The Southern Pacific Railway passes, today, not far from the site of General Trednoke’s ranch. But the events now to be narrated occurred some years before the era of transcontinental railroads: they were in the air, but not yet bolted down to the earth. The general, therefore, was a pioneer, and was by no means overrun with friends from the East in search of an agreeable winter climate. The easiest way to reach him—if you were not pressed for time—was round the cape which forms the southernmost point of South America and sticks its sharp snout inquiringly into the Antarctic solitudes, as if it scented something questionable there. The speediest route, though open to strange discomforts, was by way of the Isthmus; and then there were always the saddle, the wagon, and the stage, with the accompaniments of road-agents, tornadoes, deserts, and starvation.
Miss Grace Parsloe came via the Isthmus; and the latter part of her journey had been alleviated by the society of a young gentleman from New York, Freeman by name. There were other passengers on the vessel; but these two discovered sympathies of origin and education which made companionship natural. They sat together at table, leaned side by side over the taffrail, discussed their fellow-travellers, and investigated each other. As he lolled on the bench with folded arms and straw hat tilted back from his forehead she, glancing side-long, as her manner was, saw a sunburnt aquiline nose, a moustache of a lighter brown than the visage which it decorated, a lean, strong jaw, and a muscular neck. His forehead, square and impending, was as white as ivory in comparison with the face below; his hair, in accordance with the fashion introduced by the late war, was cropped close. But what especially moved Miss Grace were those long, lazy blue eyes, which seemed to tolerate everything, but to be interested in nothing,—hardly even in her. Now, Grace could not help knowing she was a pretty girl, and it was somewhat of a novelty to her that Freeman should appear so indifferent. It would have been difficult to devise a better opportunity than this to monopolize masculine admiration, and she fell to speculating as to what sort of an experience Mr. Freeman must have had, so to panoply him against her magic. On the other hand, she was the recipient of whatever attentions he could bring himself to detach from the horizon-line, or from his own thoughts (which appeared to amount, practically, to about the same thing). She had no other rivals; and a woman will submit amiably to a good deal of indifference, provided she be assured that no other woman is enjoying what she lacks.
Freeman, for his part, had nothing to complain of. Grace Parsloe was a singularly pretty girl. Singular properly qualifies her. She was not like the others,—by which phrase he epitomized the numerous comely young women whom he had, at various times and in several countries, attended, teased, and kissed. Both physically and mentally, she was very fine-wrought. Her bones were small; her body and limbs were slender, but beautifully fashioned. She was supple and vigorous. Grace is a product of brain as well as an effect of bodily symmetry: Grace had the quality on both counts. She answered to one’s conception of Mahomet’s houris, assuming that the conception is not of a fat person. Her head was small, but well proportioned,—compact as to the forehead, rather broad across the cheek-bones, thence tapering to the chin. Her eyes were blue, but of an Eastern strangeness of shape and setting; they were subject to great and sudden changes of expression, depending, apparently, on the varying state of her emotions, and betraying an intensity more akin to the Oriental temperament than to ours. There was in her something subtle and fierce; yet overlaying it, like a smooth and silken skin, were the conventional polish and bearing of an American school graduate. She was, in deed, noticeably artificial and self-conscious in manner and in the intonations of her speech; though it was an aesthetic delight to see her move or pose, and the quality of her voice was music’s self. But Freeman, after due meditation, came to the conclusion that this was the outcome of her recognition of her own singularity: in trying to be like other people, she fell into caricature. Freeman, somehow, liked her the better for it. Like most men of brain and pith, who have seen and thought much, he was thankful for a new thing, because, so far as it went, it renewed him. It pleased him to imagine that he could, with a word or a look, cause this veil of artifice to be thrown aside, and the primitive passion and fierceness behind it to start forth. He allowed himself to imagine, with a certain satisfaction, that were he to make this young woman jealous she would think nothing of thrusting a dagger between his ribs. Reality,—what a delight it is! The actual touch and feeling of the spontaneous natural creature have been so buried beneath centuries of hypocrisy and humbug that we have ceased to believe in them save as a metaphysical abstraction. But even as water, long depressed under-ground in perverse channels, surges up to the surface, and above it, at last, in a fountain of relief, so Nature, after enduring ages of outrage and banishment, leaps back to her rightful domain in some individual whom we call extraordinary because he or she is natural. Grace Parsloe did not seem (regarded as to her temperament and quality) to belong where she was: therefore she was a delightful incident there. Had she been met with in the days of the Old Testament, or in the depths of Persia or India at the present time, even, she might have appeared commonplace. But here she was in conventional costume, with conventional manners. And, just as the nautch-girls, and other Oriental dancers and posturers, wear a costume which suggests nature more effectively than does nature itself, so did Grace’s conventionality suggest to Freeman the essential absence of conventionality more forcibly than if he had seen her clad in a turban and translucent caftan, dancing off John the Baptist’s head, or driving a nail into that of Sisera. Grace certainly owed much of her importance to her situation, which rendered her foreign and piquante. But, then, everything, in this world, is relative.
Racial types seem to be a failure: when they become very marked, the race deteriorates or vanishes. In the counties of England, after only a thousand years, the women you meet in the rural districts and country towns all look like sisters. The Asiatics, of course, are much more sunk in type than the Anglo-Saxons; and they show us the way we would be going. Only, there is hope in rapid transit and the cosmopolitan spirit, and especially in these United States, which bring together the ends of the earth, and place side by side a descendant of the Puritans like Freeman, and a daughter of Irak-Ajemi.
“What are you coming to California for, Mr. Freeman?”
Freeman had already told her what he had been in the Isthmus for,—to paddle in miasmatic swamps with a view to the possibility of a canal in the remote, speculative future. He had given her a graphic and entertaining picture of the hideous and inconceivable life he had led there for six months, from which he had emerged the only member of a party of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows) who was not either dead by disease, by violence, or by misadventure, or had barely escaped with life and a shattered constitution. Freeman, after emerging from the miasmatic hell and lake of Gehenna, had taken a succession of baths, with soap and friction, had been attended by a barber and a tailor, and had himself attended the best table to be found for love or money in the charming town of Panama. He had also spent more than half of the week of his sojourn there in sleep; and he was now in the best possible condition, physical and mental,—though not, he admitted, pecuniary. As to morals, they had not reached that discussion yet. But, in all that he did say, Freeman exhibited perfect unreserve and frankness, answering without hesitation or embarrassment any question she chose to ask (and she asked some curious ones).
But when she asked him such an innocent thing as what he was after in California—an inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness than out of curiosity—Freeman stroked his yellow moustache with the thumb of the hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and for some time made no reply at all. Finally he said that California was a place he had never visited, and that it would be a pity to have been so near it and yet not have improved the opportunity of taking a look at it.
Grace instantly scented a mystery, and was not less promptly resolved to fathom it. And what must be the nature of a mystery attaching to a handsome man, unmarried, and evidently no stranger to the gentler sex? Of course there must be a woman in it! Her eyes glowed with azure fire.
“You have some acquaintances in California, I suppose?” she said, with an air of laborious indifference.
“Well,—yes; I believe I have,” Freeman admitted.
“Have they lived there long?”
“No; not over a few months. I accidentally heard from a person in Panama. I dropped a line to say I might turn up.”
“She——you haven’t had time to get an answer, then?”
Freeman inhaled a deep breath through his cigarette, tilted his head back, and allowed the smoke to escape slowly through his nostrils. In this manner, familiar to his deep-designing sex, he concealed a smile. Grace was, in some respects, as transparent as she was subtle. So long as the matter in hand did not touch her emotions, she had no difficulty in maintaining a deceptive surface; but emotion she could not disguise, though she was probably not aware of the fact; for emotion has a tendency to shut one’s own eyes and open what they can no longer see in one’s self to the gaze of outsiders.
“No,” he said, when he had recovered his composure. “But that won’t make any difference. We are on rather intimate terms, you see.”
“Oh! Is it long since you have met?”
“Pretty long; at least it seems so to me.”
Grace turned, and looked full at her companion. He did not meet her glance, but kept his profile steadily opposed, and went on smoking with a dreamy air, as if lost in memories and anticipations, sad, yet sweet.
“Really, Mr. Freeman, I hardly thought—you have always seemed to care so little about anything—I didn’t suspect you of so much sentiment.”
“I am like other men,” he returned, with a sigh. “My affections are not given indiscriminately; but when they are given,—you understand,—I——”
“Oh, I understand: pray don’t think it necessary to explain. I’m sure I’m very far from wishing to listen to confidences about another,—to——”
“Yes, but I like to talk about it,” interposed Freeman, earnestly. “I haven’t had a chance to open my heart, you know, for at least six months. And though you and I haven’t known each other long, I believe you to be capable of appreciating what a man feels when he is on his way to meet some one who——”
“Thank you! You are most considerate! But I shall be additionally obliged if you would tell me in what respect I can have so far forgotten myself as to lead you to think me likely to appreciate anything of the kind. I assure you, Mr. Freeman, I have never cared for any one; and nothing I have seen since I left home makes it probable that I shall begin now.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” said Freeman, slowly drawing another cigarette out of his bundle, and beginning to re-roll it with a dejected air.
“Indeed!”
“Yes: the fact is, I had hoped that you had begun to have a little friendly feeling for me. I am more than ready to reciprocate.”
“I hope you will spare me any insults, sir. I have no one to protect me, but——”
“I assure you, I mean no insult. You cannot help knowing that I think you as beautiful and fascinating a woman as I have ever met; but of course you can’t help being beautiful and fascinating. Do I insult you by having eyes? If so, I am sorry, but you will have to make the best of it.”
With this, he turned in his seat, and calmly confronted her. Beautiful she certainly was, at that moment; but it was the beauty of an angry serpent. She had a pencil in her hand, with which, a little while before, she had been sketching heads of some of the passengers in her little notebook. She was now handling this inoffensive object in such a way as to justify the fancy that, had it been charged with a deadly poison in its point, instead of with a bit of plumbago of the HH quality, she would have driven it into Freeman’s heart then and there.
“Is it no insult,” said she, in a sibilant voice, “to talk to me as you are doing, when you have just told me that you love another woman, and are going to meet her?”
Freeman’s brows gradually knitted themselves in a frown of apparent perplexity. “I must say I don’t understand you,” he observed, at length. “I am quite sure I have said nothing of the sort. How could I?”
“If you wish to quibble about words, perhaps not. But was not that your meaning?”
“No, it wasn’t. You are the only woman who has been in my thoughts to-day.”
“Mr. Freeman!”
“Well?”
“You have intimated very clearly that you are engaged—married, for aught I know—to a woman whom you are now on your way to meet——”
At this point she stopped. Freeman had interrupted her with a shout of laughter.
She had been very pale. She now flushed all over her face, and jumped to her feet.
“Sit down,” he said, laying a hand on her dress and (aided by a lurch of the vessel) pulling her into her seat again, “and listen to me. And then I shall insist upon an apology. This is too much!”
“I shall ask the captain——”
“You will not, I promise you. Look here! When I was in Panama, I met there a fellow I used to know in New York. He told me that he had recently crossed the continent with Professor Meschines, who used to teach geology and botany at Yale College, when he and I were students there. The professor had come over partly for the fun of the thing, and partly to look for specimens in the line of his profession. My friend parted from him at San Francisco: the professor was going farther south.”
“What has all this to do with the woman who——”
“It has this to do with it,—that the professor is the woman! He is over sixty years old, and has always been a good friend of mine; but I am not going to marry him. I am not engaged to him, he is not beautiful, nor even fascinating, except in the way of an elderly man of science. And he is the only human being, besides yourself, that I know or have ever heard of on the Pacific coast. Now for your apology!”
Grace emitted a long breath, and sank back in her seat, with her hands clasped in her lap. She raised her hands and covered her face with them. She removed them, sat erect, and bent an open-eyed, intent gaze upon her companion.
After this pantomime, she exclaimed, in the lowest and most musical of tones, “Oh! how hateful you are!” Then she cried out with animation, “I believe you did it on purpose!” Finally, she sank back again, with a soft laugh and sparkling eyes, at the same time stretching out her right arm towards him and placing her hand on his, with a whispered, “There, then!”
Freeman, accepting the hand for the apology, kissed it, and continued to hold it afterwards.
“Am I not a little goose?” she murmured.
“You certainly are,” replied Freeman.
“You mustn’t hold my hand any more.”
“Do you mean to withdraw your apology?”
“N—no; but it doesn’t follow that——”
“Oh, yes, it does. Besides, when a man receives such a delicate, refined, graceful, exquisite apology as this,”—here he lifted the hand, looked at it critically, and bestowed another kiss upon it,—“he would be a fool not to make the most of it.”
“Ah, I’m afraid you’re dangerous. You are well named—Freeman!”
“My name is Harvey: won’t you call me by it?”
“Oh, I can’t!”
“Try! Would it make it easier if I were to call you by yours?”
“Mine is Miss Parsloe.”
“Pooh! How can that be your name which you are going to change so soon? When I look at you, I see your name; when I think of you, I say it to myself,—Grace!”
“How do you know I am going to change my name soon—or ever?”
“Whom are you talking to?”
“To you,—Harvey! Oh!” She snatched her hand away and pressed it over her lips.
“How do I know you are beautiful, Grace, and—irresistible?”
“But I’m not! You’re making fun of me! Besides, I’m twenty.”
“How many times have you been engaged?”
“Never. Nobody wants to be engaged to a poor girl. Oh me!”
“Do you know what you are made of, Grace? Fire and flowers! Few men in the world are men enough to be a match for you. But what have you been doing with yourself all this time? Why do you come to a place like this?”
“Maybe I had a presentiment that... What nonsense we are talking! But what you said reminds me. It’s the strangest coincidence!”
“What is it?”
“Your Professor Meschines——”
“On the contrary, he is a most matter-of-fact old gentleman.”
“Do be quiet, and listen to me! When my mamma was a girl in school, there were two boys there,—it was a boy-and-girls’ school,—and they were great friends. But they both fell in love with my mamma——”
“I can understand that,” put in Freeman.
“How do you know I am like my mamma? Well, as I was saying, they both fell in love with her, and quarrelled with each other, and had a fight. The boy that won the fight is the man to whose house I am going.”
“Then he didn’t marry your mamma?”
“Oh, no; that was only a childish affair, and she married another man.”
“The one who got thrashed?”
“Of course not. But the one who got thrashed is your Professor Meschines.”
“I see! The poor old professor! And he has remained a bachelor all his life.”
“Mamma has often told me the story, and that the Trednoke boy went to West Point, and distinguished himself in the Mexican war, and married a Mexican woman, and the Meschines boy became a professor in Yale College. And now I am going to see one of them, and you to see the other. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“The first of a long series, I trust. Is this West-Pointer a permanent settler here?”
“Yes, for ever so long,—twenty years. He’s a widower, but he has a daughter—— Oh, I know you’ll fall in love with her!”
“Is she like you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her, or General Trednoke either.”
“Come to think of it, though, nobody is like you, Grace. Now, will you be so good as to apologize again?”
“Don’t you think you’re rather exacting, Harvey?”
However, the apology was finally repeated, and continued, more or less, during the rest of the voyage; and Grace quite forgot that she had never made Harvey tell what was really the cause of his coming to California. But she, on her side, had a secret. She never allowed him to suspect that the past eighteen months of her life had been passed as employee in a New York dry-goods store.
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