A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's
by
Bret Harte

Part 2 out of 4



"Mean? Well, old man, you know as well as I do. You're giving me
the very description of Ramon Martinez himself, ha! ha! No--Bill!
you didn't play me this time. You're mighty spry and clever, but
you didn't catch on just then."

He nodded and moved away with a light laugh. Bill turned a stony
face to the Expressman. Suddenly a gleam of mirth came into his
gloomy eyes. He bent over the young man, and said in a hoarse,
chuckling whisper:--

"But I got even after all!"

"How?"

"He's tied up to that lying little she-devil, hard and fast!"




THE REFORMATION OF JAMES REDDY.


I.


It was a freshly furrowed field, so large that the eye at first
scarcely took in its magnitude. The irregular surface of upturned,
oily, wave-shaped clods took the appearance of a vast, black,
chopping sea, that reached from the actual shore of San Francisco
Bay to the low hills of the Coast Range. The sea-breeze that blew
chilly over this bleak expanse added to that fancy, and the line of
straggling whitewashed farm buildings, that half way across lifted
themselves above it, seemed to be placed on an island in its midst.
Even the one or two huge, misshapen agricultural machines,
abandoned in the furrows, bore an odd resemblance to hulks or
barges adrift upon its waste.

This marine suggestion was equally noticeable from the door of one
of the farm buildings--a long, detached wooden shed--into which a
number of farm laborers were slowly filing, although one man was
apparently enough impressed by it to linger and gaze over that
rigid sea. Except in their rough dress and the labor-stains of
soil on their hands and faces, they represented no particular type
or class. They were young and old, robust and delicate, dull and
intelligent; kept together only by some philosophical, careless, or
humorous acceptance of equally enforced circumstance in their
labors, as convicts might have been. For they had been picked up
on the streets and wharves of San Francisco,--discharged sailors,
broken-down miners, helpless newcomers, unemployed professional
men, and ruined traders,--to assist in ploughing and planting
certain broad leagues of rich alluvial soil for a speculative Joint
Stock Company, at a weekly wage that would have made an European
peasant independent for half a year. Yet there was no enthusiasm
in their labor, although it was seldom marked by absolute laziness
or evasion, and was more often hindered by ill-regulated "spurts"
and excessive effort, as if the laborer was anxious to get through
with it; for in the few confidences they exchanged there was little
allusion to the present, and they talked chiefly of what they were
going to do when their work was over. They were gregarious only at
their meals in one of the sheds, or when at night they sought their
"bunks" or berths together in the larger building.

The man who had lingered to look at the dreary prospect had a
somewhat gloomy, discontented face, whose sensitive lines indicated
a certain susceptibility to such impressions. He was further
distinguished by having also lingered longer with the washing of
his hands and face in the battered tin basin on a stool beside the
door, and by the circumstance that the operation revealed the fact
that they were whiter than those of his companions. Drying his
fingers slowly on the long roller-towel, he stood gazing with a
kind of hard abstraction across the darkening field, the strip of
faded colorless shore, and the chill gray sea, to the dividing
point of land on the opposite coast, which in the dying daylight
was silhouetted against the cold horizon.

He knew that around that point and behind it lay the fierce, half-
grown, half-tamed city of yesterday that had worked his ruin.

It was scarcely a year ago that he had plunged into its wildest
excesses,--a reckless gambler among speculators, a hopeless
speculator among gamblers, until the little fortune he had brought
thither had been swept away.

From time to time he had kept up his failing spirit with the
feverish exaltation of dissipation, until, awakening from a
drunkard's dream one morning, he had found himself on board a
steamboat crossing the bay, in company with a gang of farm laborers
with whom he was hired. A bitter smile crossed his lips as his
eyes hovered over the cold, rugged fields before him. Yet he knew
that they had saved him. The unaccustomed manual labor in the open
air, the regular hours, the silent, heavy, passionless nights, the
plain but wholesome food, were all slowly restoring his youth and
strength again. Temptation and passion had alike fled these
unlovely fields and grim employment. Yet he was not grateful. He
nursed his dreary convalescence as he had his previous dissipation,
as part of a wrong done him by one for whose sake, he was wont to
believe, he had sacrificed himself. That person was a woman.

Turning at last from the prospect and his bitter memories to join
his companions, he found that they had all passed in. The benches
before the long table on which supper was spread were already
filled, and he stood in hesitation, looking down the line of silent
and hungrily preoccupied men on either side. A young girl, who was
standing near a smaller serving-table, apparently assisting an
older woman in directing the operation of half a dozen Chinese
waiters, moved forward and cleared a place for him at a side-table,
pushing before it the only chair in the room,--the one she had
lately vacated. As she placed some of the dishes before him with a
timid ostentation, and her large but well-shaped hands came
suddenly in contact with, and in direst contrast to his own whiter
and more delicate ones, she blushed faintly. He lifted his eyes to
hers.

He had seen her half a dozen times before, for she was the daughter
of the ranch superintendent, and occasionally assisted her mother
in this culinary supervision--which did not, however, bring her
into any familiar association with the men. Even the younger ones,
perhaps from over-consciousness of their inferior position or the
preoccupation of their labor, never indulged in any gallantry
toward her, and he himself, in his revulsion of feeling against the
whole sex, had scarcely noticed that she was good-looking. But
this naive exhibition of preference could not be overlooked, either
by his companions, who smiled cynically across the table, or by
himself, from whose morbid fancy it struck an ignoble suggestion.
Ah, well! the girl was pretty--the daughter of his employer, who
rumor said owned a controlling share in the company; why should he
not make this chance preference lead to something, if only to
ameliorate, in ways like this, his despicable position here. He
knew the value of his own good looks, his superior education, and a
certain recklessness which women liked; why should he not profit by
them as well as the one woman who had brought him to this? He owed
her sex nothing; if those among them who were not bad were only
fools, there was no reason why he should not deceive them as they
had him. There was all this small audacity and cynical purpose in
his brown eyes as he deliberately fixed them on hers. And I grieve
to say that these abominable sentiments seemed only to impart to
them a certain attractive brilliancy, and a determination which the
undetermining sex is apt to admire.

She blushed again, dropped her eyes, replied to his significant
thanks with a few indistinct words, and drew away from the table
with a sudden timidity that was half confession.

She did not approach him again during the meal, but seemed to
have taken a sudden interest in the efficiency of the waiters,
generally, which she had not shown before. I do not know whether
this was merely an effort at concealment, or an awakened recognition
of her duty; but, after the fashion of her sex,--and perhaps in
contrast to his,--she was kinder that evening to the average man on
account of HIM. He did not, however, notice it; nor did her absence
interfere with his now healthy appetite; he finished his meal, and
only when he rose to take his hat from the peg above him did he
glance around the room. Their eyes met again. As he passed out,
although it was dark, he put on his hat a little more smartly.

The air was clear and cold, but the outlines of the landscape had
vanished. His companions, with the instinct of tired animals, were
already making their way in knots of two or three, or in silent
file, across the intervening space between the building and their
dormitory. A few had already lit their pipes and were walking
leisurely, but the majority were hurrying from the chill sea-breeze
to the warmth and comfort of the long, well-lit room, lined with
blanketed berths, and set with plain wooden chairs and tables. The
young man lingered for a moment on the wooden platform outside the
dining-shed,--partly to evade this only social gathering of his
fellows as they retired for the night, and partly attracted by a
strange fascination to the faint distant glow, beyond the point of
land, which indicated the lights of San Francisco.

There was a slight rustle behind him! It was the young girl who,
with a white woolen scarf thrown over her head and shoulders, had
just left the room. She started when she saw him, and for an
instant hesitated.

"You are going home, Miss Woodridge?" he said pleasantly.

"Yes," she returned, in a faint, embarrassed voice. "I thought I'd
run on ahead of ma!"

"Will you allow me to accompany you?"

"It's only a step," she protested, indicating the light in the
window of the superintendent's house, the most remote of the group
of buildings, yet scarcely a quarter of a mile distant.

"But it's quite dark," he persisted smilingly.

She stepped from the platform to the ground; he instantly followed
and ranged himself at a little distance from her side. She
protested still feebly against his "troubling himself," but
in another moment they were walking on quietly together.
Nevertheless, a few paces from the platform they came upon the
upheaved clods of the fresh furrows, and their progress over them
was slow and difficult.

"Shall I help you? Will you take my arm?" he said politely.

"No, thank you, Mr. Reddy."

So! she knew his name! He tried to look into her eyes, but the
woolen scarf hid her head. After all, there was nothing strange in
her knowing him; she probably had the names of the men before her
in the dining-room, or on the books. After a pause he said:--

"You quite startled me. One becomes such a mere working machine
here that one quite forgets one's own name,--especially with the
prefix of 'Mr.'"

"And if it don't happen to be one's real name either," said the
girl, with an odd, timid audacity.

He looked up quickly--more attracted by her manner than her words;
more amused than angry.

"But Reddy happens to be my real name."

"Oh!"

"What made you think it was not?"

The clods over which they were clambering were so uneven that
sometimes the young girl was mounting one at the same moment that
Reddy was descending from another. Her reply, half muffled in her
shawl, was delivered over his head. "Oh, because pa says most of
the men here don't give their real names--they don't care to be
known afterward. Ashamed of their work, I reckon."

His face flushed a moment, even in the darkness. He WAS ashamed
of his work, and perhaps a little of the pitiful sport he was
beginning. But oddly enough, the aggressive criticism only whetted
his purpose. The girl was evidently quite able to take care of
herself; why should he be over-chivalrous?

"It isn't very pleasant to be doing the work of a horse, an ox, or
a machine, if you can do other things," he said half seriously.

"But you never used to do anything at all, did you?" she asked.

He hesitated. Here was a chance to give her an affecting history
of his former exalted fortune and position, and perhaps even to
stir her evidently romantic nature with some suggestion of his
sacrifices to one of her own sex. Women liked that sort of thing.
It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each
other. He seized the opportunity, but--for some reason, he knew
not why--awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was
lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic
manner that was unreal. Suddenly the girl stopped him.

"Yes, I know all THAT; pa told me. Told me you'd been given away
by some woman."

His face again flushed--this time with anger. The utter failure of
his story to excite her interest, and her perfect possession of
herself and the situation,--so unlike her conduct a few moments
before,--made him savagely silent, and he clambered on sullenly
at her side. Presently she stopped, balancing herself with a
dexterity he could not imitate on one of the larger upheaved clods,
and said:--

"I was thinking that, as you can't do much with those hands of
yours, digging and shoveling, and not much with your feet either,
over ploughed ground, you might do some inside work, that would pay
you better, too. You might help in the dining room, setting table
and washing up, helping ma and me--though I don't do much except
overseeing. I could show you what to do at first, and you'd learn
quick enough. If you say 'yes,' I'll speak to pa to-night. He'll
do whatever I say."

The rage and shame that filled his breast choked even the bitter
laugh that first rose to his lips. If he could have turned on his
heel and left her with marked indignation, he would have done so,
but they were scarcely half way across the field; his stumbling
retreat would have only appeared ridiculous, and he was by no means
sure that she would not have looked upon it as merely a confession
of his inability to keep up with her. And yet there was something
peculiarly fascinating and tantalizing in the situation. She did
not see the sardonic glitter in his eye as he said brutally:--

"Ha! and that would give me the exquisite pleasure of being near
you."

She seemed a little confused, even under her enwrappings, and in
stepping down her foot slipped. Reddy instantly scrambled up to
her and caught her as she was pitching forward into the furrow.
Yet in the struggle to keep his own foothold he was aware that she
was assisting him, and although he had passed his arm around her
waist, as if for her better security, it was only through HER firm
grasp of his wrists that he regained his own footing. The "cloud"
had fallen back from her head and shoulders, her heavy hair had
brushed his cheek and left its faint odor in his nostrils; the
rounded outline of her figure had been slightly drawn against his
own. His mean resentment wavered; her proposition, which at first
seemed only insulting, now took a vague form of satisfaction; his
ironical suggestion seemed a natural expression. "Well, I say
'yes' then," he said, with an affected laugh. "That is, if you
think I can manage to do the work; it is not exactly in my line,
you know." Yet he somehow felt that his laugh was feeble and
unconvincing.

"Oh, it's easy enough," said the girl quietly. "You've only got to
be clean--and that's in your line, I should say."

"And if I thought it would please you," he added, with another
attempt at gallantry.

She did not reply, but moved steadily on, he fancied a little more
rapidly. They were nearing the house; he felt he was losing time
and opportunity. The uneven nature of the ground kept him from
walking immediately beside her, unless he held her hand or arm.
Yet an odd timidity was overtaking him. Surely this was the same
girl whose consciousness and susceptibility were so apparent a
moment ago; yet her speech had been inconsistent, unsympathetic,
and coldly practical. "It's very kind of you," he began again,
scrambling up one side of the furrow as she descended on the other,
"to--to--take such an interest in--in a stranger, and I wish you
knew how" (she had mounted the ridge again, and stood balancing
herself as if waiting for him to finish his sentence) "how--how
deeply--I--I"-- She dropped quickly down again with the same
movement of uneasy consciousness, and he left the sentence
unfinished. The house was now only a few yards away; he hurried
forward, but she reached the wooden platform and stoop upon it
first. He, however, at the same moment caught her hand.

"I want to thank you," he said, "and say good-night."

"Good-night." Her voice was indistinct again, and she was
trembling. Emboldened and reckless, he sprang upon the platform,
and encircling her with one arm, with his other hand he unloosed
the woolen cloud around her head and bared her faintly flushed
cheek and half-open, hurriedly breathing lips. But the next moment
she threw her head back with a single powerful movement, and, as it
seemed to him, with scarcely an effort cast him off with both
hands, and sent him toppling from the platform to the ground.
He scrambled quickly to his feet again, flushed, angry, and--
frightened! Perhaps she would call her father; he would be
insulted, or worse,--laughed at! He had lost even this pitiful
chance of bettering his condition. But he was as relieved as he
was surprised to see that she was standing quietly on the edge of
the platform, apparently waiting for him to rise. Her face was
still uncovered, still slightly flushed, but bearing no trace of
either insult or anger. When he stood erect again, she looked at
him gravely and drew the woolen cloud over her head, as she said
calmly, "Then I'll tell pa you'll take the place, and I reckon
you'll begin to-morrow morning."


II.


Angered, discomfited, and physically and morally beaten, James
Reddy stumbled and clambered back across the field. The beam of
light that had streamed out over the dark field as the door opened
and shut on the girl left him doubly confused and bewildered. In
his dull anger and mortification, there seemed only one course for
him to pursue. He would demand his wages in the morning, and cut
the whole concern. He would go back to San Francisco and work
there, where he at least had friends who respected his station.
Yet, he ought to have refused the girl's offer before she had
repulsed him; his retreat now meant nothing, and might even tempt
her, in her vulgar pique, to reveal her rebuff of him. He raised
his eyes mechanically, and looked gloomily across the dark waste
and distant bay to the opposite shore. But the fog had already
hidden the glow of the city's lights, and, thickening around the
horizon, seemed to be slowly hemming him in with the dreary rancho.
In his present frame of mind there was a certain fatefulness in
this that precluded his once free agency, and to that extent
relieved and absolved HIM of any choice. He reached the dormitory
and its turned-down lights in a state of tired and dull uncertainty,
for which sleep seemed to offer the only relief. He rolled himself
in his blankets with an animal instinct of comfort and shut his
eyes, but their sense appeared to open upon Nelly Woodridge as she
stood looking down upon him from the platform. Even through the dull
pain of his bruised susceptibilities he was conscious of a strange
satisfaction he had not felt before. He fell asleep at last, to
waken only to the sunlight streaming through the curtainless windows
on his face. To his surprise the long shed was empty and deserted,
except for a single Chinaman who was sweeping the floor at the
farther end. As Reddy started up, the man turned and approached him
with a characteristic, vague, and patient smile.

"All lity, John, you sleepee heap! Mistel Woodlidge he say you no
go wolkee field allee same Mellikan man. You stoppee inside housee
allee same ME. Shabbee? You come to glubbee [grub] now" (pointing
to the distant dining-shed), "and then you washee dish."

The full extent of his new degradation flashed upon Reddy with this
added insult of his brother menial's implicit equality. He
understood it all. He had been detached from the field-workers and
was to come to a later breakfast, perhaps the broken victuals of
the first repast, and wash the dishes. He remembered his new
bargain. Very well! he would refuse positively, take his dismissal,
and leave that morning! He hurriedly dressed himself, and followed
the Chinaman into the open air.

The fog still hung upon the distant bay and hid the opposite point.
But the sun shone with dry Californian brilliancy over the league-
long field around him, revealing every detail of the rancho with
sharp, matter of fact directness, and without the least illusion of
distance or romance. The rough, unplaned, unpainted walls of the
dinner-shed stood out clearly before him; the half-filled buckets
of water on the near platform, and the immense tubs piled with
dirty dishes. He scowled darkly as he walked forward, conscious,
nevertheless, of the invigorating discipline of the morning air and
the wholesome whip in the sky above him. He entered sharply and
aggressively. To his relief, the room at first sight seemed, like
the dormitory he had just left, to be empty. But a voice, clear,
dry, direct, and practical as the morning itself, spoke in his ear:
"Mornin', Reddy! My daughter says you're willin' to take an indoor
job, and I reckon, speakin' square, as man to man, it's more in
your line than what you've bin doin'. It mayn't be high-toned
work, but work's WORK anyhow you can fix it; and the only
difference I kin see is in the work that a man does squarely, and
the work that he shirks."

"But," said Reddy hurriedly, "there's a mistake. I came here only
to"--

"Work like the others, I understand. Well, you see you CAN'T. You
do your best, I know. I ain't findin' fault, but it ain't in your
line. THIS is, and the pay is better."

"But," stammered Reddy, "Miss Woodridge didn't understand"--

"Yes, she did," returned Woodridge impatiently, "and she told me.
She says she'll show you round at first. You'll catch on all
right. Sit down and eat your breakfast, and she'll be along before
you're through. Ez for ME, I must get up and get. So long!" and
before Reddy had an opportunity to continue his protest, he turned
away.

The young man glanced vexatiously around him. A breakfast much
better in service and quality than the one he had been accustomed
to smoked on the table. There was no one else in the room. He
could hear the voices of the Chinese waiters in the kitchen beyond.
He was healthily hungry, and after a moment's hesitation sat down
and began his meal. He could expostulate with her afterward, and
withdraw his promise. He was entitled to his breakfast, anyway!

Once or twice, while thus engaged, he heard the door of the kitchen
open and the clipping tread of the Chinese waiters, who deposited
some rattling burden on the adjacent tables, but he thought it
prudent not to seem to notice them. When he had finished, the
pleasant, hesitating, boyish contralto of Miss Woodridge fell upon
his ear.

"When you're ready, I'll show you how to begin your work."

He turned quickly, with a flush of mortification at being
discovered at his repast, and his anger returned. But as his eyes
fell upon her delicately colored but tranquil face, her well-shaped
figure, coquettishly and spotlessly cuffed, collared, and aproned,
and her clear blue but half-averted eyes, he again underwent a
change. She certainly was very pretty--that most seductive
prettiness which seemed to be warmed into life by her consciousness
of himself. Why should he take her or himself so seriously? Why
not play out the farce, and let those who would criticise him and
think his acceptance of the work degrading understand that it was
only an affair of gallantry. He could afford to serve Woodridge at
least a few weeks for the favor of this Rachel! Forgetful of his
rebuff of the night before, he fixed his brown eyes on hers with an
audacious levity.

"Oh yes--the work! Let us see it. I'm ready in name and nature
for anything that Miss Woodridge wants of me. I'm just dying to
begin."

His voice was raised slightly, with a high comedy jauntiness, for
the benefit of the Chinese waiters who might be lingering to see
the "Mellican man" assume their functions. But it failed in
effect. With their characteristic calm acceptance of any
eccentricity in a "foreign devil," they scarcely lifted their eyes.
The young girl pointed to a deep basket filled with dishes which
had been placed on the larger table, and said, without looking at
Reddy:--

"You had better begin by 'checking' the crockery. That is,
counting the pieces separately and then arranging them in sets as
they come back from washing. There's the book to compare them with
and to set down what is broken, missing, or chipped. You'll have a
clean towel with you to wipe the pieces that have not been cleaned
enough; or, if they are too dirty, you'll send them back to the
kitchen."

"Couldn't I wash them myself?" said Reddy, continuing his
ostentatious levity.

"Not yet," said the girl, with grave hesitation; "you'd break
them."

She stood watching him, as with affected hilarity he began to take
the dishes from the basket. But she noticed that in spite of this
jocular simulation his grasp was firm and delicate, and that there
was no clatter--which would have affected her sensitive ear--as he
put them down. She laid a pencil and account book beside him and
turned away.

"But you are not going?" he said, in genuine surprise.

"Yes," she said quietly, "until you get through 'checking.' Then
I'll come back and show you what you have to do next. You're
getting on very well."

"But that was because you were with me."

She colored slightly and, without looking at him, moved slowly to
the door and disappeared.

Reddy went back to his work, disappointed but not discomfited. He
was getting accustomed to the girl's eccentricities. Whether it
was the freshness of the morning air and sunlight streaming in at
the open windows, the unlooked-for solitude and security of the
empty room, or that there was nothing really unpleasant in his
occupation, he went on cheerfully "checking" the dishes, narrowly
examining them for chips and cracks, and noting them in the book.
Again discovering that a few were imperfectly cleaned and wiped, he
repaired the defect with cold water and a towel without the least
thought of the operation being degrading. He had finished his task
in half an hour; she had not returned; why should he not go on and
set the table? As he straightened and turned the coarse table-
cloth, he made the discovery that the long table was really
composed of half a dozen smaller ones, and that the hideous
parallelogram which had always so offended him was merely the
outcome of carelessness and want of taste. Without a moment's
hesitation he set at work to break up the monotonous line and
rearranged the tables laterally, with small open spaces between
them. The task was no light one, even for a stronger man, but he
persevered in it with a new-found energy until he had changed the
whole aspect of the room. It looked larger, wider, and less
crowded; its hard practical, workhouse-like formality had
disappeared. He had paused to survey it, panting still with his
unusual exertion, when a voice broke upon his solitude.

"Well, I wanter know!"

The voice was not Nelly's, but that of her mother,--a large-boned,
angular woman of fifty,--who had entered the room unperceived. The
accents were simply those of surprise, but on James Reddy's present
sensitive mood, coupled with the feeling that here was a new
witness to his degradation, he might have resented it; but he
detected the handsome, reserved figure of the daughter a few steps
behind her. Their eyes met; wonderful to relate, the young girl's
no longer evaded him, but looked squarely into his with a bright
expression of pleasure he had not seen before. He checked himself
with a sudden thrill of gratification.

"Well, I declare," continued Mrs. Woodridge; "is that YOUR idea--or
yours, Helen?"

Here Reddy simply pointed out the advantages for serving afforded
by the new arrangement; that all the tables were equally and
quickly accessible from the serving-table and sideboard, and that
it was no longer necessary to go the whole length of the room to
serve the upper table. He tactfully did not refer to the improved
appearance of the room.

"Well, as long as it ain't mere finikin," said the lady graciously,
"and seems to bring the folks and their vittles nearer together--
we'll try it to-day. It does look kinder CITYFIED--and I reckoned
that was all the good it was. But I calkilated you were goin' to
check the crockery this morning."

"It's done," said Reddy, smilingly handing her the account-book.

Mrs. Woodridge glanced over it, and then surveyed her new
assistant.

"And you didn't find any plates that were dirty and that had to be
sent back?"

"Yes, two or three, but I cleaned them myself."

Mrs. Woodridge glanced at him with a look of approving curiosity,
but his eyes were just then seeking her daughter's for a more
grateful sympathy. All of which the good lady noted, and as it
apparently answered the unasked question in her own mind, she only
uttered the single exclamation, "Humph!"

But the approbation he received later at dinner, in the
satisfaction of his old companions with the new arrangement, had
also the effect of diverting from him the criticism he had feared
they would make in finding him installed as an assistant to Mrs.
Woodridge. On the contrary, they appeared only to recognize in him
some especial and superior faculty utilized for their comfort, and
when the superintendent, equally pleased, said it was "all Reddy's
own idea," no one doubted that it was this particular stroke of
genius which gained him the obvious promotion. If he had still
thought of offering his flirtation with Nelly as an excuse, there
was now no necessity for any. Having shown to his employers his
capacity for the highest and lowest work, they naturally preferred
to use his best abilities--and he was kept from any menial service.
His accounts were so carefully and intelligently rendered that the
entire care of the building and its appointments was intrusted to
him. At the end of the week Mr. Woodridge took him aside.

"I say, you ain't got any job in view arter you finish up here, hev
ye?"

Reddy started. Scarcely ten days ago he had a hundred projects,
schemes, and speculations, more or less wild and extravagant,
wherewith he was to avenge and recoup himself in San Francisco.
Now they were gone he knew not where and how. He briefly said he
had not.

"Because," continued Woodridge, "I've got an idea of startin' a
hotel in the Oak Grove, just on the slope back o' the rancho. The
company's bound to make some sort o' settlement there for the
regular hands, and the place is pooty enough for 'Frisco people who
want to run over here and get set up for a day or two. Thar's
plenty of wood and water up thar, and the company's sure to have a
wharf down on the shore. I'll provide the capital, if you will put
in your time. You can sling in ez much style as you like there"
(this was an allusion to Reddy's attempt to enliven the blank walls
with colored pictures from the illustrated papers and green
ceanothus sprays from the slope); "in fact, the more style the
better for them city folks. Well, you think it over."

He did. But meantime he seemed to make little progress in his
court of the superintendent's daughter. He tried to think it was
because he had allowed himself to be diverted by his work, but
although she always betrayed the same odd physical consciousness of
his presence, it was certain that she never encouraged him. She
gave him the few directions that his new occupation still made
necessary, and looked her approval of his success. But nothing
more. He was forced to admit that this was exactly what she might
have done as the superintendent's daughter to a deserving employee.
Whereat, for a few days he assumed an air of cold and ceremonious
politeness, until perceiving that, far from piquing the girl, it
seemed to gratify her, and even to render her less sensitive in his
company, he sulked in good earnest. This proving ineffective
also,--except to produce a kind of compassionate curiosity,--his
former dull rage returned. The planting of the rancho was nearly
over; his service would be ended next week; he had not yet given
his answer to Woodridge's proposition; he would decline it and cut
the whole concern!

It was a crisp Sunday morning. The breakfast hour was later on
that day to allow the men more time for their holiday, which,
however, they generally spent in cards, gossip, or reading in their
sleeping sheds. It usually delayed Reddy's work, but as he cared
little for the companionship of his fellows, it enabled him,
without a show of unsociability, to seclude himself in the dining-
room. And this morning he was early approached by his employer.

"I'm goin' to take the women folks over to Oakdale to church," said
Mr. Woodridge; "ef ye keer to join us thar's a seat in the wagon,
and I'll turn on a couple of Chinamen to do the work for you, just
now; and Nelly or the old woman will give you a lift this afternoon
with the counting up."

Reddy felt instinctively that the invitation had been instigated
by the young girl. A week before he would have rejoiced at it; a
month ago he would have accepted it if only as a relief to his
degraded position, but in the pique of this new passion he almost
rudely declined it. An hour later he saw Nelly, becomingly and
even tastefully dressed,--with the American girl's triumphant
superiority to her condition and surroundings,--ride past in her
father's smart "carryall." He was startled to see that she looked
so like a lady. Then, with a new and jealous inconsistency,
significant of the progress of his passion, he resolved to go to
church too. She should see that he was not going to remain behind
like a mere slave. He remembered that he had still certain
remnants of his past finery in his trunk; he would array himself
in them, walk to Oakdale, and make one of the congregation. He
managed to change his clothes without attracting the attention of
his fellows, and set out.

The air was pure but keen, with none of the languor of spring in
its breath, although a few flowers were beginning to star the weedy
wagon-tracked lane, and there was an awakening spice in the wayside
southernwood and myrtle. He felt invigorated, although it seemed
only to whet his jealous pique. He hurried on without even
glancing toward the distant coast-line of San Francisco or even
thinking of it. The bitter memories of the past had been
obliterated by the bitterness of the present. He no longer thought
of "that woman;" even when he had threatened to himself to return
to San Francisco, he was vaguely conscious that it was not SHE who
was again drawing him there, but Nelly who was driving him away.

The service was nearly over when he arrived at the chilly little
corrugated-zinc church at Oakdale, but he slipped into one of the
back seats. A few worshipers turned round to look at him. Among
them were the daughters of a neighboring miller, who were slightly
exercised over the unusual advent of a good-looking stranger with
certain exterior signs of elegance. Their excitement was
communicated by some mysterious instinct to their neighbor, Nelly
Woodridge. She also turned and caught his eye. But to all
appearances she not only showed no signs of her usual agitation at
his presence, but did not seem to even recognize him. In the
acerbity of his pique he was for a moment gratified at what he
believed to be the expression of her wounded pride, but his
uneasiness quickly returned, and at the conclusion of the service
he slipped out of the church with one or two of the more restless
in the congregation. As he passed through the aisle he heard the
escort of the miller's daughters, in response to a whispered
inquiry, say distinctly: "Only the head-waiter over at the
company's rancho." Whatever hesitating idea Reddy might have had
of waiting at the church door for the appearance of Nelly vanished
before the brutal truth. His brow darkened, and with flushed
cheeks he turned his back upon the building and plunged into the
woods. This time there was no hesitation in his resolve; he would
leave the rancho at the expiration of his engagement. Even in a
higher occupation he felt he could never live down his reputation
there.

In his morose abstraction he did not know how long or how aimlessly
he had wandered among the mossy live-oaks, his head and shoulders
often imperiled by the downcurving of some huge knotted limb; his
feet straying blindly from the faint track over the thickly matted
carpet of chickweed which hid their roots. But it was nearly an
hour before he emerged upon a wide, open, wooded slope, and, from
the distant view of field and shore, knew that he was at Oak Grove,
the site of Woodridge's projected hotel. And there, surely, at a
little distance, was the Woodridges' wagon and team tied up to a
sapling, while the superintendent and his wife were slowly climbing
the slope, and apparently examining the prospect. Without waiting
to see if Nelly was with them, Reddy instantly turned to avoid
meeting them. But he had not proceeded a hundred yards before he
came upon that young lady, who had evidently strayed from the
party, and who was now unconsciously advancing toward him. A
rencontre was inevitable.

She started slightly, and then stopped, with all her old agitation
and embarrassment. But, to his own surprise, he was also
embarrassed and even tongue-tied.

She spoke first.

"You were at church. I didn't quite know you in--in--these
clothes."

In her own finery she had undergone such a change to Reddy's
consciousness that he, for the first time in their acquaintance,
now addressed her as on his own level, and as if she had no
understanding of his own feelings.

"Oh," he said, with easy bitterness, "OTHERS did, if you did not.
They all detected the 'head-waiter' at the Union Company's rancho.
Even if I had accepted your kindness in offering me a seat in your
wagon it would have made no difference." He was glad to put this
construction on his previous refusal, for in the new relations
which seemed to be established by their Sunday clothes he was
obliged to soften the churlishness of that refusal also.

"I don't think you'd look nice setting the table in kid gloves,"
she said, glancing quickly at his finery as if accepting it as the
real issue; "but you can wear what you like at other times. I
never found fault with your working clothes."

There was such a pleasant suggestion in her emphasis that his ill-
humor softened. Her eyes wandered over the opposite grove, where
her unconscious parents had just disappeared.

"Papa's very keen about the hotel," she continued, "and is going to
have the workmen break ground to-morrow. He says he'll have it up
in two months and ready to open, if he has to make the men work
double time. When you're manager, you won't mind what folks say."

There was no excuse for his further hesitation. He must speak out,
but he did it in a half-hearted way.

"But if I simply go away--WITHOUT being manager--I won't hear their
criticism either."

"What do you mean?" she said quickly.

"I've--I've been thinking of--of going back to San Francisco,"
he stammered awkwardly.

A slight flush of contemptuous indignation passed over her face,
and gave it a strength and expression he had never seen there
before. "Oh, you've not reformed yet, then?" she said, under her
scornful lashes.

"I don't understand you," he said, flushing.

"Father ought to have told you," she went on dryly, "that that
woman has gone off to the Springs with her husband, and you won't
see HER at San Francisco."

"I don't know what you mean--and your father seems to take an
unwarrantable interest in my affairs," said Reddy, with an anger
that he was conscious, however, was half simulated.

"No more than he ought to, if he expects to trust you with all HIS
affairs," said the girl shortly; "but you had better tell him you
have changed your mind at once, before he makes any further
calculations on your staying. He's just over the hill there, with
mother."

She turned away coldly as she spoke, but moved slowly and in the
direction of the hill, although she took a less direct trail than
the one she had pointed to him. But he followed her, albeit still
embarrassedly, and with that new sense of respect which had checked
his former surliness. There was her strong, healthy, well-
developed figure moving before him, but the modish gray dress
seemed to give its pronounced outlines something of the dignity of
a goddess. Even the firm hands had the distinguishment of character.

"You understand," he said apologetically, "that I mean no
discourtesy to your father or his offer. And"--he hesitated--
"neither is my reason what you would infer."

"Then what is it?" she asked, turning to him abruptly. "You know
you have no other place when you leave here, nor any chance as good
as the one father offers you. You are not fit for any other work,
and you know it. You have no money to speculate with, nor can you
get any. If you could, you would have never stayed here."

He could not evade the appalling truthfulness of her clear eyes.
He knew it was no use to lie to her; she had evidently thoroughly
informed herself regarding his past; more than that, she seemed to
read his present thoughts. But not all of them! No! he could
startle her still! It was desperate, but he had nothing now to
lose. And she liked the truth,--she should have it!

"You are right," he said shortly; "these are not my reasons."

"Then what reason have you?"

"You!"

"Me?" she repeated incredulously, yet with a rising color.

"Yes, YOU! I cannot stay here, and have you look down upon me."

"I don't look down on you," she said simply, yet without the haste
of repelling an unjust accusation. "Why should I? Mother and I
have done the same work that you are doing,--if that's what you
mean; and father, who is a man like yourself, helped us at first,
until he could do other things better." She paused. "Perhaps you
think so because YOU looked down on us when you first came here."

"But I didn't," said Reddy quickly.

"You did," said the young girl quietly. "That's why you acted
toward me as you did the night you walked home with me. You would
not have behaved in that way to any San Francisco young lady--and
I'm not one of your--fast--MARRIED WOMEN."

Reddy felt the hot blood mount to his cheek, and looked away. "I
was foolish and rude--and I think you punished me at the time," he
stammered. "But you see I was right in saying you looked down on
me," he concluded triumphantly.

This was at best a feeble sequitur, but the argument of the
affections is not always logical. And it had its effect on the
girl.

"I wasn't thinking of THAT," she said. "It's that you don't know
your own mind."

"If I said that I would stay and accept your father's offer, would
you think that I did?" he asked quickly.

"I should wait and see what you actually DID do," she replied.

"But if I stayed--and--and--if I told you that I stayed on YOUR
account--to be with you and near you only--would you think that a
proof?" He spoke hesitatingly, for his lips were dry with a
nervousness he had not known before.

"I might, if you told father you expected to be engaged on those
terms. For it concerns HIM as much as me. And HE engages you, and
not I. Otherwise I'd think it was only your talk."

Reddy looked at her in astonishment. There was not the slightest
trace of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest
eyes, and yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in
its fullest sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually
referred him to her father. He was pleased, frightened, and
utterly unprepared.

"But what would YOU say, Nelly?" He drew closer to her and held
out both his hands. But she retreated a step and slipped her own
behind her.

"Better see what father says first," she said quietly. "You may
change your mind again and go back to San Francisco."

He was confused, and reddened again. But he had become accustomed
to her ways; rather, perhaps, he had begun to recognize the quaint
justice that underlaid them, or, possibly, some better self of his
own, that had been buried under bitterness and sloth and struggled
into life. "But whatever he says," he returned eagerly, "cannot
alter my feelings to YOU. It can only alter my position here, and
you say you are above being influenced by that. Tell me, Nelly--
dear Nelly! have you nothing to say to me, AS I AM, or is it only
to your father's manager that you would speak?" His voice had an
unmistakable ring of sincerity in it, and even startled him--half
rascal as he was!

The young girl's clear, scrutinizing eyes softened; her red
resolute lips trembled slightly and then parted, the upper one
hovering a little to one side over her white teeth. It was Nelly's
own peculiar smile, and its serious piquancy always thrilled him.
But she drew a little farther back from his brightening eyes,
her hands still curled behind her, and said, with the faintest
coquettish toss of her head toward the hill: "If you want to see
father, you'd better hurry up."

With a sudden determination as new to him as it was incomprehensible,
Reddy turned from her and struck forward in the direction of the
hill. He was not quite sure what he was going for. Yet that he,
who had only a moment before fully determined to leave the rancho
and her, was now going to her father to demand her hand as a
contingency of his remaining did not strike him as so extravagant
and unexpected a denouement as it was a difficult one. He was only
concerned HOW, and in what way, he should approach him. In a moment
of embarrassment he hesitated, turned, and looked behind him.

She was standing where he had left her, gazing after him, leaning
forward with her hands still held behind her. Suddenly, as with an
inspiration, she raised them both, carried them impetuously to her
lips, blew him a dozen riotous kisses, and then, lowering her head
like a colt, whisked her skirt behind her, and vanished in the
cover.


III.


It was only May, but the freshness of early summer already clothed
the great fields of the rancho. The old resemblance to a sea was
still there, more accented, perhaps, by the undulations of bluish-
green grain that rolled from the actual shore-line to the
foothills. The farm buildings were half submerged in this glowing
tide of color and lost their uncouth angularity with their hidden
rude foundations. The same sea-breeze blew chilly and steadily
from the bay, yet softened and subdued by the fresh odors of leaf
and flower. The outlying fringe of oaks were starred through their
underbrush with anemones and dog-roses; there were lupines growing
rankly in the open spaces, and along the gentle slopes of Oak Grove
daisies were already scattered. And, as if it were part of this
vernal efflorescence, the eminence itself was crowned with that
latest flower of progress and improvement,--the new Oak Grove
Hotel!

Long, low, dazzling with white colonnades, verandas, and balconies
which retained, however, enough of the dampness of recent creation
to make them too cool for loungers, except at high noon, the hotel
nevertheless had the charms of freshness, youth, and cleanliness.
Reddy's fastidious neatness showed itself in all the appointments,
from the mirrored and marbled barroom, gilded parlors, and snowy
dining-room, to the chintz and maple furnishing of the bedrooms
above. Reddy's taste, too, had selected the pretty site; his good
fortune had afterward discovered in an adjoining thicket a spring
of blandly therapeutic qualities. A complaisant medical faculty
of San Francisco attested to its merits; a sympathetic press
advertised the excellence of the hotel; a novelty-seeking,
fashionable circle--as yet without laws and blindly imitative--
found the new hotel an admirable variation to the vulgar ordinary
"across the bay" excursion, and an accepted excuse for a novel
social dissipation. A number of distinguished people had already
visited it; certain exclusive families had secured the best rooms;
there were a score of pretty women to be seen in its parlors; there
had already been a slight scandal. Nothing seemed wanting to
insure its success.

Reddy was passing through the little wood where four months before
he had parted from Kelly Woodridge to learn his fate from her
father. He remembered that interview to which Nelly's wafted kiss
had inspired him. He recalled to-day, as he had many times before,
the singular complacency with which Mr. Woodridge had received his
suit, as if it were a slight and unimportant detail of the business
in hand, and how he had told him that Kelly and her mother were
going to the "States" for a three months' visit, but that after her
return, if they were both "still agreed," he, Woodridge, would make
no objection. He remembered the slight shock which this announcement
of Kelly's separation from him during his probationary labors had
given him, and his sudden suspicion that he had been partly tricked
of his preliminary intent to secure her company to solace him. But
he had later satisfied himself that she knew nothing of her father's
intentions at the time, and he was fain to content himself with a
walk through the fields at her side the day she departed, and a
single kiss--which left him cold. And now in a few days she would
return to witness the successful fufillment of his labors, and--
reward him!

It was certainly a complacent prospect. He could look forward to a
sensible, prosperous, respectable future. He had won back his good
name, his fortune, and position,--not perhaps exactly in the way he
had expected,--and he had stilled the wanton, foolish cravings of
his passionate nature in the calm, virginal love of an honest,
handsome girl who would make him a practical helpmeet, and a
comfortable, trustworthy wife. He ought to be very happy. He had
never known such perfect health before; he had lost his reckless
habits; his handsome, nervous face had grown more placid and
contented; his long curls had been conventionally clipped; he had
gained flesh unmistakably, and the lower buttons of the slim
waistcoat he had worn to church that memorable Sunday were too
tight for comfort or looks. HE WAS happy; yet as he glanced over
the material spring landscape, full of practical health, blossom,
and promise of fruition, it struck him that the breeze that blew
over it was chilly, even if healthful; and he shivered slightly.

He reached the hotel, entered the office, glanced at the register,
and passed through into his private room. He had been away for two
days, and noticed with gratification that the influx of visitors
was still increasing. His clerk followed into the room.

"There's a lady in 56 who wanted to see you when you returned. She
asked particularly for the manager."

"Who is she?"

"Don't know. It's a Mrs. Merrydew, from Sacramento. Expecting her
husband on the next steamer."

"Humph! You'll have to be rather careful about these solitary
married women. We don't want another scandal, you know."

"She asked for you by name, sir, and I thought you might know her,"
returned the clerk.

"Very well. I'll go up."

He sent a waiter ahead to announce him, and leisurely mounted the
stairs. No. 56 was the sitting-room of a private suite on the
first floor. The waiter was holding the door open. As he
approached it a faint perfume from the interior made him turn pale.
But he recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to close the
door sharply upon the waiter behind him.

"Jim," said a voice which thrilled him.

He looked up and beheld what any astute reader of romance will have
already suspected--the woman to whom he believed he owed his ruin
in San Francisco. She was as beautiful and alluring as ever,
albeit she was thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen
her. She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain
style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect
in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly
brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence of lace and ornament,
and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist
of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered had swept
away the last dregs of his fortune.

He took her hand mechanically, yet knowing whatever rage was in his
heart he had not the strength to refuse it.

"They told me it was Mrs. Merrydew," he stammered.

"That was my mother's name," she said, with a little laugh. "I
thought you knew it. But perhaps you didn't. When I got my
divorce from Dick--you didn't know that either, I suppose; it's
three months ago,--I didn't care to take my maiden name again; too
many people remembered it. So after the decree was made I called
myself Mrs. Merrydew. You had disappeared. They said you had gone
East."

"But the clerk says you are expecting your HUSBAND on the steamer.
What does this mean? Why did you tell him that?" He had so far
collected himself that there was a ring of inquisition in his
voice.

"Oh, I had to give him some kind of reason for my being alone when
I did not find you as I expected," she said half wearily. Then a
change came over her tired face; a smile of mingled audacity and
tentative coquetry lit up the small features. "Perhaps it is true;
perhaps I may have a husband coming on the steamer--that depends.
Sit down, Jim."

She let his hand drop, and pointed to an armchair from which she
had just risen, and sank down herself in a corner of the sofa, her
thin fingers playing with and drawing themselves through the
tassels of the cushion.

"You see, Jim, as soon as I was free, Louis Sylvester--you remember
Louis Sylvester?--wanted to marry me, and even thought that he was
the cause of Dick's divorcing me. He actually went East to settle
up some property he had left him there, and he's coming on the
steamer."

"Louis Sylvester!" repeated Reddy, staring at her. "Why, he was a
bigger fool than I was, and a worse man!" he added bitterly.

"I believe he was," said the lady, smiling, "and I think he still
is. But," she added, glancing at Reddy under her light fringed
lids, "you--you're regularly reformed, aren't you? You're stouter,
too, and altogether more solid and commercial looking. Yet who'd
have thought of your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but
speculate in wild-cat or play at draw poker. How did you drift
into it? Come, tell me! I'm not Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and
maybe I might like to go into the business too. You don't want a
partner, do you?"

Her manner was light and irresponsible, or rather it suggested a
childlike putting of all responsibility for her actions upon
others, which he remembered now too well. Perhaps it was this
which kept him from observing that the corners of her smiling lips,
however, twitched slightly, and that her fingers, twisting the
threads of the tassel, were occasionally stiffened nervously. For
he burst out: Oh yes; he had drifted into it when it was a toss up
if it wasn't his body instead that would be found drifting out to
sea from the first wharf of San Francisco. Yes, he had been a
common laborer,--a farm hand, in those fields she had passed,--a
waiter in the farm kitchen, and but for luck he might be taking her
orders now in this very hotel. It was not her fault if he was not
in the gutter.

She raised her thin hand with a tired gesture as if to ward off the
onset of his words. "The same old Jim," she repeated; "and yet I
thought you had forgotten all that now, and become calmer and more
sensible since you had taken flesh and grown so matter of fact.
You ought to have known then, as you know now, that I never could
have been anything to you as long as I was tied to Dick. And you
know you forced your presents on me, Jim. I took them from YOU
because I would take nothing from Dick, for I hated him. And I
never knew positively that you were in straits then; you know you
always talked big, Jim, and were always going to make your fortune
with the next thing you had in hand!"

It was true, and he remembered it. He had not intended this kind
of recrimination, but he was exasperated with her wearied
acceptance of his reproaches and by a sudden conviction that his
long-cherished grievance against her now that he had voiced it was
inadequate, mean, and trifling. Yet he could not help saying:--

"Then you had presents from Sylvester, too. I presume you did not
hate him, either?"

"He would have married me the day after I got my divorce."

"And so would I," burst out Reddy.

She looked at him fixedly. "You would?" she said with a peculiar
emphasis. "And now"--

He colored. It had been part of his revengeful purpose on seeing
her to tell her of his engagement to Kelly. He now found himself
tongue-tied, irresolute, and ashamed. Yet he felt she was reading
his innermost thoughts.

She, however, only lowered her eyes, and with the same tired
expression said: "No matter now. Let us talk of something nearer.
That was two months ago. And so you have charge of this hotel! I
like it so much. I mean the place itself. I fancy I could live
here forever. It is so far away and restful. I am so sick of
towns and cities, and people. And this little grove is so
secluded. If one had merely a little cottage here, one might be so
happy."

What did she mean?--what did she expect?--what did she think of
doing? She must be got rid of before Kelly's arrival, and yet he
found himself wavering under her potent and yet scarcely exerted
influence. The desperation of weakness is apt to be more brutal
than the determination of strength. He remembered why he had come
upstairs, and blurted out: "But you can't stay here. The rules are
very stringent in regard to--to strangers like yourself. It will
be known who you really are and what people say of you. Even your
divorce will tell against you. It's all wrong, I know--but what
can I do? I didn't make the rules. I am only a servant of the
landlord, and must carry them out."

She leaned back against the sofa and laughed silently. But she
presently recovered herself, although with the same expression of
fatigue. "Don't be alarmed, my poor Jim! If you mean your friend,
Mr. Woodridge, I know him. It was he, himself, who suggested my
coming here. And don't misunderstand him--nor me either. He's
only a good friend of Sylvester's; they had some speculation
together. He's coming here to see me after Louis arrives. He's
waiting in San Francisco for his wife and daughter, who come on the
same steamer. So you see you won't get into trouble on my account.
Don't look so scared, my dear boy."

"Does he know that you knew me?" said Reddy, with a white face.

"Perhaps. But then that was three months ago," returned the lady,
smiling, "and you know how you have reformed since, and grown ever
so much more steady and respectable."

"Did he talk to you of me?" continued Reddy, still aghast.

"A little--complimentary of course. Don't look so frightened. I
didn't give you away."

Her laugh suddenly ceased, and her face changed into a more nervous
activity as she rose and went toward the window. She had heard the
sound of wheels outside--the coach had just arrived.

"There's Mr. Woodridge now," she said in a more animated voice.
"The steamer must be in. But I don't see Louis; do you?"

She turned to where Reddy was standing, but he was gone.

The momentary animation of her face changed. She lifted her
shoulders with a half gesture of scorn, but in the midst of it
suddenly threw herself on the sofa, and buried her face in her
hands.

A few moments elapsed with the bustle of arrival in the hall and
passages. Then there was a hesitating step at her door. She
quickly passed her handkerchief over her wet eyes and resumed her
former look of weary acceptation. The door opened. But it was Mr.
Woodridge who entered. The rough shirt-sleeved ranchman had
developed, during the last four months, into an equally blunt but
soberly dressed proprietor. His keen energetic face, however, wore
an expression of embarrassment and anxiety, with an added
suggestion of a half humorous appreciation of it.

"I wouldn't have disturbed you, Mrs. Merrydew," he said, with a
gentle bluntness, "if I hadn't wanted to ask your advice before I
saw Reddy. I'm keeping out of his way until I could see you. I
left Nelly and her mother in 'Frisco. There's been some queer
goings-on on the steamer coming home; Kelly has sprang a new game
on her mother, and--and suthin' that looks as if there might be a
new deal. However," here a sense that he was, perhaps, treating
his statement too seriously, stopped him, and he smiled
reassuringly, "that is as may be."

"I don't know," he went on, "as I ever told you anything about my
Kelly and Reddy,--partik'lerly about Kelly. She's a good girl, a
square girl, but she's got some all-fired romantic ideas in her
head. Mebbee it kem from her reading, mebbee it kem from her not
knowing other girls, or seeing too much of a queer sort of men; but
she got an interest in the bad ones, and thought it was her mission
to reform them,--reform them by pure kindness, attentive little
sisterly ways, and moral example. She first tried her hand on
Reddy. When he first kem to us he was--well, he was a blazin'
ruin! She took him in hand, yanked him outer himself, put his foot
on the bedrock, and made him what you see him now. Well--what
happened; why, he got reg'larly soft on her; wanted to MARRY HER,
and I agreed conditionally, of course, to keep him up to the mark.
Did you speak?"

"No," said the lady, with her bright eyes fixed upon him.

"Well, that was all well and good, and I'd liked to have carried
out my part of the contract, and was willing, and am still. But
you see, Kelly, after she'd landed Reddy on firm ground, got a
little tired, I reckon, gal-like, of the thing she'd worked so
easily, and when she went East she looked around for some other
wreck to try her hand on, and she found it on the steamer coming
back. And who do you think it was? Why, our friend Louis
Sylvester!"

Mrs. Merrydew smiled slightly, with her bright eyes still on the
speaker.

"Well, you know he IS fast at times--if he is a friend of mine--and
she reg'larly tackled him; and as my old woman says, it was a sight
to see her go for him. But then HE didn't tumble to it. No!
Reformin' ain't in HIS line I'm afeard. And what was the result?
Why, Kelly only got all the more keen when she found she couldn't
manage him like Reddy,--and, between you and me, she'd have liked
Reddy more if he hadn't been so easy,--and it's ended, I reckon, in
her now falling dead in love with Sylvester. She swears she won't
marry any one else, and wants to devote her whole life to him!
Now, what's to be done! Reddy don't know it yet, and I don't know
how to tell him. Kelly says her mission was ended when she made a
new man of him, and he oughter be thankful for that. Couldn't you
kinder break the news to him and tell him there ain't any show for
him?"

"Does he love the girl so much, then?" said the lady gently.

"Yes; but I am afraid there is no hope for Reddy as long as she
thinks there's a chance of her capturing Sylvester."

The lady rose and went to the writing-table. "Would it be any
comfort to you, Mr. Woodridge, if you were told that she had not
the slightest chance with Sylvester?"

"Yes."

She wrote a few lines on a card, put it in an envelope, and handed
it to Woodridge. "Find out where Sylvester is in San Francisco,
and give him that card. I think it will satisfy you. And now as I
have to catch the return coach in ten minutes, I must ask you to
excuse me while I put my things together."

"And you won't first break the news to Reddy for me?"

"No; and I advise you to keep the whole matter to yourself for the
present. Good-by!"

She smiled again, fascinatingly as usual, but, as it seemed to him,
a trifle wearily, and then passed into the inner room. Years
after, in his practical, matter of fact recollections of this
strange woman, he always remembered her by this smile.

But she had sufficiently impressed him by her parting adjuration to
cause him to answer Reddy's eager inquiries with the statement that
Kelly and her mother were greatly preoccupied with some friends in
San Francisco, and to speedily escape further questioning. Reddy's
disappointment was somewhat mitigated by the simultaneous
announcement of Mrs. Merrydew's departure. But he was still more
relieved and gratified to hear, a few days later, of the marriage
of Mrs. Merrydew with Louis Sylvester. If, to the general surprise
and comment it excited, he contributed only a smile of cynical
toleration and superior self-complacency, the reader will
understand and not blame him. Nor did the public, who knew the
austere completeness of his reform. Nor did Mr. Woodridge, who
failed to understand the only actor in this little comedy who might
perhaps have differed from them all.

A month later James Reddy married Kelly Woodridge, in the chilly
little church at Oakdale. Perhaps by that time it might have
occurred to him that although the freshness and fruition of summer
were everywhere, the building seemed to be still unwarmed. And
when he stepped forth with his bride, and glanced across the
prosperous landscape toward the distant bay and headlands of San
Francisco, he shivered slightly at the dryly practical kiss of the
keen northwestern Trades.

But he was prosperous and comfortable thereafter, as the
respectable owner of broad lands and paying shares. It was said
that Mrs. Reddy contributed much to the popularity of the hotel by
her charming freedom from prejudice and sympathy with mankind; but
this was perhaps only due to the contrast to her more serious and
at times abstracted husband. At least this was the charitable
opinion of the proverbially tolerant and kind-hearted Baroness
Streichholzer (nee Merrydew, and relict of the late lamented Louis
Sylvester, Esq.), whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting at
Wiesbaden, where the waters and reposeful surroundings strongly
reminded her of Oakdale.




THE HEIR OF THE McHULISHES.


I.


The consul for the United States of America at the port of St.
Kentigern was sitting alone in the settled gloom of his private
office. Yet it was only high noon, of a "seasonable" winter's day,
by the face of the clock that hung like a pallid moon on the murky
wall opposite to him. What else could be seen of the apartment by
the faint light that struggled through the pall of fog outside the
lustreless windows presented the ordinary aspect of a business
sanctum. There were a shelf of fog-bound admiralty law, one or
two colored prints of ocean steamships under full steam, bow on,
tremendously foreshortened, and seeming to force themselves through
shadowy partitions; there were engravings of Lincoln and Washington,
as unsubstantial and shadowy as the dead themselves. Outside,
against the window, which was almost level with the street, an
occasional procession of black silhouetted figures of men and women,
with prayer-books in their hands and gloom on their faces, seemed to
be born of the fog, and prematurely to return to it. At which a
conviction of sin overcame the consul. He remembered that it was
the Sabbath day, and that he had no business to be at the consulate
at all.

Unfortunately, with this shameful conviction came the sound of a
bell ringing somewhere in the depths of the building, and the
shuffling of feet on the outer steps. The light of his fire had
evidently been seen, and like a beacon had attracted some wandering
and possibly intoxicated mariner with American papers. The consul
walked into the hall with a sudden righteous frigidity of manner.
It was one thing to be lounging in one's own office on the Sabbath
day, and quite another to be deliberately calling there on
business.

He opened the front door, and a middle-aged man entered, accompanying
and partly shoving forward a more diffident and younger one.
Neither appeared to be a sailor, although both were dressed in that
dingy respectability and remoteness of fashion affected by second
and third mates when ashore. They were already well in the hall,
and making their way toward the private office, when the elder man
said, with an air of casual explanation, "Lookin' for the American
consul; I reckon this yer's the consulate?"

"It is the consulate," said the official dryly, "and I am the
consul; but"--

"That's all right," interrupted the stranger, pushing past him, and
opening the door of the private office, into which he shoved his
companion. "Thar now!" he continued to the diffident youth,
pointing to a chair, and quite ignoring the presence of the consul;
"thar's a bit of America. Sit down thar. You're under the flag
now, and can do as you darn please." Nevertheless, he looked a
little disappointed as he glanced around him, as if he had expected
a different environment and possibly a different climate.

"I presume," said the consul suavely, "you wish to see me on some
urgent matter; for you probably know that the consulate is closed
on Sunday to ordinary business. I am here myself quite
accidentally."

"Then you don't live here?" said the visitor disappointedly.

"No."

"I reckon that's the reason why we didn't see no flag a-flyin' when
we was a-huntin' this place yesterday. We were directed here, but
I says to Malcolm, says I, 'No; it ain't here, or you'd see the
Stars and Stripes afore you'd see anythin' else.' But I reckon you
float it over your house, eh?"

The consul here explained smilingly that he did NOT fly a flag over
his lodgings, and that except on national holidays it was not
customary to display the national ensign on the consulate.

"Then you can't do here--and you a CONSUL--what any nigger can do
in the States, eh? That's about how it pans out, don't it? But I
didn't think YOU'D tumble to it quite so quick, Jack."

At this mention of his Christian name, the consul turned sharply on
the speaker. A closer scrutiny of the face before him ended with a
flash of reminiscence. The fog without and within seemed to melt
away; he was standing once more on a Western hillside with this
man; a hundred miles of sparkling sunshine and crisp, dry air
stretching around him, and above a blue and arched sky that roofed
the third of a continent with six months' summer. And then the fog
seemed to come back heavier and thicker to his consciousness. He
emotionally stretched out his hand to the stranger. But it was the
fog and his personal surroundings which now seemed to be unreal

"Why it's Harry Custer!" he said with a laugh that, however, ended
in a sigh. "I didn't recognize you in this half light." He then
glanced curiously toward the diffident young man, as if to identify
another possible old acquaintance.

"Well, I spotted you from the first," said Custer, "though I ain't
seen you since we were in Scott's Camp together. That's ten years
ago. You're lookin' at HIM," he continued, following the consul's
wandering eye. "Well, it's about him that I came to see you. This
yer's a McHulish--a genuine McHulish!"

He paused, as if to give effect to this statement. But the name
apparently offered no thrilling suggestion to the consul, who
regarded the young man closely for further explanation. He was a
fair-faced youth of about twenty years, with pale reddish-brown
eyes, dark hair reddish at the roots, and a singular white and pink
waxiness of oval cheek, which, however, narrowed suddenly at the
angle of the jaw, and fell away with the retreating chin.

"Yes," continued Custer; "I oughter say the ONLY McHulish. He is
the direct heir--and of royal descent! He's one of them McHulishes
whose name in them old history times was enough to whoop up the
boys and make 'em paint the town red. A regular campaign boomer--
the old McHulish was. Stump speeches and brass-bands warn't in it
with the boys when HE was around. They'd go their bottom dollar
and last cartridge--if they'd had cartridges in them days--on him.
That was the regular McHulish gait. And Malcolm there's the last
of 'em--got the same style of features, too."

Ludicrous as the situation was, it struck the consul dimly, as
through fog and darkness, that the features of the young man were
not unfamiliar, and indeed had looked out upon him dimly and
vaguely at various times, from various historic canvases. It was
the face of complacent fatuity, incompetency, and inconstancy,
which had dragged down strength, competency, and constancy to its
own idiotic fate and levels,--a face for whose weaknesses valor and
beauty had not only sacrificed themselves, but made things equally
unpleasant to a great many minor virtues. Nevertheless, the
consul, with an amused sense of its ridiculous incongruity to the
grim Scottish Sabbath procession in the street, and the fog-bound
volumes of admiralty law in the room, smiled affably.

"Of course our young friend has no desire to test the magic of his
name here, in these degenerate days."

"No," said Custer complacently; "though between you and me, old
man, there's always no tellin' what might turn up over in this yer
monarchy. Things of course are different over our way. But jest
now Malcolm will be satisfied to take the title and property to
which he's rightful heir."

The consul's face fell. Alas! it was only the old, old story. Its
endless repetitions and variations had been familiar to him even in
his youth and in his own land. "Ef that man had his rights," had
once been pointed out to him in a wild Western camp, "he'd be now
sittin' in scarlet on the right of the Queen of England!" The
gentleman who was indicated in this apocalyptical vision, it
appeared, simply bore a singular likeness to a reigning Hanoverian
family, which for some unexplained reason he had contented himself
with bearing with fortitude and patience. But it was in his
official capacity that the consul's experience had been the most
trying. At times it had seemed to him that much of the real
property and peerage of Great Britain was the inherited right of
penniless American republicans who had hitherto refrained from
presenting their legal claims, and that the habitual first duty of
generations of British noblemen on coming into their estates and
titles was to ship their heirs and next of kin to America, and then
forget all about them. He had listened patiently to claims to
positions more or less exalted,--claims often presented with
ingenuous sophistry or pathetic simplicity, prosecuted with great
good humor, and abandoned with invincible cheerfulness; but they
seldom culminated more seriously than in the disbursement of a few
dollars by the consul to enable the rightful owner of millions to
procure a steerage passage back to his previous democratic
retirement. There had been others, less sincere but more
pretentious in quality, to whom, however, a letter to the Heralds'
College in London was all sufficient, and who, on payment of
various fees and emoluments, were enabled to stagger back to New
York or Boston with certain unclaimed and forgotten luggage which a
more gallant ancestor had scorned to bring with him into the new
life, or had thrown aside in his undue haste to make them citizens
of the republic. Still, all this had grown monotonous and
wearisome, and was disappointing as coming through the intervention
of an old friend who ought to know better.

"Of course you have already had legal opinion on the subject over
there," said the consul, with a sigh, "but here, you know, you
ought first to get some professional advice from those acquainted
with Scotch procedure. But perhaps you have that too."

"No," said Custer cheerfully. "Why, it ain't only two months ago
that I first saw Malcolm. Tumbled over him on his own farm jest
out of MacCorkleville, Kentucky, where he and his fathers before
him had been livin' nigh a hundred years--yes, A HUNDRED YEARS, by
Jove! ever since they first emigrated to the country. Had a talk
over it; saw an old Bible about as big and as used up as that,"--
lifting the well-worn consular Bible,--"with dates in it, and heard
the whole story. And here we are."

"And you have consulted no lawyer?" gasped the consul.

"The McHulishes," said an unexpected voice that sounded thin and
feminine, "never took any legal decision. From the craggy summits
of Glen Crankie he lifted the banner of his forefathers, or raised
the war-cry, 'Hulish dhu, ieroe!' from the battlements of
Craigiedurrach. And the clan gathered round him with shouts that
rent the air. That was the way of it in old times. And the boys
whooped him up and stood by him." It was the diffident young man
who had half spoken, half recited, with an odd enthusiasm that even
the culminating slang could not make conventional.

"That's about the size of it," said Custer, leaning back in his
chair easily with an approving glance at the young man. "And I
don't know if that ain't the way to work the thing now."

The consul stared hopelessly from the one to the other. It had
always seemed possible that this dreadful mania might develop into
actual insanity, and he had little doubt but that the younger man's
brain was slightly affected. But this did not account for the
delusion and expectations of the elder. Harry Custer, as the
consul remembered him, was a level-headed, practical miner, whose
leaning to adventure and excitement had not prevented him from
being a cool speculator, and he had amassed more than a competency
by reason of his judicious foresight and prompt action. Yet he was
evidently under the glamour of this madman, although outwardly as
lazily self-contained as ever.

"Do you mean to tell me," said the consul in a suppressed voice,
"that you two have come here equipped only with a statement of
facts and a family Bible, and that you expect to take advantage of
a feudal enthusiasm which no longer exists--and perhaps never did
exist out of the pages of romance--as a means of claiming estates
whose titles have long since been settled by law, and can be
claimed only under that tenure? Surely I have misunderstood you.
You cannot be in earnest."

"Honest Injun," said Custer, nodding his head lazily. "We mean it,
but not jest that way you've put it. F'r instance, it ain't only
us two. This yer thing, ole pard, we're runnin' as a syndicate."

"A syndicate?" echoed the consul.

"A syndicate," repeated Custer. "Half the boys that were at Eagle
Camp are in it, and two of Malcolm's neighbors from Kentucky--the
regular old Scotch breed like himself; for you know that MacCorkle
County was settled by them old Scotch Covenanters, and the folks
are Scotch Presbyterians to this day. And for the matter of that,
the Eagle boys that are in it are of Scotch descent, or a kind of
blend, you know; in fact, I'm half Scotch myself--or Irish," he
added thoughtfully. "So you see that settles your argument about
any local opinion, for if them Scots don't know their own people,
who does?"

"May I ask," said the consul, with a desperate attempt to preserve
his composure, "what you are proposing to do?"

"Well," said Custer, settling himself comfortably back in his chair
again, "that depends. Do you remember the time that we jumped them
Mexican claims on the North Fork--the time them greasers wanted to
take in the whole river-bank because they'd found gold on one of
the upper bars? Seems to me we jest went peaceful-like over there
one moonshiny night, and took up THEIR stakes and set down OURS.
Seems to me YOU were one of the party."

"That was in our own country," returned the consul hastily, "and
was an indefensible act, even in a lawless frontier civilization.
But you are surely not mad enough even to conceive of such a thing
HERE!"

"Keep your hair on, Jack," said Custer lazily. "What's the matter
with constitutional methods, eh? Do you remember the time when we
didn't like Pueblo rules, and we laid out Eureka City on their
lines, and whooped up the Mexicans and diggers to elect mayor and
aldermen, and put the city front on Juanita Creek, and then
corraled it for water lots? Seems to me you were county clerk
then. Now who's to keep Dick Macgregor and Joe Hamilton, that are
both up the Nile now, from droppin' in over here to see Malcolm in
his own house? Who's goin' to object to Wallace or Baird, who are
on this side, doin' the Eytalian lakes, from comin' here on their
way home; or Watson and Moore and Timley, that are livin' over in
Paris, from joinin' the boys in givin' Malcolm a housewarmin' in
his old home? What's to keep the whole syndicate from gatherin' at
Kelpie Island up here off the west coast, among the tombs of
Malcolm's ancestors, and fixin' up things generally with the clan?"

"Only one thing," said the consul, with a gravity which he
nevertheless felt might be a mistaken attitude. "You shouldn't
have told ME about it. For if, as your old friend, I cannot keep
you from committing an unconceivable folly, as the American consul
here it will be my first duty to give notice to our legation, and
perhaps warn the authorities. And you may be sure I will do it."

To his surprise Custer leaned forward and pressed his hand with an
expression of cheerful relief. "That's so, old pard; I reckoned on
it. In fact, I told Malcolm that that would be about your gait.
Of course you couldn't do otherwise. And it would have been
playin' it rather low down on you to have left you out in the cold--
without even THAT show in the game. For what you will do in
warnin' the other fellows, don't you see, will just waken up the
clan. It's better than a campaign circular."

"Don't be too sure of that," said the consul, with a half-
hysterical laugh. "But we won't consider so lamentable a
contingency. Come and dine with me, both of you, and we'll discuss
the only thing worth discussing,--your LEGAL rights,--and you can
tell me your whole story, which, by the way, I haven't heard."

"Sorry, Jack, but it can't be done," said Custer, with his first
approach to seriousness of manner. "You see, we'd made up our mind
not to come here again after this first call. We ain't goin' to
compromise you."

"I am the best judge of that," returned the consul dryly. Then
suddenly changing his manner, he grasped Custer's hands with both
his own. "Come, Harry," he said earnestly; "I will not believe
that this is not a joke, but I beg of you to promise me one thing,--
do not move a step further in this matter without legal counsel.
I will give you a letter to a legal friend of mine--a man of
affairs, a man of the world, and a Scot as typical, perhaps, as any
you have mentioned. State your LEGAL case to him--only that; but
his opinion will show you also, if I am not mistaken, the folly of
your depending upon any sectional or historical sentiment in this
matter."

Without waiting for a reply, he sat down and hastily wrote a few
lines to a friendly local magnate. When he had handed the note to
Custer, the latter looked at the address, and showed it to his
young companion.

"Same name, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes," responded Mr. McHulish.

"Do you know him?" asked the consul, evidently surprised.

"We don't, but he's a friend of one of the Eagle boys. I reckon we
would have seen him anyhow; but we'll agree with you to hold on
until we do. It's a go. Goodby, old pard! So long."

They both shook the consul's hand, and departed, leaving him
staring at the fog into which they had melted as if they were
unreal shadows of the past.


II.


The next morning the fog had given way to a palpable, horizontally
driving rain, which wet the inside as well as the outside of
umbrellas, and caused them to be presented at every conceivable
angle as they drifted past the windows of the consulate. There was
a tap at the door, and a clerk entered.

"Ye will be in to Sir James MacFen?"

The consul nodded, and added, "Show him in here."

It was the magnate to whom he had sent the note the previous day,
a man of large yet slow and cautious nature, learned and even
pedantic, yet far-sighted and practical; very human and hearty in
social intercourse, which, however, left him as it found him,--with
no sentimental or unbusiness-like entanglements. The consul had
known him sensible and sturdy at board meetings and executive
councils; logical and convincing at political gatherings; decorous
and grave in the kirk; and humorous and jovial at festivities,
where perhaps later in the evening, in company with others, hands
were clasped over a libation lyrically defined as a "right guid
williewaught." On one of these occasions they had walked home
together, not without some ostentation of steadiness; yet when
MacFen's eminently respectable front door had closed upon him,
the consul was perfectly satisfied that a distinctly proper and
unswerving man of business would issue from it the next morning.

"Ay, but it's a soft day," said Sir James, removing his gloves.
"Ye'll not be gadding about in this weather."

"You got my note of introduction, I suppose?" said the consul, when
the momentous topic of the weather was exhausted.

"Oh, ay."

"And you saw the gentlemen?"

"Ay."

"And what's your opinion of--his claims?"

"He's a fine lad--that Malcolm--a fine type of a lad," said Sir
James, with an almost too effusive confidence. "Ye'll be thinking
so yourself--no doubt? Ay, it's wonderful to consider the
preservation of type so long after its dispersal in other lands.
And it's a strange and wonderful country that of yours, with its
plantations--as one might say--of homogeneity unimpaired for so
many years, and keeping the old faith too--and all its strange
survivals. Ay, and that Kentucky, where his land is--it will be a
rich State! It's very instructing and interesting to hear his
account of that remarkable region they call 'the blue grass
country,' and the stock they raise there. I'm obliged to ye, my
friend, for a most edifying and improving evening."

"But his claim--did he not speak of that?"

"Oh, ay. And that Mr. Custer--he's a grand man, and an amusing
one. Ye'll be great comrades, you and he! Man! it was delightful
to hear him tell of the rare doings and the bit fun ye two had in
the old times. Eh, sir, but who'd think that of the proper
American consul at St. Kentigern!" And Sir James leaned back in
his chair, and bestowed an admiring smile on that official.

The consul thought he began to understand this evasion. "Then you
don't think much of Mr. McHulish's claim?" he said.

"I'm not saying that."

"But do you really think a claim based upon a family Bible and a
family likeness a subject for serious consideration?"

"I'm not saying THAT either, laddie."

"Perhaps he has confided to you more fully than he has to me,
or possibly you yourself knew something in corroboration of his
facts."

His companion had evidently no desire to be communicative. But the
consul had heard enough to feel that he was justified in leaving
the matter in his hands. He had given him fair warning. Yet,
nevertheless, he would be even more explicit.

"I do not know," he began, "whether this young McHulish confided to
you his great reliance upon some peculiar effect of his presence
among the tenants, and of establishing his claim to the property by
exciting the enthusiasm of the clan. It certainly struck me that
he had some rather exaggerated ideas, borrowed, perhaps, from
romances he'd read, like Don Quixote his books of chivalry. He
seems to believe in the existence of a clan loyalty, and the actual
survival of old feudal instincts and of old feudal methods in the
Highlands. He appears to look upon himself as a kind of local
Prince Charlie, and, by Jove! I've an idea he's almost as crazy."

"And why should he na believe in his own kith and kin?" said Sir
James, quickly, with a sudden ring in his voice, and a dialectical
freedom quite distinct from his former deliberate and cautious
utterance. "The McHulishes were chieftains before America was
discovered, and many's the time they overran the border before they
went as far as that. If there's anything in blood and loyalty, it
would be strange if they did na respond. And I can tell ye, ma
frien', there's more in the Hielands than any 'romancer,' as ye
call them,--ay, even Scott hissel', and he was but an Edinboro'
man,--ever dreamed of. Don't fash yoursel' about that. And you
and me'll not agree about Prince Charlie. Some day I'll tell ye,
ma frien', mair aboot that bonnie laddie than ye'll gather from
your partisan historians. Until then ye'll be wise when ye'll be
talking to Scotchmen not to be expressing your Southern prejudices."

Intensely surprised and amused at this sudden outbreak of
enthusiasm on the part of the usually cautious lawyer, the consul
could not refrain from accenting it by a marked return to practical
business.

"I shall be delighted to learn more about Prince Charlie," he said,
smiling, "but just now his prototype--if you'll allow me to call
him so--is a nearer topic, and for the present, at least until he
assume his new titles and dignities, has a right to claim my
protection, and I am responsible for him as an American citizen.
Now, my dear friend, is there really any property, land, or title
of any importance involved in his claim, and what and where, in
Heaven's name, is it? For I assure you I know nothing practical
about it, and cannot make head or tail of it."

Sir James resumed his slow serenity, and gathered up his gloves.
"Ay, there's a great deer-forest in Ballochbrinkie, and there's
part of Loch Phillibeg in Cairngormshire, and there's Kelpie Island
off Moreovershire. Ay, there's enough land when the crofters are
cleared off, and the small sheep-tenants evicted. It will be a
grand property then."

The consul stared. "The crofters and tenants evicted!" he
repeated. "Are they not part of the clan, and loyal to the
McHulish?"

"The McHulish," said Sir James with great deliberation, "hasn't set
foot there for years. They'd be burning him in effigy."

"But," said the astonished consul, "that's rather bad for the
expectant heir--and the magic of the McHulish presence."

"I'm not saying that," returned Sir James cautiously. "Ye see he
can be making better arrangements with the family on account of it."

"With the family?" repeated the consul. "Then does he talk of
compromising?"

"I mean they would be more likely to sell for a fair consideration,
and he'd be better paying money to them than the lawyers. The
syndicate will be rich, eh? And I'm not saying the McHulish
wouldn't take Kentucky lands in exchange. It's a fine country,
that blue grass district."

The consul stared at Sir James so long that a faint smile came into
the latter's shrewd eyes; at which the consul smiled, too. A vague
air of relief and understanding seemed to fill the apartment.

"Oh, ay," continued Sir James, drawing on his gloves with easy
deliberation, "he's a fine lad that Malcolm, and it's a
praiseworthy instinct in him to wish to return to the land of his
forebears, and take his place again among them. And I'm noticing,
Mr. Consul, that a great many of your countrymen are doing the
same. Eh, yours is a gran' country of progress and ceevel and
religious liberty, but for a' that, as Burns says, it's in your
blood to turn to the auld home again. And it's a fine thing to
have the money to do it--and, I'm thinking, money well spent all
around. Good-morning. Eh, but I'm forgetting that I wanted to ask
you to dine with me and Malcolm, and your Mr. Custer, and Mr.
Watson, who will be one of your syndicate, and whom I once met
abroad. But ye'll get a bit note of invitation, with the day, from
me later."

The consul remembered that Custer had said that one of the "Eagle
boys" had known Sir James. This was evidently Watson. He smiled
again, but this time Sir James responded only in a general sort of
way, as he genially bowed himself out of the room.

The consul watched his solid and eminently respectable figure as it
passed the window, and then returned to his desk, still smiling.
First of all he was relieved. What had seemed to him a wild and
reckless enterprise, with possibly some grim international
complications on the part of his compatriots, had simply resolved
itself into an ordinary business speculation--the ethics of which
they had pretty equally divided with the local operators. If
anything, it seemed that the Scotchman would get the best of the
bargain, and that, for once at least, his countrymen were deficient
in foresight. But that was a matter between the parties, and
Custer himself would probably be the first to resent any suggestion
of the kind from the consul. The vision of the McHulish burned in
effigy by his devoted tenants and retainers, and the thought that
the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted for the
potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the
saturnine humor of the consul. He had taken an invincible dislike
to the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in
some extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity. But then
he had apparently imposed equally upon the practical Sir James.
The thought of this sham ideal of feudal and privileged incompetency
being elevated to actual position by the combined efforts of
American republicans and hard-headed Scotch dissenters, on whom the
soft Scotch mists fell from above with equal impartiality, struck
him as being very amusing, and for some time thereafter lightened
the respectable gloom of his office. Other engagements prevented
his attendance at Sir James's dinner, although he was informed
afterward that it had passed off with great eclat, the later singing
of "Auld lang Syne," and the drinking of the health of Custer and
Malcolm with "Hieland honors." He learned also that Sir James had
invited Custer and Malcolm to his lacustrine country-seat in the
early spring. But he learned nothing more of the progress of
Malcolm's claim, its details, or the manner in which it was
prosecuted. No one else seemed to know anything about it; it found
no echo in the gossip of the clubs, or in the newspapers of St.
Kentigern. In the absence of the parties connected with it, it
began to assume to him the aspect of a half-humorous romance. He
often found himself wondering if there had been any other purpose in
this quest or speculation than what had appeared on the surface, it
seemed so inadequate in result. It would have been so perfectly
easy for a wealthy syndicate to buy up a much more valuable estate.
He disbelieved utterly in the sincerity of Malcolm's sentimental
attitude. There must be some other reason--perhaps not known even
to the syndicate.

One day he thought that he had found it. He had received a note
addressed from one of the principal hotels, but bearing a large
personal crest on paper and envelope. A Miss Kirkby, passing
through St. Kentigern on her way to Edinburgh, desired to see the
consul the next day, if he would appoint an hour at the consulate;
or, as her time was limited, she would take it as a great favor if
he would call at her hotel. Although a countrywoman, her name
might not be so well known to him as those of her "old friends"
Harry Custer, Esq., and Sir Malcolm McHulish. The consul was a
little surprised; the use of the title--unless it referred to some
other McHulish--would seem to indicate that Malcolm's claim was
successful. He had, however, no previous knowledge of the title of
"Sir" in connection with the estate, and it was probable that his
fair correspondent--like most of her countrywomen--was more
appreciative than correct in her bestowal of dignities. He
determined to waive his ordinary business rules, and to call upon
her at once, accepting, as became his patriotism, that charming
tyranny which the American woman usually reserves exclusively for
her devoted countrymen.

She received him with an affectation of patronage, as if she had
lately become uneasily conscious of being in a country where there
were distinctions of class. She was young, pretty, and tastefully
dressed; the national feminine adaptability had not, however,
extended to her voice and accent. Both were strongly Southwestern,
and as she began to speak she seemed to lose her momentary
affectation.

"It was mighty good of you to come and see me, for the fact is, I
didn't admire going to your consulate--not one bit. You see, I'm a
Southern girl, and never was 'reconstructed' either. I don't
hanker after your Gov'ment. I haven't recognized it, and don't
want to. I reckon I ain't been under the flag since the wah. So
you see, I haven't any papers to get authenticated, nor any
certificates to ask for, and ain't wanting any advice or
protection. I thought I'd be fair and square with you from the
word 'go.'"

Nothing could be more fascinating and infectious than the mirthful
ingenuousness which accompanied and seemed to mitigate this
ungracious speech, and the consul was greatly amused, albeit
conscious that it was only an attitude, and perhaps somewhat worn
in sentiment. He knew that during the war of the rebellion, and
directly after it, Great Britain was the resort of certain
Americans from the West as well as from the South who sought social
distinction by the affectation of dissatisfaction with their own
government or the ostentatious simulation of enforced exile; but he
was quite unprepared for this senseless protraction of dead and
gone issues. He ventured to point out with good-humored practicality
that several years had elapsed since the war, that the South and
North were honorably reconciled, and that he was legally supposed to
represent Kentucky as well as New York. "Your friends," he added
smilingly, "Mr. Custer and Mr. McHulish, seemed to accept the fact
without any posthumous sentiment."

"I don't go much on that," she said with a laugh. "I've been
living in Paris till maw--who's lying down upstairs--came over and
brought me across to England for a look around. And I reckon
Malcolm's got to keep touch with you on account of his property."

The consul smiled. "Ah, then, I hope you can tell me something
about THAT, for I really don't know whether he has established his
claim or not."

"Why," returned the girl with naive astonishment, "that was just
what I was going to ask YOU. He reckoned you'd know all about it."

"I haven't heard anything of the claim for two months," said the
consul; "but from your reference to him as 'Sir Malcolm,' I
presumed you considered it settled. Though, of course, even then
he wouldn't be 'Sir Malcolm,' and you might have meant somebody
else."

"Well, then, Lord Malcolm--I can't get the hang of those titles
yet."

"Neither 'Lord' nor 'Sir'; you know the estate carries no title
whatever with it," said the consul smilingly.

"But wouldn't he be the laird of something or other, you know?"

"Yes; but that is only a Scotch description, not a title. It's not
the same as Lord."

The young girl looked at him with undisguised astonishment. A half
laugh twitched the corners of her mouth. "Are you sure?" she said.

"Perfectly," returned the consul, a little impatiently; "but do I
understand that you really know nothing more of the progress of the
claim?"

Miss Kirkby, still abstracted by some humorous astonishment, said
quickly: "Wait a minute. I'll just run up and see if maw's coming
down. She'd admire to see you." Then she stopped, hesitated, and
as she rose added, "Then a laird's wife wouldn't be Lady anything,
anyway, would she?"

"She certainly would acquire no title merely through her marriage."

The young girl laughed again, nodded, and disappeared. The consul,
amused yet somewhat perplexed over the naive brusqueness of the
interview, waited patiently. Presently she returned, a little out
of breath, but apparently still enjoying some facetious retrospect,
and said, "Maw will be down soon." After a pause, fixing her
bright eyes mischievously on the consul, she continued:--

"Did you see much of Malcolm?"

"I saw him only once."

"What did you think of him?"

The consul in so brief a period had been unable to judge.

"You wouldn't think I was half engaged to him, would you?"

The consul was obliged again to protest that in so short an
interview he had been unable to conceive of Malcolm's good fortune.

"I know what you mean," said the girl lightly. "You think he's a
crank. But it's all over now; the engagement's off."

"I trust that this does not mean that you doubt his success?"


 


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