Jack!
Fred!
The two men remained gazing at each other with a half-amused, half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. I didnt think YOUD be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred, he said, half seriously.
Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I hunted you up, said the editor, mischievously. Read that. I got it an hour after you left. And he placed a little triumphantly in Jacks hand the letter he had received from White Violet.
Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two hands on the editors shoulders. Yes, my young friend, and you sat down and wrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollarswhich, permit me to say, was dd poor pay! But that isnt your fault, I reckon: its the meanness of your proprietors.
But it isnt the question, either, just now, Jack, however you have been able to answer it. Do you mean to say seriously that you want to know anything more of a woman who could write such a letter?
I dont know, said Jack, cheerfully. She might be a devilish sight funnier than if she hadnt written itwhich is the fact.
You mean to say SHE didnt write it?
Yes.
Who did, then?
Her brother Bob.
After a moments scrutiny of his friends bewildered face, Mr. Hamlin briefly related his adventures, from the moment of his meeting Bob at the mountain-stream to the barkeepers gossiping comment and sequel. Therefore, he concluded, the author of Underbrush is Miss Cynthia Delatour, one of four daughters of a widow who lives two miles from here at the crossing. I shall see her this evening and make sure; but to-morrow morning you will pay me the breakfast you owe me. Shes good-looking, but I cant say I fancy the poetic style: its a little too high-toned for me. However, I love my love with a C, because she is your Contributor; I hate her with a C, because of her Connections; I met her by Chance and treated her with Civility; her name is Cynthia, and she lives on a Cross-road.
But you surely dont expect you will ever see Bob, again! said the editor, impatiently. You have trusted him with enough to start him for the Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you have established in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised that a man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp the second time.
My knowledge of the world, returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, tells me thats the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesnt make a habit, nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had never tried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishment by doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is stronger than any other. Tisnt everybody that gets that chance, he added, with an odd laugh.
Nevertheless, three hours passed without bringing Bob. The two men had gone to the billiard-room, when a waiter brought a note, which he handed to Mr. Hamlin with some apologetic hesitation. It bore no superscription, but had been brought by a boy who described Mr. Hamlin perfectly, and requested that the note should be handed to him with the remark that Bob had come back.
And is he there now? asked Mr. Hamlin, holding the letter unopened in his hand.
No, sir; he run right off.
The editor laughed, but Mr. Hamlin, having perused the note, put away his cue. Come into my room, he said.
The editor followed, and Mr. Hamlin laid the note before him on the table. Bobs all right, he said, for Ill bet a thousand dollars that note is genuine.
It was delicately written, in a cultivated feminine hand, utterly unlike the scrawl that had first excited the editors curiosity, and ran as follows:
He who brought me the bounty of your friendfor I cannot call a recompense so far above my deserts by any other namegives me also to understand that you wished for an interview. I cannot believe that this is mere idle curiosity, or that you have any motive that is not kindly and honorable, but I feel that I must beg and pray you not to seek to remove the veil behind which I have chosen to hide myself and my poor efforts from identification. I THINK I know youI KNOW I know myselfwell enough to believe it would give neither of us any happiness. You will say to your generous friend that he has already given the Unknown more comfort and hope than could come from any personal compliment or publicity, and you will yourself believe that you have all unconsciously brightened a sad womans fancy with a Dream and a Vision that before today had been unknown to WHITE VIOLET.
Have you read it? asked Mr. Hamlin.
Yes.
Then you dont want to see it any more, or even remember you ever saw it, said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces and letting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.
But, I say, Jack! look here; I dont understand! You say you have already seen this woman, and yet
I HAVENT seen her, said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.
What do you mean?
I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right here and leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, andthat I owe you that dinner.
CHAPTER IV
When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr. Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupant of a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tall figure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. James Bowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had just abandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, but Mr. Bowerss resources were a life-long experience and technical skill; he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and his knowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr. Hamlins luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormal growths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowerss visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even figuratively accept the omen.
He baited and rested his horse at the hotel, where his bucolic exterior, however, did not elicit that attention which had been accorded to Mr. Hamlins charming insolence or the editors cultivated manner. But he glanced over a township map on the walls of the reading-room, and took note of the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches, passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in the direction of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a young sapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling but familiar woodmans step.
It is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to follow Mr. Bowers in his professional diagnosis of the locality. He recognized Nature in one of her moods of wasteful extravagance,a waste that his experienced eye could tell was also sapping the vitality of those outwardly robust shafts that rose around him. He knew, without testing them, that half of these fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he could detect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirred by the wind that streamed through their long aisles,like incense mingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then to part the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeing again, as he had told the editor, the weird SECOND twilight through their miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But, even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess, he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphere and melody of her verse. Its spell was upon him, too. Unlike Mr. Hamlin, he did not sing. He only halted once or twice, silently combing his straight narrow beard with his three fingers, until the action seemed to draw down the lines of his face into limitless dejection, and an inscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds which had hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before the grotesque and angular half-length of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind had blown in a scarecrow from the distant farms.
Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him, leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in the direction of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that it was singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in the presence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he could have gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so. Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He had recourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.
To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, and then shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evident distress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.
Im sorry I frighted ye, maam, but I was afraid I might skeer ye more if I lay low, and said nothin.
Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would have relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by every other line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial. Her figure was hidden by a shapeless garment that partook equally of the shawl, cloak, and wrapper.
I am very foolish, she began, in a voice and accent that at once asserted a cultivated woman, but I so seldom meet anybody here that a voice quite startled me. That, and the heat, she went on, wiping her face, into which the color was returning violentlyfor I seldom go out as early as thisI suppose affected me.
Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood which I fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient, undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being in the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.
Like as not, maam, he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in her burning face. The sun IS powful hot at this time o day; I felt it myself comin yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it back, its likely to come out agin. Ye cant check it no more than the sap in that choked limb tharhe pointed ostentatiously where a fallen pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. Do you live far from here, maam? he added.
Only as far as the first turning below the hill.
Ive got my buggy here, and Im goin that way, and I can jist set ye down thar cool and comfortable. Ef, he continued, in the same assuring tone, without waiting for a reply, yell jist take a good grip of my arm thar, curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherds crook, Ill go first, and break away the brush for ye.
She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns in this fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally dropping a word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face. When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,and perpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had been a transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,and then gravely took his place beside her.
Bein in the timber trade myself, maam, he said, gathering up the reins, I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My name is Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there aint much that grows in the way o standin timber on the Pacific Slope that I dont know and cant locate, though I DO say it. Ive got ez big a mill, and ez big a run in my district, ez there is anywhere. Ef youre ever up my way, you ask for BowersJim Bowersand thats ME.
There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation between strangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each others foibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman, naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure her that she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and so satisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the woman regained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowerss vanity, and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of the buggy along the road, thanked him graciously.
I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel, she said, after a pause.
I didnt get to see em, as I only put up my hoss there, he replied. But I know the stage took some away this mornin: it seemed pretty well loaded up when I passed it.
The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possible return of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once be distracted at any costeven conversation.
Perhaps, he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, Im a-talkin to Mrs. McFadden?
No, said the woman, abstractedly.
Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on that crossroad.
My name IS Delatour, she said, somewhat wearily.
Mr. Bowers was conversationally stranded. He was not at all anxious to know her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there was nothing more to say. He would, of course, have preferred to ask her if she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew the poetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appeared to be an eddicated woman made him sensitive of displaying technical ignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was subjective or objectivetwo words he had heard used at the Debating Society at Mendocino on the question, Is poetry morally beneficial? For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiative in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation she had held with another.
She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married. The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been obliged to part with much of it to support her childrenfour girls and a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too youngshe feared, too shiftlessto do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor; she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans, where her father had been a judge, and she didnt understand country life. Of course she had been married too youngas all girls were. Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia, was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.
As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved. But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his main object, and, looking up cautiously, said: