CHAPTER VIIUNCLE JIM
An hour before the time set by June Allen to go to the spring the Colonel was sitting in his room before a table littered with papers. They were the title deeds and the tax certificates of the Parrish tract. They represented an unmarred record of purchase and possession from the date of acquisition to the present time. As he looked them over he wondered again at the astounding boldness of Allen. Had he relied upon the rightful owner’s leniency when he should discover that the claimant’s wife had once been Alice Joyce? The thought called forth an angry sentence of pain and disgust. Perhaps so. It was of a piece with Allen’s behavior. But—
The Colonel rose to his feet. He had made up his mind what he intended to do. Allen’s baseness had no bearing on the matter. Alice and her children were all that concerned him. He threw the papers into the table drawer, looked at his watch, and picking up his hat, left the room.
There were many breaks in the fence—lengths of it were entirely down—but the one June had selected as the place of rendezvous was easy of discovery becauseof the live-oak that grew near it. The great tree cast a heavy, twisted limb across the road, making an arch of foliage almost as impervious to sunbeams as a roof. A narrow path made a pale, meandering line through the grass beyond it, and then came and went, red as a scar, through the shrubbery of the hillside. As the Colonel drew near he saw June sitting on the ground under the tree. Her figure, clothed in a dress of dull blue, made a harmonious note of color in the gold, bronze, and olive of the landscape.
She caught a glimpse of his head over the fence and jumped up with a gesture of welcome. Then as he stepped through the gap she met him with extended hand.
Viewed at close range, her appearance was an illuminating commentary on a poverty which could never be degraded or ignoble. Nothing could have been cheaper or poorer than her scanty cotton gown or her straw hat. But she had taken pains that the ribbon on her hat should match the tint of her dress, and the old-fashioned turn-over collar of lace which encircled her throat was arranged with a dainty preciseness. She had even put on her one and only pair of corsets—a treasured article of dress reserved for parties and the Sabbath—so unusual was the occasion. The Colonel did not notice these delicacies of detail. He only saw, as any other man would have seen, that a rare distinguishing fineness marked her despite her poor apparel and coarsened hands. It would have taken a woman’s deeper insight to see that this was a girl in whom a taste for all thatwas luxurious, costly and elegant was innate and ready to wake at the first call.
They followed the path across the open land and then began ascending through the chaparral, the girl leading. The shrubs, which were low-growing, offered no shade, and the sun, though slanting to the west, followed them with scorching beams. It was by no means a gentle climb and they spoke little. At intervals a lizard flicked across the path, and an occasional stirring of the underbrush told of the stealthy passage of a snake. From the whole hillside aromatic odors, that seemed to be ascending in swimming undulations, rose into the heat, not sweet and delicate as is the breath of gardens, but coarse, pungent, almost rank, in their triumphant, wild vitality.
In an opening under the pines they paused for a rest. The Colonel noticed that his companion was not as talkative as she had been on the two former occasions. There was an air of troubled abstraction about her. She indicated notable points in the landscape like a dutiful cicerone, but the intensity of interest she had displayed in arranging the trip seemed gone. He wondered if she had revealed to some member of her family her design of showing him the spring and had been reproved for it.
The last portion of the walk was again through thickets, up a hill where the poison oak grew close and high, and then among larger growths of bay and alder, with the Digger pines raising their dim bluish shapes among the more juicy greens. Here they began to follow a faint rill, a tiny thread that broke into a shower of drops over roots and splinters ofstone. Finally, pushing aside intruding boughs, she led him into an opening ringed by tall pine trunks, and cried triumphantly:
“Here it is! Do you wonder no one ever found it?”
There was a hollowing out of the bank under the eaves of a large pine root, and here the spring had been bubbling unnoticed for centuries. A delicate fringing of fern hung from the moist earth motionless over its reflection in the small, quivering mirror. Near by there was an outcropping of rock, and broken bits had been used to pave the edge where the crystal lip of water trembled, and to make a little channel for it to slip down. A rusty tin cup hung on a dead bough, and the girl rinsed it, and dipping it in the clear depths, handed it to him.
“Try it,” she said. “It tastes quite different here among the pine roots with the smell of the woods all round.”
He drank it, marveling at the sharp, acrid tang. She hung the cup back on the twig, and taking off her hat, sat down on a bent root that the pine above it seemed to have thrown out in a kindly desire to be hospitable. The Colonel subsided on to a flat shoulder of rock, rusted with lichen.
“Hasn’t it hidden itself in a pretty spot?” she said. “And didn’t it hide itself well? Coming on it from the other side you never would have suspected a spring was here among the roots of the trees.”
“And you discovered it?”
She nodded, looking down into the tiny basin.
Here it is! Do You Wonder no one Ever Found it?“Here it is! Do You Wonder no one Ever Found it?”
“Here it is! Do You Wonder no one Ever Found it?”
“Here it is! Do You Wonder no one Ever Found it?”
“I traced it up from the little stream that runs away from it. I found it in March, one day when I was prowling.”
“Prowling! What’s prowling?”
“Prowling?” she smiled, but pensively, her eyes on the water. “It’s just wandering about, generally alone, and not going to any particular place. I’ve prowled all over here. I can lead you straight to the two old shafts and show you the dumps and the remains of the old windlass. They’re almost entirely hidden by wild grapes and things. People who don’t know could easily fall in the shafts; one of them’s quite deep.”
It was now her companion’s turn to look pensive. He had sunk the two shafts, and in them, as in the property, how many thousands of dollars he did not like to think.
“Those shafts were made,” he said, “fifteen years ago when we all thought you had only to turn over a few shovelfuls of earth and find your fortune.” He struck the rock with his hand and said laughingly: “What an old fraud you’ve been!”
She looked at him without returning his smile.
“Colonel Parrish,” she said anxiously, “did you sink those two shafts?”
He nodded, once more surprised at her indirect reference to his ownership of the land. She made no reply, but, plucking a fern growing out of the earth near her, began slowly to shred its leaves from its stalk and sprinkle them on the surface of the water.
“And,” she said suddenly, “you intend now, quite soon, to build a hotel back here, under the pines, at the top of the hill, don’t you?”
That she should disappoint him with these persistent and almost indecent inquiries, considering the situation, hurt and irritated him. It was so out of keeping with her general suggestion of something sensitive and girlishly naïve.
“Ihadintended building a hotel; came here with that intention. But—” He rose to his feet and said coldly, “Don’t you think we’d better be going back again? It’s quite a long walk.”
“But?”—she echoed, unheeding his last sentences—“but what?”
She made no movement save to clasp her hands on the broken fern. Her face, raised to him, suddenly was pale and set in a curious tenseness of inquiry. It moved the Colonel strangely.
“But what?” she repeated insistently. “You were going to say something else.”
“My dear little girl,” he answered, “don’t trouble your head about these things. It’s—it’s—a man’s dispute and for men to settle. But rest assured of one thing, you’ll not suffer by it.”
“I!” she exclaimed; “it’s not I that matters. But, Colonel Parrish, our mother.”
She stopped, her voice quivering like a taut string.
“Your mother?” said the Colonel, with a rising inflection.
“You see how it is with her. Let us stay. Let us stay a little while longer.”
“Did you bring me up here to ask me this?” he said, looking steadily at her.
“Yes. I wanted to see you somewhere away from the house, and I thought the spring would be a good excuse. Talking of these things makes me”—the tears rose to her eyes and stood thick in them—“makes me do like this.”
They ran over and she brushed them away with her hand.
“You can see; you understand about mother,” she went on, struggling to speak clearly. “It’s only a question of time. It’s nearly the end of everything. And I brought you up here to-day to ask you to let us stay—right or wrong—let us stay till then.”
Her voice broke and she held her head down, trying to suppress her sobs. The Colonel turned away, walked to where the tin cup hung, took it off its twig, and looked into it.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice rough; “for Heaven’s sake, stop. I’d be angry with you for asking me such a thing if you weren’t so—so—I don’t know what. Of course you’re going to stay.”
“What?” he was not looking at her, but was conscious that she had stiffened both in mental and physical fiber at the word—“you’re going to let us stay?”
“Of course. As long as you want, always. Don’t talk any more about it.”
A quick sound came from her, and he heard the rustle of her dress as she rose, her footsteps on the stone near him, and then felt her beside him. She seized the hand hanging at his side, pressed it againstthe softness of her bosom and against her cheek, then dropped it with a murmur of broken words.
He turned on her bruskly. Her face was shining with tears, but she was smiling. She tried to speak to him, but he laid a finger on her lips and looked at her, shaking his head.
“Don’t say any more about it,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I can’t stand this sort of thing. I’m not used to it.”
She gently laid her hand on his and drawing it away unsealed her lips. She was smiling radiantly, her dimple deep. And for a moment she enveloped him in a beaming look of affection and gratitude.
“There’s lots I want to say, but I suppose I must be obedient,” she murmured.
“Of course you must. Come, we ought to be going. Put your hat on or you’ll get all freckled.”
She went back to the spring and picked up her hat. As she pulled the elastic down over her cropped locks she said gaily:
“I feel so different from what I did when I came up—at least twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter.”
“You’d better not forget how to accomplish that miracle,” said her companion. “Thirty years from now you’ll probably find it a great deal more to the point than you do to-day.”
They started down the path, laughing. The red eye of the sun, a flaming ball, stared at them between the trunks of the pines, and shot long pencils of flushed light into the rustling depths of the thickets.June led the way as before, but she was a different guide. She seemed as light-hearted going down as she had been oppressed coming up. The Colonel was to realize later how ready her optimism was to respond to the first glimmer of cheer, how quick and far was the swing of the pendulum.
Coming to a grassed plateau under the pines they paused for a moment’s rest. From the high crest of ground they could see the cottage with the cultivation of its garden cutting into the unfilled land, like an island of green floating in a yellow sea. It looked meaner and more insignificant than ever in the midst of the lazily out-flung landscape now swimming in a bath of colored light.
The Colonel saw in imagination a house he owned in San Francisco on Folsom Street. He had bought it as a favor from a pioneer friend whose fortunes were declining. It was the stateliest house of what was then a street of stately houses, with wide windows, vine-draped balconies, and scrolled iron gates shutting out the turmoil of the street. The thought had been in his mind when it came into his possession that it was the sort of house he would have given Alice, and the still more sacred thought had followed, that his children’s laughter might have echoed through its halls. Now he looked down on a hovel, also his property, where Alice had been glad to find a shelter, and in which her daughter had prayed that she might be left to die! Life and its mysteries! How inscrutable, how awful, it all was!
The voice of June at his side roused him.
“Mother’s gone in,” she said, evidently making these small domestic comments more to herself than to him, “and Rosamund’s getting supper.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, glad to be shaken from his thoughts. “Have you got second sight? You’re such a little witch I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you had.”
“You don’t have to be a witch to see the smoke coming out of the chimney.”
A faint reek of smoke curled up from the cottage roof into the evening air. The Colonel looked at her with a sheepish side-glance. She returned it, smiling in mischievous triumph.
“I’m afraid we’re not both witches,” she said saucily.
The rest over, they continued their descent by a wider path in parts of which they walked side by side, talking together sometimes, or June talking, for she was very loquacious now, while her companion listened. At the end of a description of their life in Virginia City he said,
“How long is it since you’ve been in San Francisco? Years, isn’t it?”
“Oh, years and years. I was born there, but we left when I was a child.”
“It must have been a prodigious length of time ago—in the glacial period, you might say. Sometime you and Rosamund must come down there and visit me. I’ll find a place for you to stay, and take good care of you. Would you like it?”
“Oh, Colonel Parrish!” Words failed her. Thepath was wide and she was walking beside him. He saw her eyes shine.
“I’d see to it that you’d have a good time. Lots of parties and first-rate partners. You’d never sit along the wall there. The fellows would be just breaking their necks to dance with you. And theaters—you like theaters, don’t you?”
“Theaters!” she fairly gasped. “I sawMazeppain Virginia, and it was—oh, I haven’t got the words! It was something wonderful.”
“Well, we’ll see ’em all. Better forty times than you saw in Virginia, and every night if you want. It’ll be just as good a time as San Francisco and the Colonel can give two girls like you and Rosamund.”
He looked down at her, smiling. She returned the look and said:
“Why are you so good to us? I don’t understand it!”
“Don’t try to. Never exert your brain in needless ways. That’s a fundamental law for the preservation of health. In this particular case I’d be good to myself. You don’t know what it would be for me to have two nice girls to take around. I’m a lonely old devil, you know.”
“Are you?” she said with a note of somewhat pensive incredulity. “You’ve never been married, have you?”
“Nup,” said the Colonel.
“You’ll have to look upon us as your daughters,” she continued, “or perhaps your nieces.” The path was narrow and she looked into his face with theglance of demure coquetry he was beginning to know and watch for. “Which would you prefer?”
“Daughters,” he said gruffly, looking into the bushes.
“But we’re already provided with a father,” she replied. “And it would be such a pity to waste you. Wouldn’t you care to take the position of uncle? That’s vacant.”
“All right, uncle—Uncle Jim.”
“Uncle Jim,” she repeated thoughtfully. “It seems funny to come into possession of your first uncle when you’re twenty years old.”
There was a bend in the path and the bushes grew almost across it. She suddenly quickened her speed, passed him, and ran on before.
“Come on,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m just hitting the trail again.”
He followed her, turned the bend, and pushing the branches aside, saw her a few feet ahead of him, standing on a flat stone about a foot high, which directly intercepted the path.
“What are you mounted on that for?” he said, laughing. “You look as if you were going to make a speech.”
“That’s what I’d like to do,” she answered, “but I was told not to, and I’m very obedient. Come nearer—quite close.”
He approached, a little puzzled, for he saw that she was suddenly grave. The stone raised her a few inches above him, and as he drew near she leaned down, took him by the lapels of his coat, and drawing him close, bent and kissed him softly on the forehead.Then she drew back, and still holding him, looked with tender eyes into his.
“Uncle Jim,” she said, “that’s your christening.”
The next moment she was down and flitting on ahead of him.
“The path’s very narrow,” she called. “You must be content to follow the oldest living inhabitant.”
At the gap in the fence he bade her good-by. To his great delight she caught at his hesitating suggestion that she should occasionally write to him and tell him of their life and her mother’s health. He told her he would be up again, he thought, some time during the summer. The date was uncertain. Then, with her hand in his, she said with a wilful shake of her head:
“No, notá Dios. It’shasta mañana, Uncle Jim. I won’t have it anything buthasta mañana.”
“Well, then,hasta mañana,” he answered. “And God bless you, little girl!”
That evening Colonel Parrish went to see Cusack. He brought with him the title deeds and tax certificates of the Parrish tract. They lay scattered on the office table on which the Colonel as he talked leaned a supporting elbow. The interview was short, and there were moments when it was heated, till Cusack realized, as he afterwards expressed it to a friend, “there are certain kinds of fools there’s no good bucking up against.” The Colonel had determined to recognize the squatter’s claim, and to end all further litigation by making a legal transfer of the property to Allen by means of a quit-claim deed. He talked down argument and protest.
“Why the devil should I keep the place?” he vociferated. “I’m sick of paying taxes on it and never getting a cent. I’ve sunk thousands in it and not got a dollar back. It’s been a white elephant from the first. Allen’s welcome to it. I’m glad to get it off my hands.”
“But the spring,” Cusack almost wailed in the acuteness of his disappointment, “the spring and the hotel! They were going to raise Foleys from the dead.”
“Spring!” said the Colonel, rising and taking from his pocket a fresh cigar—“damned little picayune tea-cup! That spring hasn’t power to raise a mosquito from the dead.”
“Did you expect to find a geyser?” the irritated lawyer retorted.
“I didn’t expect to find what I did find, you can bet on that,” said his client, as he bent forward to apply the tip of his cigar to the lamp chimney.