 2. 3 months after the survey of the Espirito Santo Rancho, I was again in the Valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation had erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of 1861-62 was at its height when obeying some indefinite yearning I took my carpet bag and embarked for the inundated valley. There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the Golden City but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the pattering rain and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to friends and relatives wore anxious faces and conversed soberly on the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details. But with that human disposition to seize upon any circumstance that might give Chance's event the exaggerated importance of instinct I was half-conscious of something more than curiosity as an impelling motive. The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water and a let in sky greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called Joe and, wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material about as suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the city stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee. We glided up the long level of K Street, once a cheerful busy thoroughfare now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses on street corners where they presented abrupt gables to the current or by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed to carriage-wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life and habitation. With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears as I lie lazily in the boat is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee Giuseppe has the advantage of earnestness and energy and gives a graphic description of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half clothed, and famished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar and refuses the proffered fare, for am I not a citizen of San Francisco which was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento, and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society? No, Giuseppe is poor but cannot take my money. Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard Society and the women and children without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall. I thank the generous gondolier and we go to the Hall, a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty, and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's might. But here Giuseppe tells me of the relief boat which leaves for the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succour and help the afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpet bag, and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery deck of relief boat number three. An hour later I am in the pilot house, looking down upon what was once the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a vast inland sea. Stretches of tulle land, fertilized by its once regular channel, and dotted by flourishing ranchos, are now cleanly erased. The cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood. The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere, washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful, in their suggestive quiet and concealment. As day fades in tonight, the monotony of this strange prospect grows oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet and transfer a number of our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar. There is a voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty Godspeed on either side. But our signal lights are not far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us, an indomitable Yankee cheer which scatters the gloom. Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us, the wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waist. As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I borrow a peacote of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened. It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the bow oar. LIGHT AHEAD All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling light appears, unsteadyly, and again disappears, as if by the shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon us. STIRN! ALL! A STEAMER! Hold hard there, steamer be damned! is the reply of the cockswain. It's a house, and a big one, too. It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart. There's someone in it, by heavens. Give way, boys! Lay her alongside, handsomely now. The door's fastened. Try the window. No, here's another. In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sitting, wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I spring toward him with an exclamation, Joseph Tryon! He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on his shoulder, and say, Look up, old man! Look up! Your wife and children! Where are they? The boys! George! Are they here? Are they safe? He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain, but it somehow sends the blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their peace. I make one more effort. Joseph Tryon! Don't you know me? The surveyor who surveyed your ranch, the Espirito Santo? Look up, old man! He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he repeated to himself, The surveyor who surveyed your ranch, Espirito Santo? Over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to fix in his memory. I was turning sadly to the boatman when he suddenly caught me, fearfully, by the hand, and said, Hush! We were silent. Listen! He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear. I'm a moving off. Moving off? Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off? Ah, what's that? Don't you hear? There, listen! We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor. It's them what he sent, old Al-Tasgar sent. They've been here all night. I heard him first in the creek when they came to tell the old man to move farther off. They came near and near. They whispered under the door, and I saw their eyes on the step, their cruel hard eyes. Ah, why don't they quit? I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further traces of the family while Tryon resumes his old attitude. It is so much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them briefly what I know of him and the old man murmurs again. Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock all gone, gone, gone for the hides and hoofs, and he groans bitterly. There are the other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and perhaps the family are safe by this time, says the cockswain hopefully. We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless and carry him to the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cours in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky shows the coming day. I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryon comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board. Is it George Tryon? I asked quickly. Don't know, but he's a sweet one, whoever he is, adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious remembrance. You'll find him forward. I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find not George, but the irrepressible, wise, sitting on a coil of rope a little dirtier and rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him. He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me at my ease by at once addressing me. These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's become of them thar boundary monuments you stuck? Ah! The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of admiration at a pair of high boots which, by great exertion, he has at last pulled on his feet. So you've picked up the old man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must have been soft to have stuck there instead of leaving with the old woman. Didn't know me from Adam. Took me for George. At this effecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, wise was evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the contending emotions to ask about George. Don't know why he is. If he tended stock instead of running about the prairie, packing off women and children, he might have saved something. He lost every hoof and hide I'd bet a cookie. Say you, to a passing boatman, when are you going to give us some grub? I'm hungry enough to skin and eat a host. Wreck and I'll turn butch when things is dried up and save hides, horns, and tower. I could not but admire this indomitable energy which under softer climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit. Have you any idea what you'll do, wise? I ask. There ain't much to do now, says the practical young man. I'll have to lay over a spell I reckon, till things come straight. The land ain't worth much now and won't be, I dare say, for some time. Wonder why the old man'll drive stakes next. I meant as to your father and George, wise. Oh, the old man and I'll go on to miles's why Tom packed the old woman and babies last week. George'll turn up some war between this and Altauskars if he ain't there now. I ask how the Altauskars have suffered. Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if George helped him drive him up the foothills, and his cost is built too high. Oh, there ain't any water there, you bet. Ah, says wise, with reflective admiration. Those greasers ain't the darn fools people think some. I'll bet there ain't one swamped out in all her californy. But the appearance of grub cut this rhapsody short. I shall keep on a little farther, I say, and try to find George. Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon him. I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage working on shares, eh? I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me, and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might warrant, I walked away. From others whom we picked up from time to time, we heard of George's self-sacrificing devotion with the praises of the many he had helped and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower valda of the foothills and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat-head swung round, pulled by sturdy and willing hands. It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the creek of the Espirito Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns were seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming implements. We emerge at last into a broad, silent sea. It is the Liano de Espirito Santo. As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant hills which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing silently, and I find my mind released from its tension, growing benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too, is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect the tops of Kimizal, which shows the tide to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound bearing to the north of the line of Alder, making an adverse current, which as we sweep to the right to avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside, and I call to the men to stop. There was a stake driven near its summit, with the initials L-E-S-I. Tide halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was Georges. It had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose, gravelly soil of the mound was deeply dented with horses hoofs. The stake was covered with horse hairs. It was a record, but no clue. The wind had grown more violent as we still thought our way forward, resting and rowing by turns, and often are pulling the shallower surface, but the old valda, or a bench, is still distant. My recollection of the old survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings of the creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability. Night overtakes us in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more dangerous than it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about eight o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white walls of al-taskar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving in the courtyard, but otherwise the old tomb-like repose characterizes the building. One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and al-taskar met me on the corridor. I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously held the broken riata. I began wearily to tell him about George and my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his want, he gravely laid his hand on my shoulder. Poka apoka, senor, not now. You are tired. You have hunger. You have cold. Necessary it is, you should have peace. He took us into a small room, and poured out some French cognac, which he gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity was deeper. We might have been shut out from the world as well as the whistling storm behind those ancient walls with their time-worn inheritor. Before I could repeat my inquiry, he retired. In a few minutes two smoking dishes of chupa with coffee were placed before us, and my men ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and worryness kept down the instincts of hunger. I was sitting sadly by the fire when he re-entered. You have eaten? I said, yes, to please him. Bueno, eat when you can. Food and appetite are not always. He said this with that sancho-like simplicity with which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a legend, and taking the riata from the floor held it almost tenderly before him. It was made by me, senor. I kept it as a clue to him, Don Autascar. I said, if I could find him, he is here. Here? And? But I could not say well. I understood the gravity of the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomb-like repose of the building in an electric flash of consciousness. I held the clue to the broken riata at last. Autascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before the window. In an alcove, there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their household. I stepped beside it and saw George Lyne, as I had seen him once before, peacefully at rest, but a greater sacrifice than that he had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever. He was honest and brave, said the old man, and turned away. There was another figure in the room, a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and retiring presently, left the loving and loved together. When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows of the great chamber, Autascar told me how he had, that morning, met the horse of George Tryon swimming on the prairie. How that, farther on, he found him Lyne, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his person, that he had probably become exhausted in hoarding the creek, and that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely given to others. That, as a last act, he had freed his horse. These incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great chamber that evening women and children, most of them suckered through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless above. He was buried in the Indian Mound, the single spot of strange perennial greenness which the poor Aborigines had raised above the dusty plain. A little slab of sandstone, with the initials G.T., is his monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, end of part two of Notes by Flood and Field. Selected Stories by Bret Hart. An Episode of Fiddletown. Part one. In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a quantity of light, chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle womanliness. She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion. She had only two blemishes. One of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a slight cast, and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single drop of vitriol, happily the only drop of an entire file, thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex that reached that pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism, and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add picancy to her smile. The youthful editor of the Fiddletown Avalanche had said privately that it was an exaggerated dimple. Colonel Starbottle was instantly reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that blank you ever laid your two blank eyes upon. A Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans, and this woman had a scar, a line extending blank me from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir, maddened you, sir, absolutely to sense your blackened soul to perdition with her blank fascination. And one day I said to her, Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar blank you? And she said to me, Star, there isn't another white man that I'd confide in but you, but I made that scar myself. Purposely I did, blank me. These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir, but I'll put up any blank sum you can name and prove it, blank me. Indeed most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in love with her. Of this number about one half believed that their love was returned, with the exception possibly of her own husband. He alone had been known to express skepticism. The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this Fiddletown enchantress. She also had been divorced, but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made it perhaps less novel and probably less sacrificial. I would not have it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment or devoid of its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written, on the occasion of her second divorce, the cold world does not understand Clare yet. And Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of a single woman in Opalaus's parish, Louisiana, she had more soul than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read those lines entitled Infillissimus commencing, Why Waves No Cypress or This Brow, originally published in the avalanche over the signature of the Lady Clare, without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantel his cheek at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of the Dutch flat intelligencer, which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress and its entire absence from Fiddletown as a reasonable answer to the query. Indeed it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the newspapers that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a too sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite, which an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six mule freight wagon between Night's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature, and it's possible that some reflections on the vanity of his pursuit, he supplied several mining camps with whisky and tobacco, in conjunction with the dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some cord and sympathy with this sensitive woman. How be it, after a brief courtship, as brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities, they were married, and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or Fiddelletown, as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems. The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr. Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while freighting between Stockton and Night's Ferry was different from that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to beat her, and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick, to contribute regularly to the columns of the avalanche, it was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism signed AS, also published in the avalanche, and supported by extensive quotation. As the avalanche did not possess a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Lucadian numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown who saw fit to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw, a language with which the Colonel, as a will-ohm resident of the Indian territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed, the next week's intelligencer contained some vile dog-girl supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed ASS. The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the avalanche. An unfortunate encounter took place on Monday last between the honourable Jackson Flash of the Dutch Flatch Intelligencer, and the well-known Colonel Starbottle of this place in front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from the Colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Malican man's firearms hereafter. The cause of the effray is not known, although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumour that points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are posted. Meanwhile, the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the Gulches. The old man's head is level, said one long-booted philosopher. If the Colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged. If Flash drops the Colonel, Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure thing. During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back. Here she stayed for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the strictest propriety. It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended, left the hotel and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the winged-down coach at the other extremity of the street, and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation. Here she took a cross-street, or road, running at right angles with the main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland. It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she was joined by Colonel Starvottle. The gallant Colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however, vouchsaged him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes, and the Colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his place at her side. "'The coast is clear,' said the Colonel, and Tretherick is over at Dutch flat on a spree. There's no one in the house but a Chinaman. And you need fear, no trouble from him. I,' he continued, with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, "'I will see that you are protected in the removal of your property.' "'Well, I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested,' simpered the lady as they walked along. "'It's so pleasant to meet someone who has soul, someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and heartless as this.' And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion. "'Yes, certainly, of course,' said the Colonel, glancing nervously up and down the street. "'Yes, certainly.'" Perceiving, however, that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the possession of too much soul. That many women, as a gentleman, she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names. But many beautiful women had often sought his society. But being deficient, madame, absolutely deficient in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two natures, thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sorted trammels of a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society, when two souls, in perfect accord, met and mingled in poetical union then, but here the Colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a certain whiskey-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard something like it before and was enabled to fill the hiatus. Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the Colonel was quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination. It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new uninhabited look, because if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At the farther end of the lot a Chinaman was stolidly digging, but there was no other sign of occupancy. The coast, as the Colonel had said, was indeed clear. Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The Colonel would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. "'Come for me in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed,' she said, as she smiled and extended her hand. The Colonel seized and pressed it with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned, for the gallant Colonel was impelled to inflate his chest and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom. Everything there was unchanged, as on the night she left it. On the dressing-table stood her band-box, as she remembered to have left it when she took off her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other gloves she had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the Bureau were half-open, she had forgotten to shut them, and on its marble top lay her shawl-pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her, I know not, but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blonde hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-heeled scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg for a moment, thought she should have fainted, but discovering at the next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness to a superior being who protects the friendless, for the first time sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing before the mirror. And then suddenly she became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And then the child's voice repeated, "'Is it, Mama?' Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was torn and dirty, and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled syriachomically about her forehead. For all this she was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was holding under her arm a ragdoll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself, a doll with a cylindrical head and features roughly indicated with charcoal, a long shawl evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders, and swept the floor. The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had but a small sense of humor. Certainly when the child, still standing in the doorway, again asked, "'Is it, Mama?' she answered sharply, "'No, it isn't!' and turned a severe look upon the intruder. The child retreated a step, and then gaining courage with the distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech. "'Doway, then! Why don't you doe away?' But Mrs. Tretherick was eyeing the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the child's shoulders, and said angrily, "'How dare you take my things, you bad child!' Is it yours? Then you are Mama, ain't you?' "'You are Mama!' she continued gleefully, and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had dropped her doll, and catching the woman's skirt with both hands was dancing up and down before her. "'What's your name, child?' said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the small one, not very white hands from her garments. "'Terry!' "'Terry!' "'Yes, Terry, Tawiline!' "'Caroline?' "'Yes, Tawiline, Tretherick!' "'Whose child are you?' demanded Mrs. Tretherick, still more coldly, to keep down a rising fear. "'Why, yours?' said the little creature with a laugh. "'I'm your little girl. You're my Mama, my new Mama. Don't you know my old Mama's door on the way, never to turn back any more? I don't live with my old Mama now. I live with you and Papa.' "'How long have you been here?' asked Mrs. Tretherick snavishly. "'I think it's three days,' said Carrier reflectively. "'You think?' "'Don't you know?' sneered Mrs. Tretherick. "'Then where did you come from?' This lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered, "'Papa! Papa feds me. From Miss Simmons, from Sacramento, last week?' "'Last week?' "'You said three days just now,' returned Mrs. Tretherick with severe deliberation. "'I'm in a month,' said Carrier, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness and confusion. "'Do you know what you are talking about?' demanded Mrs. Tretherick shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity. But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever. "'Then how?' "'Stop that, snifflin,' said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. "'Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.' "'Stop,' she continued, as Carrier moved away. "'Where's your Papa?' "'He's down the way, too. He's sick. He's been domed,' she hesitated. "'Two free days. Who takes care of you, child?' said Mrs. Tretherick, eyeing her curiously. "'John the Chanderman. I trust this myself.' John tooks and makes debates. "'Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me anymore,' said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. "'Stop. Where are you going?' she added as the child began to descend the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg. "'Goin' upstairs to play and be dude, and no bother, mama.' "'I ain't your mama,' shouted Mrs. Tretherick. "'Then she swiftly re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door. Once inside she drew forth a large trunk from the closet, and set to work with quarelless and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her best dress and taking it from the hook on which it hung. She scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to herself, she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first wife, this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care, just to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair. Not auburn, but red. Of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been prepared. This red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when needed. She remembered his occasional visits there, on business, as he said. Perhaps the mother already was there. But no, she had gone east. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick in her then state of mind preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious also of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Really no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy she sketched a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted at sunset among the fallen columns of a ruined temple and a melancholy at graceful attitude while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach and fore, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a legubrious poem describing her sufferings as wandering alone and poorly clad she came upon her husband and another, flaunting in silks and diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption brought on by sorrow, a beautiful wreck yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the avalanche and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He at least understood her. He? She laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before. And then her face suddenly grew grave as it had not a few moments before. What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly and listened. She fancied that she heard above the multitude and the small noises and creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within. End of Part 1 of an Episode of Fiddletown. Part 2 of an Episode of Fiddletown from Selected Stories by Bret Hart. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, reading by Jeff Cowgill. An Episode of Fiddletown, Part 2. A thwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red orial, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking to it, and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catacysed the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs. Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added, pathetically, that if she was dude, very dude, she might be her mama, and love her very much. I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly, and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek. There was something too inconceivably lonely in the situation. The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate self-centered figure. All these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman. She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material of the room were a little darker, the child lone-layer, say, sitting beside a dead mother's buyer, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below and recognized the tread of the colonel's cane. She flew swiftly down the stairs and encountered the colonel in the hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated statement of her discovery and indignant recital of her wrongs. Don't tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand, for I know it was, she almost screamed. And thank, she added, of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way. Well, it's a blank shame, stammered the colonel without the least idea of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement with his estimate of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of nature's imperfect affinity. It's of no use, said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer to some inaudible remark of the colonels, and withdrawing her hand from the fevered grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. It's of no use, my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like, but I shall stay here and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I will put him face to face with his infamy. I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental nature. But before he could say anything, Kerry appeared on the landing above them, looking timidly and yet half critically at the pair. That's her, said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical construction. Now, said the Colonel, with a sudden assumption of paternal affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. Oh, pretty little girl, pretty little girl, how do you do? How are you? Well, you find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl? A Colonel's impulse was also to expand his chest and swing his cane until it occurred to him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven. Kerry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the chivalrous Colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding herself, as if for protection in the folds of her gown. Nevertheless, the Colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous resemblance to the Madonna and child. Mrs. Tretherick simpered but did not dislodge Kerry as before. There was an awkward pause for a moment, and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child, said in a whisper, go now. Don't come here again, but meet me tonight at the hotel. She extended her hand, the Colonel bent over it gallantly, and raising his hat the next moment was gone. Well, do you think? Said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a prodigious blush, looking down and addressing the fiery curls just visible in the fold of her dress. Do you think you'll be, dude, if I let you stay in here and sit with me? And let me tell you, Mama, queried Kerry looking up. And let you call me Mama, assented Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed laugh. Yes, said Kerry promptly. They entered the bedroom together. Kerry's eye instantly caught sight of the trunk. Are you doing away, Dan Mama? She said with a quick, nervous look and clutch at the woman's dress. No, said Mrs. Tretherick, looking at the window. Only play in, you don't win away, suggested Kerry with a laugh. Let me play, too. Mrs. Tretherick assented. Kerry flew into the next room and presently reappeared, dragging a small trunk into which she gravely proceeded to pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from the child. And before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier history. But to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take Kerry upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had apparently ceased to be interested in Kerry's disclosures. And when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls. You don't hold me right, mama, said Kerry at last, after one or two uneasy shiftings of position. Well, how should I hold you? asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half amused, half embarrassed laugh. This way, said Kerry, curling up into position with one arm around Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom. This way, dear. After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small animal, she closed her eyes and went to sleep. For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her. She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust, days of an overshadowing fear, days of preparation for something that was to be prevented, that was prevented, with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have been. She dare not say had been, and wondered. It was six years ago. If it had lived, it would have been as old as Carrie. The arms which were folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble and tighten their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came. And with a half sob, half sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if she would hide it in the grave, dug there years before. And the gust that shook her past and then, ah, me, the rain. A dropper too fell upon the curls of Carrie, and she moved uneasily in her sleep. But the woman soothed her again. It was so easy to do it now. And they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and abandonment. Yet a desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay, or despair. Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks, he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by moats and sunbeams. When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr. Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much diversity of opinion in Fiddletown. The Dutch flat intelligentser openly alluded to the forcible abduction of the child with the same freedom, and it's to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the intelligentser. The majority, however, evaded the moral issue that Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers, was enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair abductor more than her offence. They promptly rejected Tretherick as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in bar rooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment. She was all as a skittish thing, Colonel, said one sympathizer with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration, and it's kind of natural that she would get away some day and stampede that there coat, but that she should shake you, Colonel, yet she should just shake you is what gets me. And they do say that you just hung around a hotel all night and payrolled them corridors and hasted yourself up and down them stairs and meandered in and out of their piazzi, and all for nothing. It was another generous and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine on the Colonel's wounds. The boys here let on that Mrs. Tretherick prevailed on you to peck your trunk and a baby over from the house to the stage office, and that the chappers did go off with a thank you and offered you two short bits and set us how he liked your looks and it'd employ you again. And now you say it ain't so well, I'll kill the boys it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you for stories do get around. Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight, stated that she was unaccompanied except by the child. He further deposed that obeying her orders he had stopped the Sacramento coach and secured a passage for herself and child of San Francisco. It was true that Afay's testimony was of no legal value, but nobody doubted it. Even those who were skeptical of the Pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern. But it would appear from a hitherto unrecorded passage of his voracious chronicle that, herein, they were mistaken. It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that Afay, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing Chinaman. They were the ordinary mining coulis equipped with long poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation at once ensued between Afay and his brother Mongolians, a conversation characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity, which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of it. Such at least was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant Colonel simply kicked them out of his way. The irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the group and dispersed them. But not before one or two slips of yellow rice paper marked with hieroglyphics were exchanged, and a small parcel put into Afay's hands. When Afay opened this in the dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed, ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials C.T. Afay tucked it away in a corner of his blouse and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction. Two days after this, Afay confronted his master. I mean I like a fiddle town, me belly sick, me go now. Mr. Tretherick violently suggested a profane locality. Afay gazed at him placidly and withdrew. Before leaving fiddle town, however, he accidentally met Colonel Starbottle and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the Colonel handed him a letter and a $20 gold piece. If you bring me an answer, I'll double that. Saab e jahan. Afay nodded. An interview equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place between Afay and another gentleman whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the avalanche. Yet I regret to state that after proceeding some distance on his journey, Afay calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother celestial whom he met on the road for a trifling gratuity. The agony of Colonel Starbottle on finding his washbill made out on the unwritten side of one of those squares and delivered to him with his weakly clean clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese Laundry of Wan Feng Ti of Fiddletown has been described to me as peculiarly affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details of this breach of trust would find ample retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended Afay's pilgrimage. On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian whose moral nature was shocked at riding with Wan addicted to opium smoking. At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger, purely an act of Christian supraerogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or other and discharged with a severe reprimand, possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public schools, but by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress he at last reached in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm of law. The next day he entered the wash house of Chai Fook as an assistant, and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chai Fook's several clients. It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill of California Street, one of those bleak gray intervals that made the summer a misnomer to any but the lively of San Francisco and fancy. There was no warmth of color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or without, only one monotonous universal neutral tint over everything. There was a fierce unrest in the windwipped streets, there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses. When Afay reached the top of the hill the mission ridge was already hidden and the chill sea breeze made him shiver. As he put down his basket to rest himself it is possible that to his defective intelligence and heathen experience this God's own climate as was called seemed to possess but scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Afay illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the school children, who being released from studious confinement at this hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on and turning a corner at last stopped before a small house. It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage, there was the little strip of cold green shrubbery before it, the chilly bare veranda and above this, again, the grim balcony on which no one sat. Afay rang the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his basket and reluctantly admitted him as if he were some necessary domestic animal. Afay silently mounted the stairs and entering the open door of the front chamber put down the basket and stood passively on the threshold. A woman who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window with the child in her lap rose listlessly and came toward him. Afay instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick, but not a muscle of his immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly. She evidently did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes. But the child, curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry. What is John, Mama? It's our old John that we had in fiddle town. For an instant Afay's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The child clapped her hands and caught at his blouse. Then he said shortly, midjan, Afay, alle same. Me know you? How do? Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously and looked hard at Afay. Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Kerry's perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows. With a recollection of past pain and an obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when he had left fiddle town. Long a time, no likey fiddle town, no likey trevelocke, likey sanflisco, likey washy, likey tally. Afay's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to consider how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his curt directness and sincerity. But she said, but don't tell any about it you've seen me, and took out her pocketbook. Afay, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Afay, without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily furnished. Afay, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy, saw that both Mrs. Tretherick and Kerry were poorly dressed. Yet it is my duty to state that Afay's long fingers closed promptly and firmly over the half dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to him. Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of extraordinary contortions. After a few moments he extracted from apparently no particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon the basket with the remark, a one-piece washman flatity. Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his efforts were rewarded by his producing apparently from his right ear a many-folded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this carefully, he at last disclosed two $20 gold pieces, which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick. You leave him money top side of Blolo, Fiddle Town. Me find the money. Me fetch the money to you. All righty? But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John, said Mrs. Tretherick earnestly. There must be some mistake. It belongs to some other person. Take it back, John. Afay's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's extended hand and began hastily to gather up his basket. Me not taking it back. No, no. Bum by please, man, he catch me. He say, god damn thief. Catch a floated dollar. Come to jelly. Me not take it back. You leave him money top side of Blolo, Fiddle Town. Me fetch the money to you. Me not take it back. Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she might have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event, she had no right to jeopardize this honest China man's safety by refusing it. So she said, very well, John, I will keep it. But you must come again and see me. Here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated with a new and sudden revelation of the fact that any man could wish to see any other than herself. And, and carry. Afay's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic laugh without moving his mouth. Then shouldering his basket, he shut the door carefully and slid quietly downstairs. In the lower hall, he, however, found an unexpected difficulty in opening the front door, and, after fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment, looked around for some help or instruction. But the Irish handmaid, who had let him in, was contemptuously oblivious of his needs and did not appear. There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall simply record without attempting to explain. On the hall table, a scarf, evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was lying. As Afay tried to lock with one hand, the other hand rested lightly on the table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward Afay's hand. From Afay's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly and with an insinuating snake-like motion, and then disappeared somewhere in the recesses of his blouse. While betraying the least interest or concern in this phenomenon, Afay still repeated his experiments upon the lock. A moment later, the tablecloth of red damask, moved by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself under Afay's fingers and sinuously disappeared by the same hidden channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say. For at this moment, Afay discovered the secret of the lock, and was enabled to open the door, coincident with the sound of footsteps upon the kitchen stairs. Afay did not hasten his movements, but patiently shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind him again, and stepped forth into the thick, encompassing fog that now shrouded earth and sky. From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Afay's figure until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present loneliness, she felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may have ascribed to the higher emotions and the consciousness of a good deed that certain expansiveness of the chest and swelling of the bosom that was really due to the hidden presence of the scarf and tablecloth under his blouse. For Mrs. Tretherick was still poetically sensitive. As the gray fog deepened in the night, she drew Carrie closer toward her, and above the prattle of the child, pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistical recollection at once bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Afay linked her again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary interval between, she was now wandering, a journey so piteous, willful, thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carrie stopped suddenly in the midst of her valuable confidences to throw her small arms around the woman's neck and bid her not to cry. End of Part 2. Part 3 of an episode of Fiddletown in Selected Stories by Brett Hart. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Jeff Cowgill. Selected Stories by Brett Hart. An episode of Fiddletown. Part 3. Heaven for Fenn that I should use a pen that should be ever dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval, an episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard. Her slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest emotions of the human heart, and compelling the editorial breast to the noblest commendation in the editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray the expenses of herself and Kerry. Then she tried the stage, but failed signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was different from that which obtained with the Sacramento audience, but it was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough in the green room, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience. In this straight it occurred to her that she had a voice, a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching, and she finally obtained a position in a church choir. She held it for three months, greatly to her pecuniary advantage, and it is said much to the satisfaction of the gentleman in the back pews who faced toward her during the singing of the last hymn. I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that slanted through the oriol of St. Davi's choir was wantfall very tenderly on her beautiful head with its stacked masses of deerskin colored hair on the low black arches of her brows, and to deepen the pretty fringes that shaded her eyes of Genoa Velvet. Very pleasant it was to watch the opening and shutting of that small straight mouth with its quick revelation of little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your eye like a racer under the spur. And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano, a little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment of her sex, that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful, that her conceit was unbearable. And if she considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she, the soprano, would like to know it, that her conduct on Easter Sunday with the besoe had attracted the attention of the whole congregation, and that she herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up during the service, that her, the soprano's friends, had objected to her singing in the choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she'd waved this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a note at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger longer with the congregation, an act that could be attributed only to a defective moral nature. That as a man, he was a very popular dry goods clerk on weekdays and sang a good deal from apparently behind his eyebrows on the Sabbath, that as a man, sir, he would put up with it no longer. The besoe alone, a short German with a heavy voice for which he seemed reluctantly responsible and rather grieved at its possession, stood up for Mrs. Tretherick, and avert that they were jealous of her because she was British. The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel wherein Mrs. Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement and epitett that the soprano burst into hysterical tears and had to be supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act was marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the usual soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with triumph, but on reaching her room frantically told Kerry that they were beggars hence forward, that she, her mother, had just taken the very bread out of her darling's mouth and ended by bursting into a flood of penitent tears. They did not come so quickly as in her old poetical days, but when they came they stung deeply. She was roused by a formal visit from a vestryman, one of the music committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She stayed there two hours, a fact that might have occasioned to some remark, but that the vestryman was married and had a family of grown-up daughters. When Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the glass and scolded Kerry, but she retained her place in the choir. Was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies received a powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's wife. That lady called upon several of the church members and on Dr. Cope's family. The result was that at a later meeting of the music committee, Mrs. Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to the size of the building and she was invited to resign. She did so. She had been out of a situation for two weeks and her scant means were almost exhausted. When Afay's unexpected treasure was tossed into her lap, the gray fog deepened into night and the street lamps started into shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs. Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Kerry had slipped away unnoticed and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick and brought her back to an active realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was want to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding some avenue of employment. She knew not what, open to her needs and Kerry had noted the habit. Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights and opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following paragraph in the telegraphic column. Fiddletown, seventh. Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this place, died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble. Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another page of the paper and glanced at Kerry. The child was absorbed in a book. Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was unusually silent and cold. When Kerry was undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees behind the bed and, taking Kerry's flaming head between her hands, said, "'Should you like to have another Papa, Kara, darling?' "'No,' said Kerry after a moment's thought. "'But a Papa to help Mama take care of you, to love you, "'to give you a nice close, "'to make a lady of you when you grow up.'" Kerry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. "'Should you, Mama?' Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flashed to the roots of her hair. "'Go to sleep,' she said sharply and turned away. But at midnight the child felt two white arms closed tightly around her and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was broken up by sobs. "'Don't cry, Mama,' whispered Kerry with a vague retrospect of their recent conversation. "'Don't cry. "'I think I should like a new Papa, "'if he loves you very much, very, very much.'" A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was married. The happy bridegroom was won Colonel Starbottle, recently elected to represent Calaveras County and the legislative councils of the state. As I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by the correspondent of the Sacramento Globe, I venture to quote some of his graceful periods. The relentless shafts of the Sly God have been lately busy among our gallant salons. We quote, one more unfortunate. The latest victim is the Honorable C. Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair Enchantress, in the case, is a beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespus, and lately, a fascinating Saint Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary. The Dutch flat intelligence her saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press. The new democratic warhorse from Calaveras has lately adventured in the legislature with the little bill to change the name of Tretherick to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate down there. Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month, but we presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts. It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victories was by no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coiness on the part of the lady was added the impediment of a rival, a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento who had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits debarring him from ordinary social intercourse and indeed any other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As this gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous rival. Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in professionally to lay out a brother senator who had unhappily fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor and either deterred by physical consideration from rivalry or wisely concluding that the colonel was professionally valuable, he withdrew from the field. The honeymoon was very brief and brought to a close by an untoward incident. During their bridal trip, Kerry had been placed in the charge of Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the city, immediately on reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle announced her intention of at once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepers to bring the child home. Colonel Starbottle, who had been exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness which he had endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally buttoned his coat tightly across his breast and after walking unsteadily once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife with his most imposing manner. I have deferred, said the colonel with an exaggeration of port that increased with his inward fear and a growing thickness of speech. I have deferred, I may say, postponed statement of fact. That's my duty to disclose to you. I did no wish to maw sunshine mutual happiness to blind but a promise to dark and conjugal sky about unplaced revelation must be done. By God, maw, must do it now. The child is gone. Gone? echoed Mrs. Starbottle. There was something in the tone of her voice in the sudden drawing together of the pupils of her eyes that for a moment nearly sobered the colonel and partly collapsed his chest. I'll spleen all in a minute, he said with a deprecating wave of the hand. Everything should be spleen. The melancholy event which precipitate our happiness, mysterious province which release you. Release child, understand? Release child. The moment Tredrick die, all claim you have in child through him die too. That's law. Whose child belong to? Tredrick? Tredrick dead. Child can't belong to dead man. Damn not since belong dead man, no. It's your child? No. Whose child there? Child belong to a smother, understand? Where is she? Said Mrs. Starbottle with a very white face and a very low voice. I'll spleen all. Child belong to a smother. That's law. I'm lawyer. Let's lead you an American system. It's my duty as lawyer, as legislator, American citizen to restore child to suffer a mother. Any cause. Any cause. Where is she? Repeated Mrs. Starbottle with her eyes still fixed on the colonel's face. Gone to a smother. Gone east on steamer yesterday. Woffed by our favorite girls to suffering in pain. That's so. Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair and endeavored to beam with chivalrous gallantry, not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her, as she said. Your feelings, men, do honor to your sex, but consider situation. Consider mother's feelings. Consider my feelings. The colonel paused and flourishing a white handkerchief placed it negligently in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles on the woman before him. Why should dark shutter cast blind? Two shoals with single beat. Child's fine, child. Good child, but someone else's child. Child's gone, Clare. But all isn't gone, Clare. Consider dust. Yours have me. Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. You! She cried, bringing out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring. You that I married to get my darling food and clothes. You! A dog that I whistled to my side to keep the men off me. You! She choked up and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had been Carey's. Then she swept by him again into her own bedroom and then suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing with a burning fire over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and mouth, a squaring of jaw, an Ophidian flattening of the head. Listen, she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. Hear me, if you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child. If you ever expect to speak to me again to touch me, you must bring her back. For where she goes, I go. You hear me? Where she has gone, look for me. She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing out of her arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary bonds and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door. Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry woman and recoiling as she swept by lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions and the narcotic quantity of his potations. Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her mind, for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand as if she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway and heard once more a childish voice asking, is it mama? But the epitett now stung her to the quick and with a quick passionate gesture she dashed it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper with a broken sandal string. She uttered a great cry here, the first she had uttered, and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again and again, and rocking from side to side with emotion peculiar to her sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her fever slips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede before her the floor to sink beneath her feet. And staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark, and there was a spot upon her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still another on the white counterpane of the bed. The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white curtains in a ghostly way. Later a gray fog stole softly over the roofs, soothing the wind roughened surfaces and unwrapping all things in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very quiet, for all her troubles still a very pretty bride. On the other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom from his temporary couch. Snored peacefully. A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa in the state of New York exhibited perhaps more strongly than at any other time the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole played around this soft Italian capital, whirled in and out of the great staring wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the cold green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular stiff dark figures in its streets. From the level of the street the four principal churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the low driving storm. Near the railroad station, the new Methodist Chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter location. But the pride of Genoa, the great Kramer Institute for Young Ladies, stretched its bare brick lengths and reared its cupola plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue. There was no evasion in the Kramer Institute of the fact that it was a public institution, a visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty face at its window, were clearly visible all over the township. The shriek of the engine of the four o'clock Northern Express brought but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger alighted and it was driven away in the solitary waiting slay toward the Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again with that passionless indifference to human sympathies or curiosity peculiar to express trains. The one baggage truck was wheeled into the station again. The station door was locked and the station master went home. The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness of three young ladies of the Kramer Institute who were even then surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bake shop and confectionary saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the admirable regulations of the Institute failed to entirely develop the physical and moral natures of its pupils. They conformed to the excellent dietary rules in public and in private drew upon the luxurious rations of their village caterer. They attended church with exemplary formality and flirted informally during service with the village beau. They received the best and most judicious instruction during school hours and devoured the trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was an aggregation of quite healthy, quite human and very charming young creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even Mistress Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums exhilarated by the exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of them young things did her good and had even been known to shield them by shameless equivocation. Four o'clock, girls, and if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll be missed. Said the tallest of these foolish virgins with an aquiline nose and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader as she rose from her seat. Have you got the books, Addy? Addy displayed three dissipated looking novels under her waterproof. And the provisions, Carrie? Carrie showed a suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack. All right, then. Come, girls, strudge, charge it! She added, noting to her host as they passed toward the door, I'll pay you when my quarters allowance comes. No, Kate, in her post to Carrie, producing her purse, let me pay its matern. Never, said Kate, arching her black brows loftily. Even if you do have rich relatives and regular remittances from California, never. Come, girls, forward march. As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their feet. Kind-hearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. Sakes alive, guys! You mustn't go out and sit whether. Better let me send word to the institute and make you up a nice bed tonight in my parlor. But the last sentence was lost in a course of half-suppressed shrieks as the girls, hand in hand, ran down the steps into the storm and were at once whirled away. The short, December day, unlit by any unusual glow, was failing fast. It was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow. For some distance, their high-spirits youth and even inexperience kept them bravely up. But in ambitiously attempting a shortcut from the high road across an open field, their strength gave out. The laugh grew less frequent, and tears began to stand in Kerry's brown eyes. When they reached the road again, they were utterly exhausted. Let's go back, said Kerry. We'd never get across that field again, said Addie. Let's stop at the first house then, said Kerry. The first house, said Addie, peering through the gathering darkness, is Squire Robinson's. She darted a mischievous glance at Kerry that even in her discomfort and fear brought the quick blood to her cheek. Oh, yes, said Kate with gloomy irony. Certainly, stop at the Squires by all means and be invited to tea and be driven home after by your dear friend Mr. Harry with a formal apology from Mrs. Robinson in hopes that the young ladies may be excused this time. No, continued Kate with sudden energy. That may suit you, but I'm going back as I came by the window or not at all. Then she pounced to suddenly like a hawk on Kerry who was betraying a tendency to sit down on a snow bank and whimper and shook her briskly. You'll be going to sleep next. Stay, hold your tongues, all of you. What's that? It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. Hold down your head, girls, if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost. But it was not. For a voice strange to their ears but with all very kindly and pleasant asked if its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome seal skin cloak wearing a seal skin cap. His face half concealed by a muffler of the same material disclosing only a pair of long mustaches and two keen dark eyes. It's a son of old Santa Claus, whispered Addy. The girls tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh. They had regained their former spirits. Where shall I take you? said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried whispering and then Kate said boldly to the institute. They drove silently up the hill until the long ascetic building loomed up before them. The stranger reigned up suddenly. Well, you know the way better than I do. He said, where do you go in? Through the back window, said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. I see, responded the strange driver quietly and alighting quickly, removing the bells from the horses. We can drive as near as you please now, he added by way of explanation. He certainly is a son of Santa Claus, whispered Addy. Hadn't we better ask after his father? Hush, said Kate decidedly. He is an angel at essay. She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was however perfectly understood by her feminine auditors. We are looking like three frights. Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to a light. There was still some light from the reflected snow and as he handed his fair companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense, still respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window. Thank you and good night, whispered three voices. A single figure still lingered. The stranger leaned over the windowsill. Will you permit me to light my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck a match outside. By the uprising light he saw the figure of Kate very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had detected the pitiable sceptre-fuge. For what else did she stand at the head of her class and had doting parents paid three years tuition? The storm had passed and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat was nearest to the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of Carrie, her neighbor. Hey, she gasped in a thrilling whisper. Who, asked Carrie sympathetically, who never clearly understood when Kate was in earnest. Who? Why the man who rescued us last night I saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak, I shall be better in a moment. There, she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air. What can he want? Asked Carrie whose curiosity was excited. I don't know, said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. Possibly to put his five daughters to school, perhaps to finish his young wife and warn her against us. He didn't look old. And he didn't seem like a married man, rejoined Addie thoughtfully. That was whose art, you poor creature, returned Kate scornfully. You can never tell anything of these men. They're so deceitful. Besides, it's just my fate. Why, Kate, began Carrie in serious concern. Hush! Miss Walker is saying something, said Kate, laughing. The young ladies will please give attention, said a slow, perfunctory voice. Miss Carrie Trevorick is wanted in the parlor. End of...