speeches. Those d——d printers make such a mess of it; I suppose I don't write a very fine hand.”
If the gifted Gashwiler had added that he did not write a very intelligent hand, or a very grammatical hand, and that his spelling was faulty, he would have been truthful, although the copy and proof before him might not have borne him out. The near fact was that the speech was composed and written by one Expectant Dobbs, a poor retainer of Gashwiler, and the honorable member's labor as a proof-reader was confined to the introduction of such words as “anarchy,” “oligarchy,” “satrap,” “palladium,” and “Argus-eyed” in the proof, with little relevancy as to position or place, and no perceptible effect as to argument.
The stranger saw all this with his wicked left eye, but continued to beam mildly with his right. Removing the coat and waistcoat of Gashwiler from a chair, he drew it towards the table, pushing aside a portly, loud-ticking watch,—the very image of Gashwiler,—that lay beside him, and, resting his elbows on the proofs, said:
“Well?”
“Have you anything new?” asked the parliamentary Gashwiler.
“Much! a woman!” replied the stranger.
The astute Gashwiler, waiting further information, concluded to receive this fact gaily and gallantly. “A woman?—my dear Mr. Wiles,—of course! The dear creatures,” he continued, with a fat, offensive chuckle, “somehow are always making their charming presence felt. Ha! ha! A man, sir, in public life becomes accustomed to that sort of thing, and knows when he must be agreeable,—agreeable, sir, but firm! I've had my experience, sir,—my OWN experience,”—and the Congressman leaned back in his chair, not unlike a robust St. Anthony who had withstood one temptation to thrive on another.
“Yes,” said Wiles impatiently, “but d—n it, she's on the OTHER SIDE.”
“The other side!” repeated Gashwiler vacantly.
“Yes, she's a niece of Garcia's. A little she devil.”
“But Garcia's on our side,” rejoined Gashwiler.
“Yes, but she is bought by the Ring.”
“A woman!” sneered Mr. Gashwiler; “what can she do with men who won't be made fools of? Is she so handsome?”
“I never saw any great beauty in her,” said Wiles shortly, “although they say that she's rather caught that d——d Thatcher, in spite of his coldness. At any rate, she is his protegee. But she isn't the sort you're thinking of, Gashwiler. They say she knows, or pretends to know, something about the grant. She may have got hold of some of her uncle's papers. Those Greasers were always d——d fools; and, if he did anything foolish, like as not he bungled or didn't cover up his tracks. And with his knowledge and facilities too! Why, if I'd—” but here Mr. Wiles stopped to sigh over the inequalities of fortune that wasted opportunities on the less skillful scamp.
Mr. Gashwiler became dignified. “She can do nothing with us,” he said potentially.
Wiles turned his wicked eye on him. “Manuel and Miguel, who sold out to our man, are afraid of her. They were our witnesses. I verily believe they'd take back everything if she got after them. And as for Pedro, he thinks she holds the power of life and death over him.”
“Pedro! life and death,—what's all this?” said the astonished Gashwiler.
Wiles saw his blunder, but saw also that he had gone too far to stop. “Pedro,” he said, “was strongly suspected of having murdered Concho, one of the original locators.”
Mr. Gashwiler turned white as a sheet, and then flushed again into an apoplectic glow. “Do you dare to say,” he began as soon as he could find his tongue and his legs, for in the exercise of his congressional functions these extreme members supported each other,—“do you mean to say,” he stammered in rising rage, “that you have dared to deceive an American lawgiver into legislating upon a measure connected with a capital offense? Do I understand you to say, sir, that murder stands upon the record—stands upon the record, sir,—of this cause to which, as a representative of Remus, I have lent my official aid? Do you mean to say that you have deceived my constituency, whose sacred trust I hold, in inveigling me to hiding a crime from the Argus eyes of justice?” And Mr. Gashwiler looked towards the bell-pull as if about to summon a servant to witness this outrage against the established judiciary.
“The murder, if it WAS a murder, took place before Garcia entered upon this claim, or had a footing in this court,” returned Wiles blandly, “and is no part of the record.”
“You are sure it is not spread upon the record?”
“I am. You can judge for yourself.”
Mr. Gashwiler walked to the window, returned to the table, finished his liquor in a single gulp, and then, with a slight resumption of dignity, said:
“That alters the case.”
Wiles glanced with his left eye at the Congressman. The right placidly looked out of the window. Presently he said quietly, “I've brought you the certificates of stock; do you wish them made out in your own name?”
Mr. Gashwiler tried hard to look as if he were trying to recall the meaning of Wiles's words. “Oh!—ah!—umph!—let me see,—oh, yes, the certificates,—certainly! Of course you will make them out in the name of my secretary, Mr. Expectant Dobbs. They will perhaps repay him for the extra clerical labor required in the prosecution of your claim. He is a worthy young man. Although not a public officer, yet he is so near to me that perhaps I am wrong in permitting him to accept a fee for private interests. An American representative cannot be too cautious, Mr. Wiles. Perhaps you had better have also a blank transfer. The stock is, I understand, yet in the future. Mr. Dobbs, though talented and praiseworthy, is poor; he may wish to realize. If some—ahem! some FRIEND—better circumstanced should choose to advance the cash to him and run the risk,—why, it would only be an act of kindness.”
“You are proverbially generous, Mr. Gashwiler,” said Wiles, opening and shutting his left eye like a dark lantern on the benevolent representative.
“Youth, when faithful and painstaking, should be encouraged,” replied Mr. Gashwiler. “I lately had occasion to point this out in a few remarks I had to make before the Sabbath school reunion at Remus. Thank you, I will see that they are—ahem!—conveyed to him. I shall give them to him with my own hand,” he concluded, falling back in his chair, as if the better to contemplate the perspective of his own generosity and condescension. Mr. Wiles took his hat and turned to go. Before he reached the door Mr. Gashwiler returned to the social level with a chuckle:
“You say this woman, this Garcia's niece, is handsome and smart?”
“Yes.”
“I can set another woman on the track that'll euchre her every time!”
Mr. Wiles was too clever to appear to notice the sudden lapse in the Congressman's dignity, and only said, with his right eye:
“Can you?”
“By G-d, I WILL, or I don't know how to represent Remus.”
Mr. Wiles thanked him with his right eye, and looked a dagger with his left. “Good,” he said, and added persuasively: “Does she live here?”
The Congressman nodded assent. “An awfully handsome woman,—a particular friend of mine!” Mr. Gashwiler here looked as if he would not mind to have been rallied a little over his intimacy with the fair one; but the astute Mr. Wiles was at the same moment making up his mind, after interpreting the Congressman's look and manner, that he must know this fair incognita if he wished to sway Gashwiler. He determined to bide his time, and withdrew.
The door was scarcely closed upon him when another knock diverted Mr. Gashwiler's attention from his proofs. The door opened to a young man with sandy hair and anxious face. He entered the room deprecatingly, as if conscious of the presence of a powerful being, to be supplicated and feared. Mr. Gashwiler did not attempt to disabuse his mind. “Busy, you see,” he said shortly, “correcting your work!”
“I hope it is acceptable?” said the young man timidly.
“Well—yes—it will do,” said Gashwiler; “indeed I may say it is satisfactory on the whole,” he added with the appearance of a large generosity; “quite satisfactory.”
“You have no news, I suppose,” continued the young man, with a slight flush, born of pride or expectation.
“No, nothing as yet.” Mr. Gashwiler paused as if a thought had struck him.
“I have thought,” he said, finally, “that some position—such as a secretaryship with me—would help you to a better appointment. Now, supposing that I make you my private secretary, giving you some important and confidential business. Eh?”
Dobbs looked at his patron with a certain wistful, dog-like expectancy, moved himself excitedly on his chair seat in a peculiar canine-like anticipation of gratitude, strongly suggesting that he would have wagged his tail if he had one. At which Mr. Gashwiler became more impressive.
“Indeed, I may say I anticipated it by certain papers I have put in your charge and in your name, only taking from you a transfer that might enable me to satisfy my conscience hereafter in recommending you as my—ahem!—private secretary. Perhaps, as a mere form, you might now, while you are here, put your name to these transfers, and, so to speak, begin your duties at once.”
The glow of pride and hope that mantled the cheek of poor Dobbs might have melted a harder heart than Gashwiler's. But the senatorial toga had invested Mr. Gashwiler with a more than Roman stoicism towards the feelings of others, and he only fell back in his chair in the pose of conscious rectitude as Dobbs hurriedly signed the paper.
“I shall place them in my portman-tell,” said Gashwiler, suiting the word to the action, “for safe keeping. I need not inform you, who are now, as it were, on the threshold of official life, that perfect and inviolable secrecy in all affairs of State”—Mr. G. here motioned toward his portmanteau as if it contained a treaty at least—“is most essential and necessary.”
Dobbs assented. “Then my duties will keep me with you here?” he asked doubtfully.
“No, no,” said Gashwiler hastily; then, correcting himself, he added: “that is—for the present—no!”
Poor Dobbs's face fell. The near fact was that he had lately had notice to quit his present lodgings in consequence of arrears in his rent, and he had a hopeful reliance that his confidential occupation would carry bread and lodging with it. But he only asked if there were any new papers to make out.
“Ahem! not at present; the fact is I am obliged to give so much of my time to callers—I have to-day been obliged to see half a dozen—that I must lock myself up and say 'Not at home' for the rest of the day.” Feeling that this was an intimation that the interview was over, the new private secretary, a little dashed as to his near hopes, but still sanguine of the future, humbly took his leave.
But here a certain Providence, perhaps mindful of poor Dobbs, threw into his simple hands—to be used or not, if he were worthy or capable of using it—a certain power and advantage. He had descended the staircase, and was passing through the lower corridor, when he was made the unwilling witness of a remarkable assault.
It appeared that Mr. Wiles, who had quitted Gashwiler's presence as Dobbs was announced, had other business in the hotel, and in pursuance of it had knocked at room No. 90. In response to the gruff voice that bade him enter, Mr. Wiles opened the door, and espied the figure of a tall, muscular, fiery-bearded man extended on the bed, with the bedclothes carefully tucked under his chin, and his arms lying flat by his side.
Mr. Wiles beamed with his right cheek, and advanced to the bed as if to take the hand of the stranger, who, however, neither by word or sign responded to his salutation.
“Perhaps I'm intruding?” said Mr. Wiles blandly.
“Perhaps you are,” said Red Beard dryly.
Mr. Wiles forced a smile on his right cheek, which he turned to the smiter, but permitted the left to indulge in unlimited malevolence. “I wanted merely to know if you have looked into that matter?” he said meekly.
“I've looked into it and round it and across it and over it and through it,” responded the man gravely, with his eyes fixed on Wiles.
“And you have perused all the papers?” continued Mr. Wiles.
“I've read every paper, every speech, every affidavit, every decision, every argument,” said the stranger as if repeating a formula.
Mr. Wiles attempted to conceal his embarrassment by an easy, right-handed smile, that went off sardonically on the left, and continued: “Then I hope, my dear sir, that, having thoroughly mastered the case, you are inclined to be favorable to us?”
The gentleman in the bed did not reply, but apparently nestled more closely beneath the coverlids.
“I have brought the shares I spoke of,” continued Mr. Wiles, insinuatingly.
“Hev you a friend within call?” interrupted the recumbent man gently.
“I don't quite understand!” smiled Mr. Wiles. “Of course any name you might suggest—”
“Hev you a friend, any chap that you might waltz in here at a moment's call?” continued the man in bed. “No? Do you know any of them waiters in the house? Thar's a bell over yan!” and he motioned with his eyes towards the wall, but did not otherwise move his body.
“No,” said Wiles, becoming slightly suspicious and wrathful.
“Mebbe a stranger might do? I reckon thar's one passin' in the hall. Call him in,—he'll do!”
Wiles opened the door a little impatiently, yet inquisitively, as Dobbs passed. The man in bed called out, “Oh, stranger!” and, as Dobbs stopped, said, “Come yar.”
Dobbs entered a little timidly, as was his habit with strangers.
“I don't know who you be—nor care, I reckon,” said the stranger. “This yer man”—pointing to Wiles—“is Wiles. I'm Josh Sibblee of Fresno, Member of Congress from the 4th Congressional District of Californy. I'm jist lying here, with a derringer into each hand,—jist lying here kivered up and holdin' in on'y to keep from blowin' the top o' this d——d skunk's head off. I kinder feel I can't hold in any longer. What I want to say to ye, stranger, is that this yer skunk—which his name is Wiles—hez bin tryin' his d—dest to get a bribe onto Josh, and Josh, outo respect for his constituents, is jist waitin' for some stranger to waltz in and stop the d—dest fight—”
“But, my dear Mr. Sibblee, there must be some mistake,” said Wiles earnestly.
“Mistake? Strip me!”
“No! No!” said Wiles, hurriedly, as the simple-minded Dobbs was about to draw down the coverlid.
“Take him away,” said the Hon. Mr. Sibblee, “before I disgrace my constituency. They said I'd be in jail afore I get through the session. Ef you've got any humanity, stranger, snake him out, and pow'ful quick, too.”
Dobbs, quite white and aghast, looked at Wiles and hesitated. There was a slight movement in the bed. Both men started for the door; and the next minute it closed very decidedly on the member from Fresno.