ROBERT ERNEST COWAN

 
 TOLD AT TUXEDO 
 
 A. M. EMORY 
 
 FROTH It is an open room, and good for winter. 
 
 CLO Why, very well, then ; I hope here be truths. 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 G, P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 &j)t ^nitherbothtr |)resfi 
 
 1887
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 1887 
 
 
 Press of 
 
 O. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 New York
 
 E57tr 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PROLOGUE ....... i 
 
 CO 
 
 CO 
 
 ^ I. CARMELITA CASTRO . . . . 10 
 
 2 II. THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL ... 43 
 
 ca 
 
 III. IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO . 65 
 
 ^ IV. A POINT OF LAW .... 96 
 & 
 
 V. IN SOLITUDE 113 
 
 EPILOGUE 142 
 
 276489
 
 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 THERE is no doubt that the appearance of a 
 blinding, unappeasable storm, when the general 
 temper is disposed to out-door sports, is annoy- 
 ing, especially when every facility for enjoying 
 these sports is at hand in alluring readiness. 
 But storms, like fate, like death, like landlords, 
 take no cognizance of individual tastes and in- 
 tentions, even when the individuals are of the 
 importance characterizing the gay company as- 
 sembled in the very prettiest club-house that 
 ever hid itself in the woods, like a patrician 
 beauty coyly deserting the brilliant town to 
 draw all true lovers after her into her sylvan 
 retreat. 
 
 Yet surely the unkindly elements without 
 might have been forgiven for the imprisonment 
 they enforced on all but a few of the most ad- 
 venturous spirits, for who but these singled 
 favorites of fortune could have found this luxu-
 
 2 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 rious captivity irksome ? Ah, fellow scribblers ! 
 have not we, nous autres, been also in Arcadia 
 and learned the exquisite pain of the crumpled 
 rose-leaf ? 
 
 The long, gay evening wore away, fainter 
 grew the 
 
 " Flashing of jewels and flutter of laces, 
 Tropical odors sweeter than musk. 
 
 The curtain of silvery azure had long since 
 hidden the bright and gallant forms that had 
 moved through the spirited scenes of the gay 
 little comedy on the stage in the ball-room. 
 The wild waltz music, sadder in its sweetness 
 than any song, had sobbed itself into quiet. 
 The circling chairs were no longer freighted 
 with the stately figures of lace-wrapped dowa- 
 gers, and the tripping feet no longer advanced 
 and retreated on the shining round of the floor. 
 One attendant, looking like a gigantic May-fly 
 in the green and gold livery of the club, flitted 
 alone across the deserted expanse of the splen- 
 did, silent room, with a sheet of music dropped 
 by a departed player, and only the echo of his 
 footsteps remained. 
 
 Outside on the piazza, the lanterns burned 
 low, and a faint mist gathered on the glass that 
 shut out the white winter world. The festoons 
 of Christmas green trembled no longer to the
 
 PROLOGUE. 3 
 
 tread of pacing couples, or hung above young 
 heads in suggestion of the garland God send 
 it too be ever green ! that might one day bind 
 young lives entangled amid the routs of this 
 pretty play-house. Glancing through the inner 
 windows one might have seen fair faces looking 
 back with parting smiles from the wide stair- 
 cases, while soft voices gently bade a last good- 
 night. These too soon were sounded in deeper 
 tones, and out of all the brilliant household but 
 six watchers remained by the Yule-tide blaze 
 on the wide hearth in the great hall. 
 
 Merrily the fire-light danced, throwing rosy 
 reflections on the polished oaken floor, sending 
 flickering shafts of flame to play hide-and-seek 
 among the rafters of Georgia pine, as though 
 the imprisoned wood spirits, set free from the 
 burning logs on the brass andirons, flew up to 
 search in condolence for sister sprites from 
 Southern forests, bound forever into the tim- 
 bered ceiling to look down on the passing 
 pageant below. 
 
 The silent group by the hearth gazed with 
 concerted pensiveness into the deep red embers. 
 No silk-swathed figure of gentle maid or stately 
 dame broke the masculine sobriety of attire. 
 Now and then from " lips of bearded bloom " 
 fell brief references to triumphs on the turf, to
 
 4 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 dark days on the fearsome street, to fair women 
 and nights of revel perhaps, then again came 
 silence. 
 
 At last the youngest of the circle rose and 
 walked with languid impatience through the 
 hall to the outer door. He came back with a 
 lounge of dismal acquiescence, and turned the 
 periodicals on the long table over with an idle, 
 petulant hand. 
 
 " How 's the weather, Harry?" asked a hand- 
 some man of forty, with the more generous in- 
 flection of one moved to contribute something 
 to the general fund of conversation, now much 
 reduced, rather than the tone of one who seeks 
 for information. 
 
 " Beastly ! " answered Harry, sadly. After 
 a few moments passed in silent reflection, he 
 added : " And it 's going to be worse to-mor- 
 row. There 's not the first chance that it will 
 let up." 
 
 " It 's a confounded shame," said the ques- 
 tioner, relapsing into quietude again. A slum- 
 berous calm descended upon the group, and 
 though no one moved or spoke or sighed with 
 gratification, there was evident relief that the 
 brief interruption to their aimless repose was 
 at an end. 
 
 But so, speedily, was their satisfaction. Har-
 
 PROLOGUE. 5 
 
 ry's wrongs rankled in his young soul. It was 
 not so many years since he, watched with terror 
 by his anxious nurse, had flung himself head- 
 long upon a painted sled and departed on his 
 mad career down a snow-covered hill on the 
 grounds of his father's country place. The 
 chief charm of that rapturous ride had not been 
 in the wild exultation with which he felt 
 "White Ranger" dart away on the true little 
 runners, nor yet the final sweep, sometimes 
 ending in a delicious, delirious tumble into a 
 contiguous snowbank, but in the blue eyes of a 
 neighboring infant, of the softer sex, who stood 
 by in the care of her less harassed attendant, 
 and clapped her tiny hands with terrified delight 
 as the small hero flashed by. Harry had 
 secretly plied her with gum-drops in those 
 early days, and vainly endeavored to persuade 
 her to share his perilous glory. And then the 
 years, the cruel, dividing years not many of 
 them, though, had come between and borne 
 her off to Europe and Harry to Harvard, and 
 it was all very soft, he knew, and the fellows 
 would never believe it of him, but he had seen 
 no one since in the gay world or out of it who 
 had kept such baby roses in soft cheeks, or 
 shaded them with such marvellous long lashes. 
 And now she was at Tuxedo, a little braver,
 
 6 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 very much taller, and a thousand times prettier. 
 And no trunk had been carried into the club- 
 house containing such a fetching toboggan suit 
 as the one which her maid had proudly exhib- 
 ited to his sister's maid. And who but Harry 
 should guide the glorified toboggan that should 
 bear that precious freight down the long slide ? 
 But her throat was delicate Harry thought a 
 good deal about that delicate throat in odd 
 moments, and if it stormed to-morrow she 
 would not be permitted to venture out of 
 doors. Poor Harry! 
 
 He looked at the pictures in Life ; he 
 read extracts from Vanity Fair, and the 
 Court Journal, pray what was that august 
 publication doing among the wooded hills of 
 New York ? he surreptitiously tore slips from 
 the file of the Scientific American, and rolled 
 them into admirable lamp-lighters, and at last 
 broke forth again : 
 
 " Oh, I say ! Did any of you ever see such 
 an infernal night as this ? " 
 
 No one seemed to regard this in the light of 
 a question, but rather as a piece of justifiably 
 dramatic rebellion against fate, and all were 
 rather surprised when a voice said in a very 
 grave and quiet tone, " Yes, my boy, I 've seen 
 a worse night."
 
 PROLOGUE. 7 
 
 There was a general turning of heads in the 
 direction of the speaker, who did not move his 
 own, but sat gazing at the smouldering, wink- 
 ing logs. He was a grave man, with an abun- 
 dance of fire in the dark eyes, and a sturdiness 
 in the quiet figure, that showed that the snow 
 on his thick hair and mustache must have fallen 
 fast and heavily in a few seasons. He was 
 attired with the elegant nicety that characterized 
 each lounger there, and the hint of something 
 bluff and weather-beaten beneath the fastidi- 
 ously correct appearance gave him an odd dis- 
 tinction. Something in the fine melancholy of 
 his tone entered into the mood of all who heard, 
 changing it as a sudden change in the light will 
 alter the whole aspect of a landscape. 
 
 " When was that, Mr. Lenox?" asked Harry, 
 with respectful earnestness. 
 
 Mr. Lenox made no answer for a little while, 
 and his thoughtful eyes, soft with revery, dwelt 
 on the dull blaze on the hearth. The others 
 sat waiting in mute surprise, until at last, slowly, 
 as if in meditative address to his own memory 
 rather than to the listening group, he spoke : 
 
 " It was in California, four and twenty years 
 ago, a night so wild, so wet, so pierced by cruel 
 winds " he stopped suddenly " I don't like 
 to remember that wind," he said.
 
 8 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 " I should hardly have thought that any 
 storm would have made any impression on you, 
 much less have lived in your memory for a 
 quarter of a century," said one listener, with a 
 good-humored glance at the powerful figure. 
 
 " You do not suppose I am cherishing a per- 
 sonal resentment against that one of all the 
 storms I have weathered," said Mr. Lenox, with 
 a half smile. But the smile faded quickly. 
 "Ah," he said in a low voice, " the wind that 
 night was driving the rain against the poor ruin 
 of a face that was once the fairest my eyes ever 
 looked on." 
 
 Van Corlear was one of the group. Now 
 Van lives on the surface, and keeps there with 
 determination, but he has sometimes an un- 
 comfortable consciousness of depths below that 
 are waiting, and waiting for him perhaps. Some- 
 thing in the words suggested those hidden 
 deeps, and made him uneasy. 
 
 " Ah," he said, with airy deference, " have 
 you a love-story for us, Mr. Lenox? We all 
 know the charm in those based on personal ex- 
 perience." 
 
 " No, sir," said Mr. Lenox, briefly. " If I had 
 ever loved that face, do you think I should speak 
 of it here and now? And the story I have to 
 tell is not a love-story."
 
 PROLOGUE. 9 
 
 " Let us have it, by all means, Mr. Lenox," 
 said a gentleman with a figure that suggested 
 the silken robe of justice even in evening dress. 
 " That qualification will be a recommendation 
 to those of us who are older than Van Corlear 
 and Harry here." 
 
 So, while the wind whistled and the snow 
 beat upon the panes without, he told them the 
 story of Carmelita Castro.
 
 I. 
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 
 
 IN the year eighteen fifty-four the social and 
 business circles of San Francisco were invaded 
 by a tall, blonde Englishman, by name Stanley 
 Wade, handsome, fluent, with a heartiness of 
 manner that atoned for his superior refinement 
 and the real elegance and grace of his pretty 
 wife, as fair and nearly as tall as he. He 
 brought letters of introduction from prominent 
 persons in London and New York to the lead- 
 ing merchants of the new city, which stated 
 him to be eminently competent and trustworthy, 
 and were of immediate use in securing for him 
 a most desirable place in the office of Robert 
 Stirling. You all know about Stirling, the 
 forty-niner. The strain of Scotch shrewdness 
 in his Yankee blood was a rare thing among 
 Calif ornians, and his success was largely due to 
 that touch of caution in his enterprise. Yet for 
 all that he was no cool-headed, canny Scot, but 
 had plenty of good red blood in his veins, and 
 could be rash enough on occasions, He had 
 
 IQ
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. II 
 
 the true American lavish instinct besides. He 
 had done a great deal for San Francisco ; had 
 built great blocks of shops and warehouses, had 
 laid out a beautiful park at the south end, and 
 at the time of which I speak, was much occu- 
 pied in the construction of an enormous building 
 to be used as a sugar refinery. He had long 
 felt the need of some one to fill the position of 
 confidential secretary, on whose convenient 
 shoulders he could lay a portion of his cares, 
 who could be safely trusted to act for him in 
 his occasional absences. Well, he was prone to 
 sudden likings, and Wad? elicited one of the 
 most pronounced of these. It was not long 
 before he gained the complete confidence of 
 his employer, and was entrusted with nearly all 
 the financial portion of his vast undertakings. 
 
 The Wades were admitted into such society as 
 the city afforded at that time, and soon made a 
 position for themselves which was of a very solid 
 character. They were regular attendants, as be- 
 coming good church people, at the services of the 
 Episcopal Chapel, were teachers in the Sunday- 
 School, and associated with all works of charity 
 and religion. If a missionary came from the 
 islands of the Pacific to tell his experiences 
 and solicit subscriptions, it was Wade who intro- 
 duced him to those whose beneficent instincts
 
 12 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 were best ascertained, who entertained him at 
 his house, and finally bade him God-speed on 
 his return with a well-filled purse. If a fire 
 devoured the little all of any poor family, or 
 accident disabled the head of it, it was Wade 
 who started the subscription for their relief, and 
 was quick with personal aid and benevolent 
 sympathy. His wife, a fair, gentle creature, 
 who adored him, followed in his wake with lov- 
 ing assistance, and in all the flourishing town 
 their names were quoted as synonyms for char- 
 ity, rectitude, and conjugal devotion. 
 
 They were at the height of the top wave of 
 popular esteem when Robert Stirling suddenly 
 decided to go East. Although in the prime of 
 life he was beginning to feel the strain of the 
 intense absorption of his business career for the 
 past few years. His physicians had long 
 warned him that rest and change of scene were 
 urgently required if he hoped to have the health 
 necessary to carry out the hundred schemes in 
 his teeming brain. Like most eminently suc- 
 cessful men, he had a core of real simplicity in 
 his nature, and he had often longed in the most 
 exciting moments of his astonishing career to 
 visit the old home on which his tired eyes had 
 not rested for twenty years ; and this pull upon 
 the heartstrings almost more than the constant
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 13 
 
 reminders from his overworked brain made him 
 long for a respite from the toil that had brought 
 such splendid results. But he could never 
 bring himself to believe that he could be spared 
 from his place. 
 
 " If the boys were old enough to act for me ! " 
 he sighed to his wife. 
 
 But he began to be reconciled to the incon- 
 venient youth of his sons after Wade had been 
 with him a short time, and his decision to leave 
 all in the hands of this acquired treasure was 
 reached with surprising rapidity. Stirling made 
 arrangements for a year's absence, for he meant 
 to rest, as he had worked, thoroughly. His 
 wife and children should see Europe with him, 
 and spend some weeks in the Eastern cities, but 
 the greater part of the time should be passed 
 in the farmhouse, where his own little lads 
 could be shown their father's haunts ; should 
 roam the fields, and follow the stream, and 
 climb the trees in the old orchard where the 
 successful merchant had once wandered, a 
 dreaming boy, with a thousand thoughts and 
 projects under the curls that crept through his 
 torn straw hat. 
 
 Well, I think that year paid Stirling pretty 
 well for the nights he had lain hard and the 
 days he had gone hungry, and the more pros-
 
 14 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 perous yet more painful years when the little 
 wife by his side wore gowns turned for the 
 third time, and took sole charge of three very 
 active babies. He had no anxieties with regard 
 to the business, for each mail brought most 
 satisfactory reports from Wade, and assurance 
 that he might prolong his absence far beyond 
 the original limit if he so desired. But that he 
 did not. The very definiteness of the number 
 of the golden hours left him held part of their 
 charm, which would have been spoiled by an 
 arbitrary extension, and on the very day set for 
 his return he started for San Francisco, notifying 
 Wade of his intention. 
 
 Two days before the steamer was due, the 
 city was thrown into a fever of amaze by this 
 item appearing in the evening paper : 
 
 " We are informed on good authority that 
 Stanley Wade, secretary and agent for Rob- 
 ert Stirling, left the city yesterday by the 
 clipper ship Flying Fish, bound for China, 
 deserting his wife and taking with him a noto- 
 rious woman of the town, and two hundred 
 thousand dollars belonging to his employer." 
 
 The good-humored tolerance with which the 
 Californian of those days received the intelli- 
 gence of the moral obliquities of his neighbor 
 has no place here. Wade had been the conven-
 
 CARMEL1TA CASTRO. 15 
 
 tional shining example, model man, devoted 
 husband, Christian gentleman. Their pride in 
 their own acuteness was humbled by this dere- 
 liction on the part of their sample citizen. 
 
 There were many speculations as to the way 
 in which Stirling was likely to " take it," and 
 all curiosity was set at rest on the day after his 
 return by the brief announcement in the papers 
 that he offered a reward of fifty thousand dol- 
 lars for the arrest of Stanley Wade, with or 
 without the money. 
 
 Local enterprise in amateur detective work 
 received a powerful stimulus by this step on the 
 part of the wronged employer, who kept his 
 own counsel in wrathful, unrelenting silence, 
 but the chances of success were very slight. 
 There seemed no doubt that Wade was on the 
 Flying Fis/i, already two days out at sea, and 
 favored by the northwest winds, which had a 
 propulsive power almost equal to steam. There 
 were no steamers to spare for the pursuit, even 
 had the chances been equal. The regular police, 
 counting some of the ablest and sharpest of 
 the class, were terribly chagrined, despite some 
 inevitable professional admiration of the sur- 
 prising shrewdness which had outwitted them 
 with the rest of the community. They had 
 little hope of circumventing this surprising
 
 1 6 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 adroitness, but went through the usual meth- 
 ods, much interviewing included. Their sedu- 
 lous attention to this branch of professional 
 duty resulted in columns of reported opinion 
 in the papers ; one which caused special com- 
 ment being a very indefinite interview between 
 Detective Grant and a woman discreditably 
 known to local fame as Carmelita Castro. I 
 need not remind you that ladies of her ante- 
 cedents found California so congenial in those 
 days that one had need to be very exceptional 
 to attain even this reputation. But one look 
 at that woman explained any interest excited 
 by her. 
 
 I think I have never seen so beautiful a crea- 
 ture. Her great rings of copper-colored hair 
 shaded the blackest arched eyebrows over big, 
 sleepy, brown eyes. Her superb figure was 
 always held aloft with a certain easy defiance, 
 and the fixed roses in her creamy cheeks faded 
 or deepened for no man. Mrs. Wade had often 
 passed that reckless magnificent shape in the 
 streets, and shrunk with timid haughtiness from 
 the cool, good-humored glance of the splendid 
 eyes. Of late, had the virtuous but delicate 
 lady but known it, there had been a gleam of 
 comprehending pity in their bold regard. 
 
 As in the time of flood, animals, bitterly an-
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. I/ 
 
 tagonized by nature, may be seen clinging to- 
 gether in the close companionship of a common 
 terror on a single rock, so in certain simple, ter- 
 rible moments, the strong primitive emotions 
 assert themselves at the expense of social dis- 
 cernment, moral difference, natural repulsion 
 even, and men and women forget all but a 
 common humanity. 
 
 The deserted, bewildered wife, reading with 
 bright, fevered eyes each item in the paper that 
 teemed with references to her husband, fastened 
 her gaze on the report of that interview with 
 sudden conviction. What was Carmelita Cas- 
 tro to her now ? Only a person through whom 
 tidings of her missing husband might come. 
 It was not long before her shrinking figure was 
 stealing along the streets, in the late twilight, 
 to the door of a house where the very knocker 
 seemed to shudder away from her spotless 
 hand. 
 
 How she asked for the woman, how she was 
 answered, Mrs. Wade never knew. It seemed 
 as if hours had gone by before she was ushered 
 into a room where sat the one she sought. 
 Carmelita was bending over a desk, pen in hand, 
 her loose white wrapper falling away from her 
 beautiful throat, against which lay the heavy 
 hair in dense, waving masses. She turned care-
 
 1 8 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 lessly as her visitor entered. Mrs. Wade unfast- 
 ened her veil with trembling fingers. The 
 indolent, bold curiosity in the dark eyes 
 changed suddenly. 
 
 " What brings you here ? " asked Carmelita, 
 abruptly. 
 
 The shaking hands held out with a piteous, 
 mutely imploring gesture, a paper, one white 
 finger pointing to the printed interview between 
 Grant and Carmelita Castro. 
 
 " Well ? " demanded the latter. 
 
 " Oh, you can help me, I know you can ! 
 There was nothing in these words to make me 
 feel this, and yet I do. Oh, have pity on me ! 
 We love our husbands, we Englishwomen." 
 
 " I am an Englishwoman," said Carmelita, 
 slowly, " and I had a husband once ; a Mexi- 
 can. He was a devil." 
 
 " Mine is not ! " cried the other woman, pas- 
 sionately. " Wicked ? Yes, he has been wicked, 
 but once, only this once. We have lived to- 
 gether for eleven years, and he has never given 
 me one hard word. He has never until now 
 wronged one human being of a penny, or de- 
 ceived man, woman, or child who trusted him. 
 This is a delirium. He will wake and then he 
 will want me. He will want me," she repeated 
 piteously.
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 19 
 
 " Do you think he is with me ? " asked Car- 
 melita. 
 
 The wife looked steadily in the wonderful 
 face. 
 
 " No ! " she said, after a short, strong scrutiny. 
 
 " They say he is on his way to China." 
 
 " Not yet. He is not gone so far out of my 
 reach." 
 
 " He has left you some clue, then ? " 
 
 With what a wail came the answer. 
 
 " Not one word ! " 
 
 Carmelita was a shrewd woman. She be- 
 lieved her implicitly. 
 
 "Why do you believe I can help you?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " I have told you that I do not know." 
 
 Carmelita threw herself back in her chair 
 again. Then she folded her beautiful arms on 
 the desk and rested her chin on them, looking 
 up with keen eyes at the pallid face that 
 watched her. 
 
 "Mrs. Stanley Wade," she said, "if I had 
 come to your house in South Park and told you 
 that I sought your aid in recovering a lost lover, 
 what would you have done, a month ago ? " 
 
 The honest Saxon color burned up into the 
 wan countenance. 
 
 " I suppose," said Mrs. Wade, steadily, "that
 
 20 
 
 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 I should have ordered my servants to turn you 
 away from my door." 
 
 Carmelita nodded approvingly. 
 
 " You speak the truth," she said, " so do I. 
 We have that much in common ; nothing else, 
 except our English birth. You don't mind my 
 claiming it ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Perhaps- 1 might go farther, and say we Ve 
 both been ill-treated." 
 
 She saw an angry light invade Mrs. Wade's 
 mild eyes, and stopped. 
 
 " You 've come to me fairly enough," she 
 said, after a pause, " and I '11 answer you fairly. 
 I don't know where your husband is." 
 
 The look of bitter disappointment with which 
 her words were met was quickly chased away 
 by one of persistent hope. 
 
 " But you could find out ! " 
 
 Carmelita was silent. 
 
 "You have suspicions," urged the wronged 
 wife, her face imploring like that of a suffering 
 child. 
 
 " Yes," said Carmelita, curiously shaken. 
 
 Mrs. Wade came close to the white figure 
 and caught one of the large, dimpled hands in 
 her own slight ones with a gesture of passionate 
 entreaty.
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 21 
 
 " Oh, listen to me ! I do not know what your 
 life has been. It must have been cruel, or you 
 would not be here. But once you were a girl, 
 as I was when Stanley Wade came to me. You 
 heard, as I did, words of love, and you believed 
 them. You believed them so surely," she 
 repeated, watching closely the face of that 
 other woman, " that when you found they came 
 from a false and cruel heart there was nothing 
 in the world for you but this ! I went to my 
 mother in that early time, and told her what 
 he had said to me. Was there no one to whom 
 you told your love-story? " 
 
 "Yes," said Carmelita, in a low voice, " there 
 was a saint on earth then whose name you must 
 not mention here." 
 
 " Then there is an angel in heaven now. She 
 would be sorry for us if she knew, two poor 
 girls remembering their happier time 
 
 " Stop ! " said Carmelita, imperatively. " This 
 is no place for such words, no place for you. 
 Go home. If I can help you I will. Let that 
 comfort you. I told you I speak the truth." 
 
 When Mrs. Wade wearily stepped within the 
 door of her lonely house, Carmelita Castro was 
 already dashing far beyond the outskirts of the 
 city on a horse that she knew and loved. On 
 and on she rode through the night, her pis-
 
 22 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 tols at her belt, her luminous eyes narrowed 
 to the veriest gleam of brown as she peered into 
 the darkness, her full voice never ceasing in its 
 encouragement to the trusty friend who carried 
 her with fleet safety. The dawn was beginning 
 to redden the eastern sky when at last she drew 
 rein before a long, low house that was little more 
 than a fantastic ruin. She had long since aban- 
 doned the highway, and the road which brought 
 her to this hidden door was scarcely more than 
 a just perceptible bridle-path. Slipping from 
 her saddle, Carmelita struck the handle of her 
 whip sharply against the casement of one of 
 the low windows. All was silent, and she re- 
 peated the blow with such energy that the weary, 
 sagacious horse started at the noise of it. This 
 time there was a stir within, and Carmelita lis- 
 tened with alert attention, not devoid of a cer- 
 tain grim amusement, to the muffled sounds of 
 hurry and agitation. They lasted longer than 
 she liked, but as her impatience approached a 
 climax, a violent fit of coughing came to shake 
 her into an exhaustion that gave the effect of 
 placid waiting, for, as the door was cautiously 
 approached from within, she called out gently : 
 
 " Well, Kate ! " 
 
 " Carmelita ! " 
 
 " Just so."
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 2$ 
 
 The unseen Kate swore a little, then, with 
 nervous, hurrying ringers, opened the door far 
 enough for Carmelita to enter, closing it sharply 
 upon her, almost before the last fold of her 
 gown had fluttered in. A fire still smouldered 
 and winked on the hearth of the large, low room 
 they entered, sending out light enough to show 
 that Kate was a very handsome Kate indeed, 
 gorgeous as a tropical flower in her heavy, rich, 
 dark beauty, coarse too, as its leaves. 
 
 In the name of a most ineligible locality, this 
 lady demanded of her untimely guest the cause 
 of this late or early call. She was apparently 
 at once apprehensive and relieved, despite the 
 sleepy swagger of her manner, and withal, not 
 unkindly disposed toward the intruder. 
 
 "Where is your brother?" asked Carmelita, 
 abruptly. 
 
 The crimson in Kate's cheeks flamed into 
 scarlet as she answered with a cool laugh : 
 
 " You aint come after him, I suppose ; I never 
 thought you was sweet on each other." 
 
 " I am come after him," said Carmelita, dog- 
 gedly. "You 'd better call him." 
 
 " S'posin' he aint home ? " 
 
 " Who were you talking with after my knock 
 wakened you ? " demanded Carmelita. 
 
 " We do entertain a friend occasional," said
 
 2 4 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 Kate, pushing her bare foot furtively at an 
 escaped brand, still dully warm from the burn- 
 ing. 
 
 " I want to see your brother," insisted Car- 
 melita. " You have n't a houseful to-night." 
 
 " Better wait until morning." 
 
 " I have n 't time." 
 
 " Well, whatever you want of Dick, you Ve 
 come at a bad time. He came home from 
 Zuchiro two hours ago, and was pretty full. 
 I don't care about wakin' him when he 's like 
 that." 
 
 " Then I will," said Carmelita, moving tow- 
 ard a door in the corner. 
 
 Kate's quick motion toward that door was as 
 quickly arrested, but Carmelita caught it. 
 
 " Come, Kate," she said, quietly. " You 
 know and I know that Stanley Wade is in 
 there. I Ve got to see him." 
 
 " Stanley Wade ! He 's on his way to China. 
 Dick is here," said Kate, boldly. 
 
 " Let me see him," said Carmelita, for an- 
 swer. 
 
 Kate hesitated for a moment, then, going 
 forward, flung open the door. 
 
 " Look for yourself, you loon," she said. 
 " He 's gone to sleep again, I suppose." 
 
 Carmelita looked at the recumbent figure 
 
 o
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 2$ 
 
 nearly hidden by the bedclothes. Only the 
 outline of an olive cheek and a mass of dark 
 hair could be seen. She gazed steadily for a 
 few moments, then advanced into the room. 
 
 " There 's no use playing possum," she said, 
 going up to the side of the couch. " I 've 
 something to tell you, Mr. Wade." Still there 
 was no movement, and Carmelita coolly drew 
 from her belt one of the little silver-mounted 
 pistols. She cocked it with a resonant, busi- 
 ness-like click. 
 
 " Now, Wade," she said, " I '11 call in this 
 persuader. If you don 't speak, I '11 wing you. 
 I Ve come as your friend, but not as your friend 
 alone, and this is a pretty desperate matter." 
 
 At the sound of that click the eyes of the 
 man started open. They closed instantly, but 
 Carmelita caught the gleam of bright blue 
 that flashed out oddly enough from the tawny 
 setting of his dark face. 
 
 " I thought so," she said, composedly, 
 " though I was n 't sure until now. You 
 need n 't speak. I 've something to tell you. 
 Go away, Kate." 
 
 Kate stood within the door, and now burst 
 into an oration quite distinguished by its 
 strained, jocose profanity. Carmelita paid no 
 attention to her.
 
 2 6 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 " I don't think I ever saw walnut juice and 
 Tarol's dye work better," she said, still address- 
 ing the man. " You always had Dick Drener's 
 features, and you Ve matched his colors so well, 
 except in the eyes, that your own mother 
 would n 't know the difference when you 're 
 asleep unless she knew what I know." 
 
 The man sat up in bed, the sheets falling 
 away and showing him to be fully dressed. 
 
 "Well," he said, "what is it? You are a 
 clever woman, Carmelita Castro." 
 
 " Not so clever," said Carmelita, carelessly. 
 " Any one who knew you and Kate as I Ve 
 known you these six months, would n't be 
 fooled into thinking you 'd left her on this side 
 of the water and gone off with Meg Merino. I 
 suspected from the first that you had n't left 
 the country, because I knew where Kate was. 
 Why did n't you ? " 
 
 " There were arrangements ," muttered 
 
 Wade. 
 
 " About the money you stole ? I suppose so. 
 Dick Drener has part of it with him, and you 
 and Kate mean to take off the rest of it and 
 yourselves when it comes handy and the coast 
 is clear. 
 
 " See here, Carmelita," interposed Kate, who 
 had passed from amaze, alarm, and rage into de-
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 27 
 
 fiance, " what the is it all to you any way. 
 
 If you 're after some of the cash, say so. It aint 
 like you to spring a thing on us in this way." 
 
 " You leave the room " said Carmelita ; " it 
 will be better for you. Going to be ugly about 
 it, are you ? I would n't. Do you remember 
 the time when you were down with small-pox, 
 and not a soul in the camp would come near 
 you but one woman, and how she risked her life 
 to save yours, and what you value more, your 
 skin, for you ? You made a big promise then, 
 Kate ; keep it now, and give me half an hour 
 with this man." 
 
 The girl turned sullenly away. "Are you going 
 to get us into trouble ? " she asked, with a 
 lowering brow. 
 
 " No, I 'm going to get you out of it, and 
 more besides. Go, there 's no time to lose." 
 
 Slowly, and with many a muttered, protesting 
 oath, Kate passed into the outer room ; Car- 
 melita promptly closed the door upon her, and 
 looked Wade in the face. 
 
 " You 're a fine specimen of a fool," she said, 
 with a touch of indulgent cynicism. 
 
 " Was that what you came to say ? " 
 
 " Do you think she 's worth it ? " asked Car- 
 melita, indicating the banished Kate, and igno- 
 ring the question.
 
 28 
 
 " She 's the handsomest thing alive," said the 
 man, doggedly. 
 
 Carmelita waved her left hand at him with a 
 gesture of immense, resigned contempt. 
 
 " Oh, but you 're a hopeless lot ! " she said. 
 " Kate can't hold a candle tome, if that 's what 
 
 took you, nor even but some things can't 
 
 be spoken of together. Stanley Wade," and she 
 went to his side, speaking in a clear, rapid whis- 
 per : " do you know that there 's a reward of 
 fifty thousand dollars offered for you, with or 
 without the loot ? " 
 
 Wade was white to the very lips. For one 
 moment there was a murderous gleam in his 
 eye as it rested on the woman's figure, only a 
 woman's, for all its splendid vigor. It was a 
 lonely place, and Kate was devoted to him. 
 
 Carmelita caught the cruel, fleeting sugges- 
 tion. 
 
 " Ah, it won't be worth your while to add 
 murder to the list of your new accomplish- 
 ments," she said, with a light laugh. " I 'm not 
 after the reward, my fine gentleman." 
 
 " What then ? " demanded the man, staring. 
 
 " Sit down and I '11 tell you," said Car- 
 melita. 
 
 It was soon told. Wade sat quite still, with 
 his head bowed on his hands. Carmelita made
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 29 
 
 no comment on her simple narrative. " Now 
 I '11 fix Kate," she concluded. 
 
 " Wait ! " said Wade, hoarsely. " I don't 
 know 1 
 
 She flashed around on him a look before 
 which he cowered. 
 
 " You ! " she cried, in a tone that smote the 
 air as if it had been thunder evoked by the 
 lightning of that blinding glance. " By the Lord, 
 I think I could serve that sweet woman best by 
 giving you up ! " 
 
 Again came that evil look into the man's face. 
 
 " Better not," said Carmelita. " I thought I 
 might have some little difficulty with you, and 
 I left a letter for the Madam. The fifty thou- 
 sand would n't come amiss to her, and she '11 
 read that letter, if I 'm not there by the time I 
 set." 
 
 Wade rose. " Do you think 
 
 " I think you are going to accept my plan. 
 I don't pretend to say you are worth saving, 
 but she thinks you are, and I suppose things 
 the world over are nothing but what people 
 think they are." With this hint at the deepest 
 secret of an advanced philosophy, Carmelita 
 turned away. 
 
 " Shall you tell Kate about the reward ? " 
 whispered Wade.
 
 30 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 She gave him one glance of good-humored 
 scorn. " Tell her ! " she said ; " What do you 
 take me for ? Do you think she loves you fifty 
 thousand dollars worth? No, Stanley Wade. 
 There 's only one woman in the world fool 
 or angel enough to do that." 
 
 Three days after, a man, in obedience to a 
 surly word of command from the captain of the 
 clipper ship Astra, permitted himself to be 
 aided first by that official, whose manner 
 throughout was one of protesting compliance, 
 up the side of that noble vessel. 
 
 Two women stood below in a little boat that 
 danced and rocked restlessly on the uneasy 
 waves. Both were silent, and one held against 
 her heart the hands of the other. 
 
 " Mary ! " called a voice from above, and both 
 started. 
 
 " That is your name," said the larger, taller, 
 woman. " It was mine once too, the English 
 name my mother gave me. Will you think of 
 me sometimes as Mary?" 
 
 The stainless lips were pressed against the 
 full, crimson mouth that quivered at their 
 touch. " I will pray for you always as Mary," 
 was the answer. 
 
 " Mary ! " came the call again, and, with a 
 last look of love and gratitude, Mary Wade 
 turned away.
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 31 
 
 Far out at sea that night a man and a woman 
 paced the narrow deck of the flying ship. 
 
 "And she pleaded with him, this captain, who 
 loved her once, loves her now, I think," said 
 the fair-haired, gentle Mary. " And she has 
 done all this for me, a stranger, because I asked 
 her. Is it not wonderful?" 
 
 And the man answered with hanging head, 
 " Nothing is wonderful when you can forgive." 
 
 Seven years were not long in passing to those 
 who felt each moment a retrieval. The wife of 
 Stanley Wade had spoken with the divine dis- 
 cernment of love. That dark episode in his 
 life had been a delirium, a fever, a soon tamed 
 riot of hitherto well-disciplined senses. No one 
 sudden crime can corrupt a whole soul. As 
 violent as had been his sin, was his repentance. 
 Eighty thousand dollars of Stirling's money 
 had been restored to him as soon as it could be 
 safely placed in his hands. To extort a portion 
 of Dick Drener's claimed share of the spoil was 
 hard, but it was done. From this Wade 
 reserved a few thousands due him for his ser- 
 vices. The rest had gone in speculation. 
 
 An old friend to whom he went in Hong 
 Kong with the sorrowful tale of his aberration, 
 received him, with many restrictions and stipu- 
 lations, into his counting-house. There he
 
 32 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 slaved, early and late, night and day, to save 
 from his salary until the sum still due his 
 wronged employer should be complete. This 
 would have taken a lifetime and more, had 
 not the money reserved on his old account 
 been invested a little against Mrs. Wade's 
 cautious instinct, it must be owned in a spec- 
 ulation that brought riches with a rapidity that 
 seemed miraculous. When seven years were 
 gone Wade had paid Robert Stirling every far- 
 thing of which he had robbed him, and was in 
 a fair way to make a decent competence for 
 himself. Then said Mary Wade to her hus- 
 band, looking into the blue eyes of the woman- 
 child born to them in their exile : " We must 
 go back, now, for Carmelita. My letters are 
 of no avail. We will take the child and show 
 her to her, and tell her she bears her name, and 
 she will not refuse longer to come to us." 
 
 It was on a night in January that I, long 
 absent from California, was asking myself why 
 I had never remembered with sufficient vindic- 
 tiveness the amenities of its climate. I fought 
 
 o 
 
 my way along the deserted streets in the teeth 
 of the gale, my face stung by the bitter rain 
 that drove against it like an army of red-hot 
 needles, my hands muffled in my cloak, and 
 my feet protecte'd by heavy boots, clogged with
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 33 
 
 dampness, my every fibre a protest againt the 
 outrageous behavior of the elements. As I 
 turned a corner with a desperate, concentrated 
 resistance to the wind that tore savagely around 
 it, a slight figure fluttered against me, like a 
 leaf blown upon my breast by the cruel gale, 
 and fell prone at my feet. I picked it up, sup- 
 porting it as well as I could, until breath and 
 the power to speak should come. But after a 
 moment's struggle, a wild fit of coughing 
 racked and shook the gaunt frame into insen- 
 sibility, and I saw that there was nothing for 
 me to do but carry it to the nearest shelter. I 
 thought it would be difficult, but as I raised 
 the sick creature in my arms I found it so light 
 a burden that it would have been no task to 
 have borne it on with me for a mile. It was 
 but a short distance that I had to go before 
 the shelter appeared in the form of a saloon, 
 sending out a warm red light into the winter 
 night. As we approached the door I lifted my 
 hand and put away from the poor face the 
 torn, weedy draperies that had fallen over it. 
 The rain had beaten hard upon it, and the long 
 straying locks were wet and dripping. The 
 glow from the saloon windows fell strong upon 
 it, and then, for all its pinched outlines, its 
 fallen contours, for all the cruel scar across it,
 
 34 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 showing clear in that rosy light, then, gentle- 
 men, I knew her. 
 
 I got her into the place and an inner room, 
 and the wife of the proprietor helped me to 
 bring back the ebbing life to the wrecked frame. 
 At last the lovely dark eyes lovely still, sole 
 vestige of that ruined beauty looked at me 
 with intelligence and recognition. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " it is you, John Lenox." 
 
 " I can hardly dare say it is you, Carmelita 
 Castro," I answered, sadly. " Why do I find 
 you like this ? " 
 
 She gave the ghost of a smile. " It 's not 
 like our last meeting, is it ? " 
 
 I remembered the night when I had last seen 
 her in the full plentitude of her beauty and 
 power, and could only turn my face away. 
 
 " It was at that dinner at the Alcazar restau- 
 rant, where Ricardo Mores brought you," she 
 said, meditatively. " What a shy fellow you 
 were, and how you hated meeting me, though 
 you had told Ricardo over and over again that 
 you longed to be a painter just to make my 
 face live forever on canvas. You would n 't 
 care to do that now, would you ?" she asked, 
 with that same unearthly smile. " Do you re- 
 member," she went on, " that it was just after 
 the Wade affair had set the city mad, and that
 
 CARMF.LITA CASTRO. 35 
 
 you and every one suspected me of knowing 
 more about it than anybody else, and how 
 you and Howard urged me to tell you some- 
 thing about it, and tried to trap me when you 
 failed?" 
 
 " Yes," I said. She had grown deadly white 
 as she spoke, and I made her drink some 
 brandy. 
 
 " Kind, always kind," she said. " There were 
 some words spoken that night, John Lenox, 
 which even I should not have heard from the 
 lips of men. Do you remember how you 
 turned on Howard and told him that a man 
 who forgot the sex of any woman was unwor- 
 thy of his own ? There was danger of a fight 
 for a while, but he was always very fond of you 
 afterward." 
 
 " Yes," I said again. " He 's underground 
 now, poor Howard." 
 
 " And I above it ! " she said, in a tone that 
 seemed to reproach the dead man for that sad 
 advantage. " But not for long." 
 
 " Tell me," I entreated, " why you are abroad 
 on this fearful night." 
 
 Something of the old careless shrug was in 
 the lifting of her wasted shoulders. 
 
 " Hobson's choice," she said. 
 
 " I Ve been turned out of my lodgings. I Ve
 
 36 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 owed rent for months, and I have n't a cent in 
 the world." 
 
 " What fiend could have turned you out on 
 such a night." 
 
 " Oh," she said, " the woman is no fiend. 
 She did well in letting me into her house at all ; 
 and she has been out of her money for a long 
 time." 
 
 " Let me take you where you can be made 
 comfortable," I said, eagerly. 
 
 "What 's the use?" 
 
 " Use ! " I echoed. " Is there no use in 
 preserving your life ? " 
 
 " Not the slightest, and you could n't do it if 
 there was, my friend. It won't pay to prolong 
 it." 
 
 " Let me be the judge," I said, gently. 
 
 She turned away irritably. " Oh, I wish I 
 had not met you ! The storm would have 
 been a better friend, though you mean well. I 
 should have been as comfortable as Howard is 
 if I had stayed out all night." 
 
 But I persisted and urged, and the poor 
 thing, weakened by long sickness, yielded easily 
 enough, only declaring that if I were willing to 
 help her, she would go back to the lodgings 
 from which she had been ejected. " It 's all 
 the home I 've had for so long," she said.
 
 CARMELITA CASTRO. 37 
 
 The woman who kept the place was suffi- 
 ciently civil when I came, bringing Carme- 
 lita, and stating that henceforth I would be 
 responsible for her. 
 
 Well, with the best medical care, and all 
 that money could do to make her comfortable, 
 she seemed to rally. One day when I visited 
 her sick-room, she looked at me with some- 
 thing of the old, gay, delicious smile. 
 
 "You 're not a newspaper man any more?" 
 she said. 
 
 " No," I answered. 
 
 " Then I '11 tell you what you were so wild to 
 know seven years ago. I can't do any thing 
 else." 
 
 So she told me the true story of her rescue 
 of Stanley Wade for the sake of his wife. 
 
 "You see," she concluded, lightly, turning 
 off so the force of the narrative which her 
 dramatic instinct had shown in all its power, 
 much as she slurred her own part in it, " I felt 
 it coming on then, this consumption ; it 's 
 been in my family for years, and I did n't know 
 then whether it would be the hasty kind, or 
 slow, as it has proved, and I thought I might 
 as well do a decent thing before I died." 
 
 " Did you not know of what that fifty thou- 
 sand dollars' reward might do for you with 
 
 276469
 
 38 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 your failing health and your hopeless future ? " 
 I asked, after a while. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said. " Women of my sort 
 always do think of what money can do. But 
 she wanted that man more than I wanted the 
 money. Do you know that she has written me 
 constantly during these seven years, and begged 
 me to come to her. Do you understand, 
 begged me to come to her, to her home where 
 her little child, a girl, is growing up?" 
 " And you never thought of going? " 
 " What do you take me for ? " with the old 
 toss of the head. " No ! " 
 
 "But this scar, Carmelita?" I said, after a 
 long silence. 
 
 " Oh, that is my husband's legacy." 
 " Juan Castro was your husband ? " 
 " Yes. Did you know I was an English girl ? 
 I was a farmer's daughter, living near Oxford, 
 when Castro was at the University. He fell in 
 love with my looks, and I I adored him. We 
 ran away together, but we were married first. 
 We came to America. When we had been in 
 the country some time, he grew tired of me, 
 and then he told me that we were not really 
 married, since he was Catholic and I Protestant. 
 I was a girl. I did not know. I was mad and 
 wild. I could have killed him. I did not know
 
 CAKMEL1TA CASTRO. 39 
 
 what to do with myself. I went away with his 
 best friend. They fought about me. I came 
 to hate that other man I think I always hated 
 him and then ' She turned her face to the 
 wall. " You know what then." 
 
 " You had not this scar when I knew you," I 
 said, when she had lain so for a long time. 
 
 " No. I 've had it for five years only. Castro 
 met me one day. I was looking ill even then. 
 He looked almost worse. He had gone through 
 his little fortune, had been confidence man, bar- 
 keeper, heaven knows what, though his people 
 were among the best in Mexico. He was 
 broken down and very poor. He had come to 
 get money of me of me. He had heard in 
 some vague way of the Wade affair. When he 
 learned about the fifty thousand dollars he was 
 beside himself with rage. He kept it down at 
 first, though, and demanded that I should write 
 to Wade for money. He did not understand 
 when I refused. I suppose he thought he would 
 frighten me. He had often been cruel to me 
 when we were together, even while he still said 
 he loved me. When he found I was not to be 
 moved he was frantic, and at last he dashed at 
 me with his knife. When he saw the blood 
 there was a good deal of it he was frightened, 
 and ran away. He thought he had killed me.
 
 40 TOLD A T TUXEDO, 
 
 He was drowned in Yelva creek two weeks after 
 that. This is his last gift all that he left me," 
 she said, drawing her thin finger across the scar. 
 
 When I next visited her she had failed visibly. 
 She could scarcely speak, but she drew from her 
 poor bosom a little packet of letters. 
 
 "If you ever see her give them back 
 to her with my love." 
 
 I took them. They were signed : " From 
 Mary to Mary." 
 
 This was in the morning. I could not stay, 
 for an urgent business matter claimed me, but 
 I promised to return in the evening. At sun- 
 down I was hastily summoned. When I en- 
 tered the room, flooded as it was with the sun- 
 set glow, I started back in positive terror. 
 Carmelita was propped up in the bed, her eyes 
 shining like stars, her glorious hair spread over 
 the pillow in thin billows of deep gold, two scar- 
 let roses burning in her cheeks, overflowing and 
 hiding that cruel scar. 
 
 She bowed to me as I entered. 
 
 " Welcome," she said. "Any friend of Seflor 
 Mores 
 
 I went forward and took her hand. 
 
 " Dori't you know me, Carmelita?" I said. 
 
 "Not yet," she answered, with an archly 
 radiant smile. " But we shall be friends I am
 
 CAKMELITA CASTRO. 41 
 
 sure. Ah, thanks ! " She held out her hand 
 and took in it an imaginary wine-glass. She 
 held this phantom cup to her lips as though 
 draining it ; then, with a gesture of indescribable 
 grace and audacity, threw it over her shoulder. 
 
 As she did so the marvellous color faded sud- 
 denly. The whole expression of her face altered, 
 and the hand I seized grew very cold. 
 
 " Carmelita ! " I said. 
 
 She looked at me with a glance of gentle 
 correction. 
 
 " Mary," she said, " my name is Mary." 
 
 "Yes," I said. "I forgot." 
 
 She struggled a little for breath, and I raised 
 her on the pillow. She turned her head to my 
 shoulder with a little sigh, and a thin stream of 
 bright red blood sprang from her chilling lips. 
 
 I staunched it as best I could and watched 
 the lids flutter down over the beautiful eyes 
 that had looked on so much evil. Suddenly 
 they were lifted, and she looked at me with a 
 long, curious, innocent gaze, like that of a wak- 
 ing babe. 
 
 " Mary! " I said. 
 
 " Ah ! she said, with a smile of unspeakable 
 content, " Mary always, now." 
 
 As I laid her down, a knock sounded at the 
 door, and while I yet held my quiet burden
 
 42 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 three people entered. Stanley and Mary 
 Wade and their child stood, too late by the 
 moment that separates time from eternity, 
 looking down on the worn and radiant face. 
 
 It needed but a few words, spoken with sacred 
 quietude in that still presence to tell it all. 
 Then the mother lifted her child, and the flow- 
 er-like face pressed with the holy fearlessness 
 of infancy the brow of the dead woman. 
 
 Mourning bitterly they sailed away to their 
 Eastern home, but not until the baby hands had 
 planted on a nameless grave in the soil of the 
 Pacific slope, and twined about a shining cross, 
 a trailing wreath of English ivy.
 
 II. 
 
 THE wild cry of the wind had softened to a 
 continuous sobbing sigh when Mr. Lenox fin- 
 ished speaking, and for a while nothing else 
 was heard in the silent hall. At last the Judge 
 said very tremulously and simply : 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 The others did not speak at all. Harry had 
 turned his back on the rest and was fluttering 
 the leaves of the magazines with an unsteady 
 hand. Never mind what else Harry was doing. 
 Oh, blessed time of youth, when tears are 
 ready ! How sadly, in later years, we turn our 
 dry eyes back to those foolish, soft-hearted 
 days! 
 
 Van Corlear was rather pale. He walked 
 restlessly about the room for a while, then 
 spoke abruptly : 
 
 " Who will speak next ? " 
 
 " I don't think the occasion demands any 
 thing further," said one man, very gravely. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it does ! We can make a modern 
 Decamerone of this episode, though the plague 
 
 43
 
 44 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 in the form of the snow-storm arrived after 
 we got here." 
 
 " A Decamerone ? Six of us ! said one of the 
 group, derisively. 
 
 " We '11 make up the other four to-morrow. 
 
 " What we have heard has hardly been in 
 Decameronic vein," said the Judge, soberly. 
 
 " Hardly. I '11 tell a tale decidedly in that 
 vein if you '11 listen," said Van Corlear, with de- 
 termination. 
 
 " I '11 hear it another time, Van Corlear," 
 said Mr. Lenox, very kindly. He pushed back 
 his chair and moved away. 
 
 " Let him go," said Van Corlear, looking 
 rather resentfully after his retreating figure. "If 
 he thinks we are going to carry off that story 
 of his to dream over, he 's decidedly mistaken. 
 If he can do it, let him. I frankly own that I 
 don't dare." 
 
 But Mr. Lenox was coming back again. 
 
 " I '11 hear your story, Van," he said. " Life 
 leads us from phase to phase in just such a 
 fashion." 
 
 " My tale is of an old fellow I knew once," said 
 Van Corlear, " and true as yours is. He was 
 the chief physician in the town where I was 
 born and bred. Did you know that I was once 
 a simple country lad ? "
 
 THE DOCTOR 'S RIVAL. 45 
 
 " We Ve noticed the affecting touches of 
 rural simplicity, that no art can disguise, Van," 
 said the Judge, laughing. 
 
 " Nature will have her way," said Van, grave- 
 ly. " Harry, you young beggar, come around 
 here to the fire and prepare to pay homage to 
 my talents as raconteur, while I tell you of 
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 
 
 The Doctor had married in haste and was 
 repenting at leisure. Not an uncommon situa- 
 tion, truly, but an uncommonly disagreeable 
 one, the Doctor, thought, considering those 
 individualities on which he prided himself. 
 
 There were certain reasons for the existence 
 of these distinguishing traits. The blood of 
 sunny Gascony darted through the veins of the 
 little physician. His mother was well, she 
 was a native of Gascony, and perhaps we had 
 best touch only on this, her sole, conspicuous 
 virtue, and not inquire closely into her career 
 after that favorable introduction to this planet. 
 But the Doctor's father was a most respectable 
 man, a most excellent physician, and a most in- 
 jured husband. He had unusual conjugal sus- 
 ceptibilities for a Frenchman, and bore but 
 restively his wife's liberal interpretation of the 
 Decalogue. So one day when she returned to
 
 46 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 their pretty home in a suburb of Paris, after a 
 six weeks' sojourn in the city, more than usually 
 characterized by adventures erratic and erotic, 
 he decided that he would speedily make arrange- 
 ments to have the joy of her next return unim- 
 paired by the presence of his small son and 
 himself. He also, being a prudent' and thrifty 
 person, elected that it should be free from 
 the resumption of household cares, and on her 
 next departure sold the cottage and furnishings, 
 arranged his affairs, and with the boy and several 
 letters of some value as credentials, set his face 
 towards that asylum for unsuccessful lives, the 
 fortunate discovery of the late Christopher Co- 
 lumbus. 
 
 He prospered well in the new country, though 
 with that we are not immediately concerned, 
 and the youngster throve on the wholesome 
 economies of a household ever kept distinctively 
 French in its abundant thrift. He grew to be 
 a sharp and active lad, and, in time, naturally 
 followed his father's profession. They worked 
 amicably together for many years, and the son 
 mourned when the father died, with that filial 
 devotion which seems to be developed in the 
 modern Gaul, at the expense of other virtues. 
 
 The house was a thought too quiet with the 
 old man gone, and the young Doctor young
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 47 
 
 only now in local parlance, which had been used 
 so to distinguish him from his father naturally 
 turned his thoughts toward matrimony. At 
 this juncture the extremely dissimilar charac- 
 teristics inherited from his extremely dissimilar 
 parents asserted themselves in a most perplex- 
 ing and uncomfortable manner. He was highly 
 sensible to beauty, and actively conscious of the 
 solid attractions to be found in a rich bank ac- 
 count. These conflicting allurements were ad- 
 mirably represented in the persons of Miss Rosa 
 Melvor and Miss Martha Tree. 
 
 " Oh," said the Doctor to himself after much 
 meditation, " what man of taste marries his 
 sweetheart ? To degrade an ideal into a wife, 
 to contemplate the adored one as she applies 
 hot mustard to the aching tooth, which surely 
 must befall in the course of a lifetime, to be 
 obliged to hand her gross money in filthy bills 
 and chinking silver that she may buy with it 
 hideous utensils to be used in her kitchen, 
 bah, what horror ! True, that is the custom 
 of this country, but I am a Frenchman by 
 birth and conviction. Rosa, my heart is ir- 
 revocably thine. That less worthy gift, my 
 hand, shall be bestowed on the respectable 
 Martha." 
 
 Martha accepted the hand with avidity. It
 
 48 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 was a nice little hand, well-shaped, skilful, and 
 by no means empty. She was three years his 
 senior, and he was past forty, and, despite the 
 bank account, this was her first offer. She was 
 not handsome, though a merciful fate had de- 
 creed that she should be blissfully unconscious 
 of this fact, and she told her friends that it was 
 so sweet to be loved for herself alone. 
 
 Now the Doctor's American breeding, while 
 it had familiarized him with American customs, 
 had never impregnated him with American 
 ideas. He had believed that, after a brief 
 period of courteous attention to his wife, he 
 would be permitted to devote himself to his 
 really cherished practice, diversified by harmless 
 sighs sacred to the thought of the relinquished 
 Rosa. Little did this amiable child of a distant 
 clime divine the disposition of the American 
 wife, of which social fact, considered as a class, 
 his Martha may be said to have possessed all 
 the representative vices. Her assiduities ap- 
 palled him ; her blandishments wearied him ; her 
 tyrannies astounded him. She took possession 
 of him as the American wife always takes pos- 
 session of her legal lord and actual serf, and 
 would n't in the least understand that this was 
 not the boon he craved. In truth, Martha 
 honestly considered herself a most indulgent
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 49 
 
 wife, whose many concessions to her husband's 
 misfortune in being a native of other shores 
 required explanations to her conscience and 
 her friends. 
 
 " Oh, v/ell ! " said the poor Doctor to himself, 
 " but one knows the destiny of husbands. But 
 a little while, my friend, and one will supplant 
 thee in her regard, and thou shalt perhaps own 
 thyself once more." But even as he spoke he 
 felt little confidence. Martha was profoundly, 
 hopelessly, utterly faithful, with that most re- 
 liable fidelity which is to use a vulgar simile 
 Hobson's choice. 
 
 " Nothing could ever tempt me to think of 
 any one but the Doctor," asserted she on all 
 occasions, and had her husband been familiar 
 with English literature, he might have an- 
 swered, in the words of the immortal Micaw- 
 ber : " My dear, I am not aware that any one 
 has asked you to do so." 
 
 " These women, these women, who make a 
 virtue of necessity ! " he said, despairingly. 
 " Why, why, did I not study the character of 
 this person ? Why, why, did I think with 
 longing of her dollars ? Sordid pig of an imbe- 
 cile that I am, a million would not pay me for 
 this slavery ! " 
 
 As time went on he became yet more aK
 
 50 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 jectly wretched. " There is no release for me 
 but in the grave," he mourned. " When I ab- 
 sent myself, she traces me. When I lock my 
 office door, she sits outside and sings ah, just 
 Heaven, what sounds are those ! two ballads 
 called * Waiting ' and ' Longing.' May he who 
 composed them live to experience my fate ! 
 When I am cold, she is pensive ; when I am 
 dull, she is sprightly ; when I am angry, she 
 weeps. Is there no way to alienate this per- 
 vasive woman ? ' Where have you been, 
 love ? ' ' What do you do, dear ? ' ' With 
 whom did you speak, darling ? ' Is it for this 
 and for eight hundred dollars a year that I 
 have sold my liberty ? " 
 
 Flight never occurred to the Doctor. He 
 was far too well placed in the regard of his 
 town to wish to leave it, and the gold which 
 he loved was surely piling itself up in the fees, 
 which came thicker and faster each day. The 
 Doctor never sighed now for Rosa ; his one 
 thought was to disembarrass himself of Martha. 
 
 For more than two years he endured this 
 bondage, and might still be enduring it, had it 
 not been for the sinful resolve of the trustees 
 of the little Academy of Music in Minkville to 
 present French opera to be witnessed in that 
 hitherto undesecrated temple of art. The Doc-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S KIFAL. 51 
 
 tor found little enjoyment in any entertainment 
 now, but motives of patriotism impelled him to 
 attend the first performance. Of course, Mar- 
 tha went with him, and, of course, she apolo- 
 gized to the other members of the Presbyterian 
 Ladies' Zenana Mission Band by the oft- 
 repeated extenuation : " My husband being a 
 foreigner, you know." She also felt it neces- 
 sary to explain that there was little danger that 
 they should fall " into the habit of the thing," 
 as there were to be but six performances, after 
 which the entire troupe were to return to 
 France, leaving Minkville boards desolate and 
 decent. 
 
 The tenor was a good-looking youth, with a 
 poor voice and a fine figure. Martha was still 
 susceptible, and she raved of this dapper hero 
 with much propriety. The Doctor listened at 
 first to her remarks with that listless inattention 
 which betrays the confirmed husband, but as 
 she prattled and rambled o;i, a dark thought 
 flashed into his stupefied brain. 
 
 " Aha ! " said he, " at last ! " He was very 
 attentive to Martha during the rest of the 
 evening, but she appeared a shade less flattered 
 than usual by the circumstance. He begged 
 her to excuse him when they reached home, as 
 he had to write a very important letter to his
 
 52 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 old friend, Gaston Voisin, who had once, with 
 himself, composed the French population of 
 Minkville, but had long since returned to his 
 native city of Rouen. 
 
 One evening, some weeks after this agreeable 
 dissipation, as Martha beamed upon her Doctor 
 with maddening amiability across the dinner 
 table, a letter was handed her. She held it 
 upside down, sideways, straight, slanting ; she 
 examined the illegible post-mark with great 
 care ; she commented on the foreign stamp ; 
 she wondered audibly who could have sent it ; 
 and at last, having gone through the usual 
 feminine programme on such occasions, ap- 
 peared to be suddenly impressed by the fact 
 that it was possible to gratify her curiosity in 
 some measure by opening it. At that moment 
 the Doctor was summoned by an imperative 
 ring at the office bell. Martha unfolded the 
 thin sheet of paper and, with a gasp of amaze- 
 ment, read : 
 
 " ANGEL OF MY DREAMS : 
 
 " Long have I sought an ideal. I do not write 
 well thy so cold language, but I have of it enough 
 to say that I adore thee. That night when ' La 
 Fille du Tambour-Major' was displayed at the 
 miserable theatre in the town which has the 
 happiness to contain thee, I, Antoine Nardin, saw
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 53 
 
 but thee. That face spirituelle ! Those charms 
 ripe ! Those eyes of pale fire ! When I them for 
 the first time contemplate, they demolish me. 
 
 " I have learned of thee that thou art wedded to 
 a compatriot of mine. It is with rage that I re- 
 member him, miserable, for it was he, I know, who 
 sat beside thee. 
 
 " One word wilt thou send me one word ? 
 Think of my youth and my sorrows, and suffer one 
 drop of balm to fall upon my lacerated heart. 
 " To thee, always to thee, 
 
 "ANTOINE NARDIN. 
 
 " Rue de Paris." 
 
 Martha had read the letter at first with 
 increasing wonder, but when she laid it down 
 at last all surprise had ceased. Her cheeks 
 were very red, in blotches, I grieve to say, for 
 that was their uncomfortable custom when in- 
 vaded by blushes, but she was not surprised 
 on reflection. Was she not beautiful? She had 
 always known it, and had been shocked, on 
 aesthetic principles entirely, at the Doctor's in- 
 sensibility to the fact in its fulness. Spirituelle ? 
 Ah ! Martha looked at her lean wrists and 
 attenuated arms. This young man was pos- 
 sessed of great discernment. Ripe ? Surely. 
 What man of taste finds aught but rawness in 
 charms that have not basked in the suns of
 
 54 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 forty summers ? Poor fellow ! So he had 
 carried her image with him over wide seas. 
 Would it be wrong to send him one little word 
 of comfort and admonition? Of course it was 
 very terrible, she thought, with a thrill of com- 
 placent horror, that she, a married woman, 
 should be addressed by any one (and an actor, 
 too !) in words of love, however respectful, but, 
 like her husband, he was a foreigner, you 
 know. 
 
 She fled to her room. Now it was her turn 
 to lock the door, and, with trembling hands 
 she penned the following epistle : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : 
 
 " It is very wrong for you to address me as you 
 have done, so wrong that I feel it my duty to tell 
 you it must never happen again. I can understand 
 how greatly you must suffer from this hopeless 
 sentiment. I need not say that I think your singing 
 and acting beautiful, and that perhaps if we had 
 
 met earlier but it was not to be. Forget me, 
 
 and I will endeavor to forget you. 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 "MARTHA T. PELLETIN." 
 
 The Doctor was able to pursue his avoca- 
 tions in peace during that day, and for many 
 days after, Martha spent the greater part of
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 55 
 
 her time in contemplation of this new interest 
 in her life. It was with difficulty that she re- 
 served the mighty secret for her own delecta- 
 tion. At times her pride in the sentiments she 
 had awakened made her resolve to tell all to 
 her husband within an hour. Then the fear 
 that he might be angry and she really was 
 rather afraid of his serious anger made her 
 hesitate. Besides, he might sternly forbid her 
 to answer any further communications, and 
 circumvent her in the event of disobedience, 
 and Martha wished to have the moral credit of 
 a voluntary deference to conscience. So she 
 contented herself with darkly mysterious refer- 
 ences to the hidden perils in the life of fasci- 
 nating women when she conversed with her 
 friends, and dwelt with augmented emphasis on 
 her fidelity to the Doctor. 
 
 The reply to her letter arrived with flattering 
 promptitude. This forbidden and expected 
 document was of a more fervent character than 
 the last. Antoine told her of the kisses he 
 had rained on the cold, cruel words traced by 
 her so divine hand. He sent her a photograph 
 of himself in the most effective of his stage 
 costumes. He wrote of charcoal and a closed 
 room, of pistols and poison bowls, of all sorts 
 of dreadful, delicious things.
 
 56 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 "Never, never will I answer that letter!' 
 cried Martha. Accordingly, she sat down the 
 next Sunday and wrote a much longer and 
 slightly warmer epistle than the last, in which 
 she implored him for her sake to abandon all 
 thoughts of the insidious charcoal-fume, the 
 deadly pistol, and the contorting drug. 
 
 That night, with the photograph hidden in 
 her gown, she cast many glances at the un- 
 conscious Doctor over her embroidery, for the 
 first time with something of criticism in their 
 regard. Well, undoubtedly he did present a 
 dried and tanned appearance in contrast with 
 the stalwart comeliness of the pictured figure. 
 
 " And this miserable little man dares to 
 slight me, while that beautiful young person 
 adores me," thought Martha, indignantly. 
 
 Letters rained upon her after this fast as 
 leaves in autumn. Martha neglected her house- 
 hold duties, relaxed her pinching economies, 
 ceased entirely to molest her husband, and 
 wrote reams in answer. The Doctor seemed 
 strangely oblivious of this change in the partner 
 of his joys and sorrows ; doubtless he was 
 deeply grateful, but he said nothing. 
 
 Four months had passed since that first 
 letter from the young French singer had in- 
 vaded Martha's hitherto well-regulated bosom
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 57 
 
 with disturbing thoughts. One day, after a 
 brief but alarming season, in which none ap- 
 peared, one came written in a tremulous 
 hand. 
 
 " I have been ill," wrote Antoine " ill unto 
 death. My physicians tell me I can but recover 
 among the mountains of Switzerland. But I 
 am wiser than they, ignorant. It is only the 
 touch of thy hand that will heal me. Come to 
 me ; but meet me in Switzerland, my adorable 
 Martha ; leave the husband ungrateful, and to- 
 gether we will know what it is to live." 
 
 Martha nearly swooned with horror. Elope ! 
 Was that what he meant ? She elope ! Oh, the 
 unspeakable audacity of her bad young lover. 
 How dared he, the wretch ! Ah, but how 
 dared she thus condemn him when he lay sick, 
 perhaps dying, and all for her ? Might it not 
 be possible for her to go to him, to succor and 
 befriend him, and return to her husband when 
 he was restored to health ? 
 
 She cabled immediately " Impossible! " Then 
 she sat down and wrote that she wondered at 
 him, was horrified, grieved, wounded and how 
 could she possibly come, anyway? 
 
 Antoine in answer gave her very explicit 
 directions for reaching the little town of 
 Aupre, and stated that in a few days he would
 
 58 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 be on Kis way thither. It was all simple 
 enough. Martha had visited Switzerland some 
 years before her marriage, personally conducted 
 by the obliging Mr. Cook, and was a courageous 
 if not very experienced traveller. Now, as to 
 ways and means. Antoine had written of the 
 income, excellent, according to French ideas, 
 which he derived from his profession. It would 
 be so sweet, in case the Doctor should die, or 
 any thing, to owe all to her lover ; but Martha 
 was ever a prudent soul in money matters, 
 and she drew out of the bank a comfortable 
 little sum of her own money, and arranged that 
 if any thing should detain her in Switzerland 
 after her services to the invalid were no longer 
 necessary, the balance should be paid over 
 according to her directions. 
 
 Then she read four chapters in a French 
 novel and compared herself to its heroine, a 
 most fascinating duchess, and, with many 
 qualms, but unimpaired resolution, fled from 
 the roof of her lord. She left the regulation 
 letter, explaining that she went to the side of 
 the only being who loved her truly. She went 
 as a friend, as sister, but she could not be dull 
 to the voice that called her. She bade her 
 husband farewell with a heart of stone, she 
 said. He had never' remembered what was
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 59 
 
 due to her, and she could not see that in this 
 agonizing hour there was any thing due to 
 him. 
 
 Poor Martha's elderly nose was cruelly nipped 
 by the cold, her limbs were stiff with fatigue, 
 her eyes blinded by the strong light that had 
 been around her all day when she arrived at the 
 little inn in Aupre, but she heroically ignored 
 her personal discomforts." 
 
 " Take me at once to the sick gentleman, to 
 Monsieur Nardin," she said. 
 
 " Pardon, Madame," said the bowing host, 
 " but he is not here, this Monsieur." 
 " Not here ! " cried Martha, gasping. 
 " Ah, but stay ! " said the landlord, applying 
 a meditative finger to his brow. " I may per- 
 haps have the happiness to address Madame de 
 Vivien ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " said Martha, eagerly, for by that 
 euphonious name had she elected to travel. 
 " Is there a message for me ? " 
 
 " But yes, truly. A letter that I am to de- 
 liver to Madame when she does us the honor 
 to arrive chez nous." 
 
 He despatched a servant for the letter, and 
 soon brought it to Martha with a triumphant 
 "Void!" 
 
 Martha tore open the envelope in wild agita-
 
 60 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 tion. It was addressed in an unfamiliar hand 
 to Madame de Vivien, and the enclosure was 
 written in French. Slowly and painfully, with 
 many starts and cries, she spelled it out, and, 
 as she read the last word, san'k in a tumbled 
 heap at the feet of the landlord. 
 
 Alas, alas! The letter was written by the 
 physician who had attended poor Antoine in 
 his fatal illness. The lover had died on the 
 day that she arrived at Queenstown, en route 
 for Aupre\ He had no friends, said the melan- 
 choly screed, nearer than the good physician. 
 Him he told that one he loved was to have met 
 him in Aupre, and he bade him break the sad 
 news, and charge her to consider herself hence- 
 forth sacred to one whose last hours were con- 
 secrated to the thought of her. He claimed 
 the remaining years of her life, for though she 
 had not been his wife, she might still be his 
 widow. 
 
 Poor Martha was faithful to the charge. She 
 established herself at the solitary pension in 
 Aupre, where many impecunious but respect- 
 able Americans and English did congregate, 
 engaged a local artist to use the little photo- 
 graph as a clue to an immense idealized por- 
 trait of her departed lover, and wrote to her 
 husband, begging his forgiveness, but assuring
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 6 1 
 
 him that the rest of her life should be past in 
 remembrance of Antoine. She was calm, 
 gentle, autumnally serene. She spent much 
 time in contemplation of the mountains, and 
 broke her heart in an unspeakably melancholy 
 and enjoyable manner. She was important, 
 she was somebody, she was the heroine of a 
 tragic romance. How petty did the village 
 comedies, enacted by her friends, Mrs. Jonas 
 Brown and Miss Letitia Hunter, appear in 
 retrospective contrast. " Ah, said Martha, 
 looking off at the distant sky, " I have lived 
 and loved. What a destiny for one from 
 Minkville! " 
 
 The Doctor wrote two letters after receiving 
 hers. The one in reply to that of his faithless 
 wife was also calm, gentle, serene. He felt no 
 bitterness toward her. His desolate heart, his 
 deserted home were avenged by the death of 
 his supplanter in her affections. He could 
 appreciate her situation, and would never dis- 
 turb the mournful repose of her existence. He 
 would assist her bankers in transferring her 
 account to Beaurole et Cie. at Geneva, and 
 after that the veil should fall forever. 
 His other letter may be given in full : 
 " Ah, my little Gaston, but thou hast the ability 
 of a true demon to so realize the great intention
 
 62 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 of thy so relieved friend ! All has prospered, all 
 is well. I am once and for all at peace. Madame 
 my wife is no more, but Madame the widow of 
 Antonio Nardin lives in perpetual retirement in 
 the village of Aupre. Mountains and seas extend 
 between us, and for always. 
 
 " There is a proverb, my brave boy, my admi- 
 rable fox, which tells us that heaven helps those 
 who have the address to help themselves. Thou 
 knowest with what dread I have thought of the 
 day when Madame my wife should discover the 
 talents I have employed to secure our mutual 
 felicity. My friend, that day will never come. 
 Hast thou not seen in the papers that Nardin has 
 inherited a fortune of value three thousand francs 
 a year ! And that he abandons the stage, re- 
 suming his own name, and departing to Norway, 
 there to end his days with his Norwegian wife. 
 Surely one so fortunate would with ease pardon, 
 if he discover, our use of his convenient name. If 
 only the fools of papers come not in the way of 
 Madame my wife ! But I trust in that so obliging 
 heaven which has thus far recognized and approved 
 my efforts to aid myself, and the fortunes of chance. 
 Nardin is not of importance to be mentioned again. 
 
 "Come, now, when thou wilt to America. My 
 house, my home, my heart, dear Gaston, are thine 
 always thine ! Thou askest if I have no thought 
 to profit by the American divorce, so easy to attain, 
 if the charming Rosa shall not be called to heal the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S RIVAL. 63 
 
 wound in my lacerated bosom. Never, my friend, 
 never ! Had Martha penetrated te the secret of 
 our amiable arrangement to further her happiness, 
 had she returned to me, all furious, then the di- 
 vorce should have been my protection from the 
 faithless woman who deserted me ; the fact of de- 
 sertion could be proved. 
 
 " But that is finished. Matrimony, of it I have 
 had enough. Rosa is fair, is young, is mild. Shall 
 I render hideous that view to which distance lends 
 enchantment ? Ah no ! I have my laboratory, 
 my patients, my beautiful little pile of gold, which 
 grows each day higher. It is mine, all alone. 
 
 " And my embraces of gratitude, my admira- 
 tion, my eternal regard are thine alone, dear Gas- 
 ton, and I beg of thee to come speedily and witness 
 the undisturbed felicity of 
 
 " Thy emancipated friend, 
 
 "HENRI PELLETIN." 
 
 " Much obliged, Van," said the Judge, with a 
 laugh, in which the others joined. 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " said Harry. " It 's an awfully 
 good story, but wasn't it rather hard on the old 
 girl?" 
 
 " You 're a nice boy, Harry," said Van, in 
 answer to his artless criticism. " Yes, it was 
 rather hard, now you mention it." 
 
 " Do you know what time it is ? " asked the
 
 64 TOLD A T TUXEDO, 
 
 Judge, rising with weighty deliberation. The 
 others lookecUup at the clock over the chimney- 
 piece. There was a general exclamation of 
 amused consternation, and the party rather 
 abruptly separated.
 
 III. 
 
 HARRY opened his eyes the next, or rather 
 that morning, and hopeful youth prompted 
 him to anticipate a cessation of hostilities on 
 the part of the weather. Alas ! as he looked 
 from his window, the same dismal sheet of 
 driving snow was drawn over the landscape. 
 I am afraid he said some naughty words as he 
 dashed back into bed again, with a stern reso- 
 lution to abide there during the coming day, 
 born of that curious sense within us, which 
 prompts us to revenge ourselves for the dis- 
 comforts imposed upon us by fate, by adding 
 a few of our own invention. 
 
 But hunger, that wonderful hunger, which 
 never survives the teens and the early twenties, 
 soon drove him out again, and into his clothes, 
 and down to the piazza, where, with the snow 
 whirling in the bitter wind without, he ate a 
 prodigious breakfast in a leafy bower of green 
 and an atmosphere of summer warmth. After 
 this indulgence he proceeded to the hall, his 
 eyes ostentatiously fastened on his paper, but 
 ever and anon giving surreptitious glances that 
 65
 
 66 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 at last assured him that she was there, nestling 
 like the bud she was, in the midst of a gay 
 group of ladies. 
 
 " More snow ! " said Harry, after exchanging 
 greetings, with a gloom that he felt to be posi- 
 tively treacherous, so soon had her pretty smile 
 flooded that gray world with sunshine. 
 
 " More snow ! " echoed a handsome woman, 
 impatiently. " 7am going back to New York." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Percy ! How unkind you are to 
 us ! " 
 
 " Well, when one comes up here for an out- 
 ing, and is compelled to spend the time cower- 
 ing over a fire, it is not calculated to develop 
 the social virtues. I feel unkind." 
 
 " I like the fire," said Harry's little sweet- 
 heart, shyly. " And easy chairs. You do not 
 like easy chairs, Mrs. Percy?" 
 
 "No, I prefer a side saddle." 
 
 "You would like a life on the plains, Mrs. 
 Percy," said Van Corlear, lounging up to the 
 group. 
 
 " Immensely." 
 
 " So all the people say who have never tried 
 it," said Mr. Lenox, leaning over Van's shoulder. 
 
 " Then you would n't return to it ? " 
 
 " Except in memory," said Mr. Lenox, 
 smiling.
 
 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 67 
 
 " Mr. Lenox's memories of the Far West recon- 
 ciled us to the state of the weather last night," 
 said Van Corlear. 
 
 " Oh, give us the benefit of them ! " came 
 the cry in chorus. 
 
 " He told us a story," said Van Corlear. 
 
 " Tell it us ! " begged the ladies in concert. 
 
 " No, you would n't enjoy it," said Mr. 
 Lenox, quietly. " Ask Van for his." 
 
 " I Ve forgotten it," said Van, indolently. 
 
 " Is that the way you beguiled the midnight 
 hour ? " asked Mrs. Percy. 
 
 " Yes, we sat around the fire and told tales 
 till morning." 
 
 " Let us sit around the fire and tell tales till 
 night," said the lady, and the young girl at her 
 side murmured a soft " Please ! " 
 
 " Shall I tell you why I became a failure ? " 
 asked Van. 
 
 " Because it was the only career open to 
 you," replied Mrs. Percy. " No, we know all 
 about that. I had rather hear something from 
 Mr. Lenox." 
 
 " Will the representative from the Wild 
 West kindly come forward ? " said Van, imper- 
 turbably. 
 
 " Must it be something from the other side 
 of the Sierras ? " asked Mr. Lenox, good- 
 humoredly.
 
 68 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 " Yes ! " came the answer. 
 " I am at your service, ladies, and you shall 
 hear of something that happened 
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO." 
 
 The two principal rivers of California are 
 the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. The 
 former rises near Mount Shasta, among the 
 sierras, in the extreme northern part of the 
 State, and, flowing through the rich and fertile 
 valley, pours into Suisun Bay. The source of 
 the San Joaquin is Lake Tulare, in the southern 
 part of the State, and its course is northerly 
 through the counties of Merced, Stanislaus, 
 and San Joaquin, until it too reaches Suisun 
 Bay. The outlet of this bay is by the straits 
 of Carquinez to the larger bay of San Pablo, 
 which in turn mingles with the waters of San 
 Francisco, and San Francisco, through the 
 Golden Gate, goes out to meet the sea. 
 
 On the southerly side of Suisun Bay, a few 
 miles back from its shores, stands a lone moun- 
 tain, known to Californians as Monte Diablo. 
 It was here that the initial surveys of that part 
 of the country were commenced, and around 
 the rugged sides of the mountain clung many 
 of the legends of the early Spanish and Mexican 
 period. It was up the difficult slope that the
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 69 
 
 good Padre Junipero toiled to pray during a 
 period of extreme drought, and, being tempted 
 by the devil with a cup of wine, dashed the 
 alluring draught to earth, thus winning the ob- 
 durate heavens to open, sending down a healing 
 shower of rain, while the reviving earth looked 
 up rejoicing. 
 
 Broad, level lands stretch out from its base 
 toward the bay, and by the small stream that 
 flows down the mountain side possibly the 
 undried tear of disappointment that Satan shed 
 when the worthy priest escaped him in eigh- 
 teen forty-eight the terrible, tumultuous, de- 
 lightful year, when the spark of gold in a Cali- 
 fornia mill flume set the whole Western conti- 
 nent aflame, stood a large adobe house, where 
 dwelt through the changing seasons a lonely 
 old man. He had a companion, to be sure, for 
 whose comfort he manifested always a consci- 
 entious regard and a care so scrupulous as to 
 indicate a lack of the unbounded freedom of 
 affection. 
 
 This companion was an elfish and sickly 
 child a dark, frowning, delicate girl, only a few 
 years old, who received all attempts at caresses 
 with shrieks, and would strike out at the kind 
 hand that faithfully administered the many 
 drugs required to keep the flickering flame of
 
 ;Q TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 life within the frail, ugly little body. The pa- 
 tient nurse knew better than most, the secrets 
 of healing, and, in his double character of father 
 and physician, watched over this querulous 
 mite, the only human interest left him after a 
 life of extraordinary vicissitude and fortune. 
 But often, as he sat silently guarding the 
 hardly won slumbers of his daughter, his mem- 
 ory would go back to the time of his youth, 
 when he had held another child Marie's child 
 in his arms, a great, rosy, confident boy, who 
 clung to him with exuberant affection, and 
 looked up at him with his mother's dark eyes 
 under the golden curls that were the father's 
 gift. And the old man would put his hand up 
 to the white hair from which the years had 
 stolen all the sunshine, and look down with 
 grave kindness on the small, sleeping Juanita, 
 while the grief for his lost boy fed daily on this 
 renewal of paternal duties. 
 
 He has been called old, this solitary man, yet 
 it was an eager life, not time, that aged him, 
 for the eyes that looked out now on Monte 
 Diablo had opened among the. Berkshire Hills 
 little more than fifty years before, and had met 
 those of many men and looked on many scenes 
 since. The only child of a farmer and his wife, 
 who had never left their wooded valley even to
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. J\ 
 
 visit the capital of their State, there was a 
 strange, nomadic strain in the blood of Charles 
 Morse which his parents resented as unaccount- 
 able. It was less remarkable that he should 
 be a student, for down from the hills and out 
 from the woods of New England have wandered 
 many of our most notable scholars. The French 
 and Latin books which Charles saved his sparse 
 coins to buy were kindly looked on by these 
 simple people, who were willing enough to be- 
 lieve that all the fruits of human knowledge 
 and experience were not collected within the 
 walls of the district school, but the wild tales 
 of travel and adventure over which the boy 
 pored in the interminable winter evenings, 
 finding them all too short as he bent his bright 
 eyes and eager brow and flushed cheeks over 
 the alluring pages, were regarded by his elders 
 with disapproval. " A rolling stone gathers no 
 moss, Charles," said his father, gravely. 
 
 " I Ve always thought he favored Elias," said 
 his mother with a sigh, for Elias, her young 
 brother, long dead, had come to no good. 
 
 After a while the kind, chiding voices were 
 silent, and the lad was quite alone in the world. 
 His nearest relative was a young uncle, his 
 father's brother, who had quarrelled bitterly 
 with the boy's parents over a small piece of
 
 72 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 property, and had finally gone West to live, 
 still unreconciled. At seventeen, with no 
 counsellors, the future of a youth left suddenly 
 his own master is much at the mercy of his 
 immediate bent. The variety of young Morse's 
 tastes assisted his judgment now. He sold the 
 farm that was to be expected and started 
 out to see the world. But in order to see it 
 well he determined to first equip himself with 
 an education that would explain the novel ex- 
 periences that awaited him. He entered him- 
 self at a neighboring college, where he soon be- 
 came known as a student of exceeding promise 
 His choice of the profession of all others calcu- 
 lated to bind a man to one locality was rather 
 curiously determined by his intimacy with an 
 old physician in the town, a scientist and a 
 linguist, who became greatly interested in the 
 brilliant lad, and finally persuaded him to enter 
 his profession, promising him a partnership 
 with himself when his medical course should be 
 ended. Two more years of hard study ; another 
 spent in walking the city hospitals, and Charles 
 Morse was settled in the quiet old college town, 
 apparently to be a local feature while his life 
 should last. 
 
 But it was only while the life of his old friend 
 and partner lasted. Him he aided gently to
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 73 
 
 the threshold of the other world, then, with 
 his first sense of freedom, left prospects of solid 
 excellence behind him and wandered out into 
 the world. 
 
 He set his face toward the north. Up he 
 wandered through New England, straying over 
 her frozen fields and through her dense woods 
 with the delight of an Arab journeying across 
 his wide desert, sometimes borne along by the 
 coaches which conveyed travellers in those 
 days, oftener on foot. At last he reached the 
 St. Lawrence, and drifted on its broad bosom 
 to Quebec. He passed through the quaint 
 streets with delight, and it was long before he 
 could leave it for the more modern town of 
 Montreal. That visit to Montreal was destined 
 to stay him for a while in his wanderings, to 
 give to him a few years of intense joy, and a 
 lifetime of tender sorrow. 
 
 Walking one day through the odd little ham- 
 let of Pere Lachine, he stopped before the 
 door of one of its quaint cottages, wherein he 
 descried a knitting dame wrinkled with the 
 rigors of many winters, and asked if he might 
 buy a cup of milk. The old woman moved her 
 eyes only, then called shrilly, " Marie ! " 
 
 A slender shape stole to her side, bending 
 till the long plaits of dusky hair fell across the
 
 74 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 aged working hands, and a soft voice answered, 
 "Grand'mere?" 
 
 For answer the crone only motioned towards 
 the young doctor, who repeated his question 
 with a new diffidence. The young girl disap- 
 peared within the house and reappeared with 
 the milk. As she handed the cup to the hand- 
 some stranger she lifted her eyes shyly, and 
 he saw in them the soft splendor of the south 
 shadowed by the sadness of the north. 
 
 Who that has youth, in fact or in memory, 
 will ask if the young man tarried in his jour- 
 neyings ? As the traveller over the desert 
 comes in soft surprise upon an oasis, fresh and 
 green, and lays him down beside its purling 
 stream, and beneath its plumy trees, in deep 
 content, and, ever after, bearing the burden in 
 the heat of the day, looks back to that time 
 of deep repose and quiet bliss with unspeak- 
 able regret, so the wanderer paused by the side 
 of that gentle figure, and entered into the beau- 
 tiful quiet of her maiden world. 
 
 The old grandam sickened and died. The 
 young physician tried to save her for Marie, 
 but medical skill has a poor chance when time 
 and disease battle with it for one aged frame. 
 The Doctor came home to the cottage, and it 
 was a home indeed for three happy years.
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 75 
 
 The first was a year of sweet silence, broken 
 only by words of love and the soft murmur of 
 caresses, but the second was pierced by a baby's 
 lusty cry, and the third alive with the gurgling 
 music of baby laughter. How the father 
 tossed the splendid round-limbed fellow aloft, 
 and answered the crows of glee with deep bass 
 notes of joy, handing him at last, rosy, breath- 
 less, and glowing to the meek mother, who 
 took him to her white breast, and brooded 
 over him like a dove of peace. 
 
 Nor was the physician idle while the husband 
 and father dallied with wife and child. The 
 Doctor was soon a loved and welcome figure 
 among the simple people of Pere Lachine. 
 He readily adapted his scholar's French to 
 their patois, and never was the healing art 
 more faithfully practised or gratefully rewarded. 
 Alas ! how peaceful and pleasant it was. For 
 Death, the conqueror of conquerors, who in- 
 vades the strongholds of palaces and lowers 
 the tents of the mighty, could not spare that 
 humble cottage. And he came, as he comes so 
 often, with awful wisdom, choosing the fairest 
 and best there. 
 
 There came a day when Marie lay, her brown 
 eyes wide with a pained wonder that the wise 
 Jover who helped so many could not help her.
 
 76 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 Soon that piteous look of sweet reproach hard- 
 ened to one of dumb endurance, then faded to 
 blank unconsciousness. There was nothing else 
 in the fair face for many hours after that, but 
 at last, just as the winter dawn was filling the 
 little white room with a flush that fell like the 
 shadow of a rose on the meek figure on the bed 
 the grief-worn husband saw light and life shine 
 out in that supreme moment, while the spirit 
 poised for its final flight. 
 
 " Mon enfant ! " she whispered, with a love- 
 ly smile. 
 
 He brought the child and laid him by her 
 side, and the mother's hand strayed over the 
 curls that her eyes could no longer see." 
 
 " II cst si beau ! " she murmured. " C outvie 
 toi, mon mari. Ah,Je stiis bicn kcurctisc ! " 
 
 With these simple words of pleasure, the 
 gentle soul departed, and with her the one 
 complete joy of the Doctor's life. 
 
 He could not stay in the little cabin that 
 grew dark and desolate with the mild radiance 
 of that presence withdrawn. His large man's 
 hands cared but clumsily for the motherless 
 child, who wailed reproachfully at the father 
 gazing helplessly at his whilom playmate, in 
 pathetic ignorance of the meaning of that 
 piteous cry,
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 7/ 
 
 In the next cabin dwelt a kindly and elderly 
 couple named Pentier. The wife was a placid, 
 efficient creature, who readily gave what aid 
 she could to the bereft man and forlorn baby. 
 The husband was known to cherish a fondness 
 for money, remarkable once among the prudent 
 and thrifty villagers, and was thought to be 
 willing to gain it even at some slight moral 
 sacrifice, otherwise a well-meaning man and de- 
 sirable neighbor. Like every one else, he was 
 very gently disposed to Marie's child, and was 
 not averse to the young presence in his own 
 quiet cottage. Soon it became constant. The 
 little fellow turned to Louise Pentier with that 
 happy confidence which children show under 
 experienced handling. He cried when his fa- 
 ther came to fetch him away. The Doctor, 
 meanwhile, had grown unspeakably wretched 
 and restless. The old wanderer's fever seized 
 him. He wanted to go away, carrying his 
 blessed memory with him into strange scenes 
 and climes, but escaping from the daily tortur- 
 ing suggestions of what had been and was not. 
 
 One night he talked late with the Pentiers. 
 After they had left him he moved to and fro 
 in his little home, making arrangements with 
 quick, practised hands. It had all been settled. 
 He had paid the rent of the cottage until
 
 78 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 the time when his lease should expire into the 
 hands of its owner. The household goods 
 were to be given to the Pentiers, and they were 
 to take the child into their keeping until the 
 father should return. Joseph Pentier was glad 
 at the thought of the modest sum to be paid 
 for the support of the boy, but Louise, his wife, 
 thought only that once more a child should 
 play upon their hearth, from which her only 
 treasure, a daughter, had gone in early girlhood 
 to follow her young husband's fortunes in the 
 Western world. 
 
 There were a few things that the Doctor 
 folded by themselves to be borne with him 
 wherever he should go, and be seen by no eyes 
 but his. This done, but one thing remained, 
 something even harder than had been the put- 
 ting together of those poor trifles that had once 
 gained a grace from the gentle form they had 
 decked harder almost than had been the visit 
 at sunset to the low little mound, already grow- 
 ing green as the memory of the quiet heart be- 
 neath the young grass. He turned to the little 
 bed where Marie's boy lay sleeping, and kissed 
 the white lids that hid the eyes that were like 
 hers. They opened at the sorrowful touch 
 with her very look, and the man caught the 
 child in his arms and broke his heart over him 
 <n an agony of tears and sobs.
 
 //V THE SHADOW Of MONTE DIABLO. 79 
 
 The next day he was gone, and the little 
 Charles played undisturbed about the Pentiers' 
 door, and Joseph Pentier sat in Marie's low 
 chair of an evening, and patted the boy kindly 
 on the head, liking him well for his own sake, 
 and better for sake of those coins that he 
 brought into the stroking hand. 
 
 The Doctor wandered from one Western city 
 to another. Sometimes he would remain for 
 many months in one place, establish a small 
 practice, then, as his prospects brightened, 
 wander on. At last he found himself journey- 
 ing southward again, and entering with a sense 
 of pleasure the fair old town of New Orleans. 
 
 At that time the Crescent City was in the 
 full tide of its prosperity. The long lines of 
 railroads which now exist had not then been 
 constructed, and the great traffic of the Missis- 
 sippi River, with all of the business of the sur- 
 rounding States, centred there. No city on 
 the American continent had then the cosmo- 
 politan characteristics which distinguished New 
 Orleans, and the babel of soft southern tongues 
 spoke in many languages. 
 
 But I think it was the language of the city 
 that determined the Doctor's stay there. 
 Softened, changed, rolling with the thick rich- 
 ness from Creole lips, it yet recalled the patois
 
 8o TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 of the Northern peasants of Pere Lachine, and 
 it was in French, Marie's mother tongue, that 
 the business of life was carried on. He came 
 to love the quaint, gay town very dearly, and 
 ever and anon a face would shine softly out 
 from lattice or balcony that recalled in its 
 luminous, dusky sweetness the one hidden 
 under Canadian snows. He thought he would 
 send for his boy, and as he grew older, he would 
 point out to him these shy, dark-eyed maidens, 
 saying : " See, your mother was like that." 
 But the call to arms disturbed and banished 
 that tender purpose. The neighboring State of 
 Texas, then under the dominion of Mexico, was 
 in rebellion, and fighting for independence. 
 Many young men, the flower of the city, had 
 crossed the border and enlisted in the army 
 commanded by General Houston. All Louisi- 
 ana was alive with the fervid, chivalric sympathy 
 of the far South, and the Doctor felt his blood 
 fire as excited voices, in the language he had 
 learned to love through the lips of his dead 
 wife, spoke of comradeship and battle and 
 victory. He joined the Texan army, and was 
 assigned duty as brigade surgeon in a short 
 time. 
 
 Within six months he was taken prisoner 
 while attending to the wounded during a des-
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 8 1 
 
 perate battle, and carried to the city of Mexico. 
 For more than a year the man who found even 
 the limits of a town or State a restraint lan- 
 guished behind inexorable bars, his restless feet 
 stayed in their wanderings, his eager spirit 
 fretting itself into tameness within the limits of 
 a cell. 
 
 At last a partial liberty was granted him. 
 Through the intercession of an influential 
 American resident he was released from the 
 prison on parole, and allowed to practise his 
 profession within the limits of the city. The 
 dull acquiescence which had succeeded his first 
 months of impotent protest during his cap- 
 tivity, now, through a resumption of familiar 
 ways, became invaded by an anxiety that had 
 been one of the chief tortures of that early 
 time. It was for news of his boy. He had 
 been in constant communication with the 
 Pentiers until he entered the Texan army, but 
 after the last letter received at New Orleans no 
 word or token had come. He had attributed 
 this to the rapid movements of the army, 
 though other and less important letters had 
 reached him safely. During his confinement 
 he had been permitted to write at stated inter- 
 vals, and now with his greatly enlarged privi- 
 leges, every facility for correspondence was at
 
 82 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 his disposal. It was in vain, letters and mes- 
 sages brought no answer. The Doctor lost 
 heart. He remembered Pentier's well-known 
 and rather unscrupulous avarice, recalled the 
 fact that that last New Orleans letter had 
 spoken of the child as suffering from one of the 
 many ailments of childhood, and concluded 
 that Pentier was acting the part of a rascal, 
 still receiving the unfailing remittances, while 
 the boy was dead. He became more certain 
 of this when a newspaper from one of the 
 Northern States dropped into his hands one 
 day, that told of a fever raging among the 
 Canadian settlements, and of the great mor- 
 tality among children attacked by it. He 
 wrote to the postmaster of the village, and 
 again in vain, and remembering that that 
 official was a cousin of Pentier, accepted his 
 silence as proof of collusion. 
 
 Hopeless and joyless he went on his rounds 
 about the beautiful city, and whenever he saw 
 a child he turned his face the other way. 
 
 But Time, the Healer, laid a cool hand on his 
 heart, stilling the sharp pang to a dull ache, 
 such as most of us bear about with us all our 
 lives, eating and sleeping and working in fair 
 comfort all the while. The Doctor did his 
 duty, and found the usual reward in the quiet-
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 83 
 
 ing influence of continuous action. At last the 
 war was ended, and he was at liberty again. 
 With every tie broken that bound him to the 
 past, he turned his face to the setting sun, and 
 tried to forget that grave over which the sad 
 trees of the North murmured their melancholy 
 requiem, seeing always in imagination a shorter 
 one by the side of it. 
 
 He joined a party who were bound for the 
 mountains of Sinaloa and Durango, prospecting 
 for silver, and for a while the life of the mines 
 gave him a certain rude satisfaction. But he 
 tired of it and his illiterate companions, and 
 under convoy of a bullion train travelled to the 
 city of Mazetan. The then small and insignifi- 
 cant seaport its only communication with the 
 outer world through the city of Mexico, or an 
 occasional ship that stopped to barter Yankee 
 notions for hides and tallow held nothing to 
 detain him long, and he was soon on a trading 
 vessel bound for Upper California. The ship 
 stopped for a few days at San Francisco, then 
 only a scanty settlement of a dozen or more 
 houses, but something in the look of the place 
 attracted the Doctor's capricious regard. He 
 let the vessel depart without him, saying that 
 he would wait for the next ship, with a vague 
 intention of still going westward until the
 
 84 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 earth's round should bring him into the far 
 Orient. But the new little town, soon to develop 
 into the metropolitan exotic of the Pacific 
 Slope, held him. There were there some hardy 
 and adventurous spirits akin to his own, and 
 there was sad need for his professional services. 
 He caught now and then the accent of his own 
 New England in the speech of the pioneers, 
 and the sound was dear to him. Perhaps, also, 
 the Doctor was a little tired. The stress and 
 strain of battle, the privation and lassitude of 
 confinement above all, the bitter certainty 
 that the boy was gone forever, had tamed that 
 roving nature. Ships came and sailed away 
 without him, and still he stayed on in the little 
 port, practising diligently, passing most of his 
 time in the saddle, as he rode on his professional 
 rounds from one out-lying ranch to another. 
 It was a strange life ; there was so little money 
 in the country, that horses and cattle, hides 
 and tallow, were used as circulating medium. 
 In these he was paid with a lavishness that 
 gave promise of the opulent and over-powering 
 methods of later Californian days, and he 
 found himself a stock farmer quite without 
 volition. He had no objection to assuming 
 this character, however, and made application 
 to the government for a tract of land. He
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 85 
 
 was granted five leagues at the foot of Monte 
 Diablo, where he built him an adobe house, 
 and here at last, his travels ended, he came to 
 end his days. He did not come alone, how- 
 ever. Many years after his arrival at San 
 Francisco he had attached himself to a Mexi- 
 can family, chiefly because the daughter of the 
 house had a voice and a trick with the eye- 
 lashes that reminded him of Marie. She was 
 like her in nothing else, but when the young 
 woman was left quite alone in the world, 
 through the death of parents and brothers, the 
 Doctor asked her, quite gravely and soberly, to 
 marry him. She consented with delight, for 
 he was rapidly becoming a wealthy man. She 
 did not make him happy, for she was a sickly, 
 querulous, and exacting creature, very unlike 
 the mild wives of her own nation, and no chil- 
 dren came to make the great adobe house a 
 home. 
 
 The Doctor grew very silent under her com- 
 plaints, and, in time, morose. He devoted 
 himself assiduously to his stock, which multi- 
 plied rapidly, and, when the Americans took 
 possession of the country, he was one of the 
 wealthiest men there. He had been many 
 years married when, to his amazement, perhaps 
 to his disturbance, it became evident that his
 
 86 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 Juanita was to present him with a child. God 
 knows what early memories, sad and tender as 
 the strains of long-forgotten lullabies, the ex- 
 pectation wakened in him, aged as he was 
 before his time. He was very gentle with the 
 sick and terrified wife, and as her weak soul 
 fled from the world with the first cry that gave 
 token that a new one had entered it, he bent 
 over her exhausted body with real grief. 
 
 The baby was curiously like her mother, and 
 her tiny frame seemed to harbor a perpetual 
 resentment against the author of her being for 
 introducing her into a world apparently so 
 little to her liking. Perhaps the Doctor con- 
 sidered this ground for her objection to him, 
 and regarded it as a justifiable aversion, for he 
 cared for her with great patience through a 
 wretched infancy into a graceless and delicate 
 childhood. 
 
 But his mood became very bleak. His riches 
 were piling themselves up, and of his own blood 
 there were none left in the world but this un- 
 promising girl and a young cousin, the son of 
 that uncle who had quarrelled with the Doctor's 
 father so many years ago. This man, young 
 enough to be the Doctor's son, had been dis- 
 covered by him in the person of a clerk in the 
 offices of Wells, Fargo, & Company in San
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 87 
 
 Francisco. The Doctor was not one to keep 
 alive the flames of an ancestral enmity, and he 
 was genuinely pleased to meet one of his own 
 name and race. But the pleasure was short- 
 lived like so many of the poor Doctor's joys. 
 Henry Morse was not a lovable youth. He 
 was a surly, dissipated fellow, on whom the 
 attempt to conciliate his wealthy relative sat 
 but ill. He was shrewd enough withal, and 
 managed to keep the knowledge of his excesses 
 from his employers, and instinctively hated his 
 keen old kinsman for the discernment he de- 
 tected in his grave glance. 
 
 One night, late in the autumn of eighteen 
 fifty-three, the Doctor sat by his fire, worn with 
 the task of wooing slumber to Juanita's staring 
 eyes, and meditating on the general unsatisfac- 
 toriness of human existence. 
 
 " I must make my will," he said. " The poor 
 baby may die at any moment, and then, if any 
 thing happens to me, Henry Morse will make 
 ducks and drakes of my hard earnings. They 
 must be left to Juanita, with a reversion to 
 some charity at her death, if she dies, as she 
 undoubtedly will, without issue. And then it 
 will all go in reports and red tape. Well, better 
 so than to grog-shops and gambling-hells ! " 
 
 As he stooped, sighing, to push a fallen brand
 
 88 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 back into the blaze, he heard a knock at the 
 door. The servants had long since retired, and 
 he seized his candle and his stout stick and 
 went to open it himself. A weather-beaten 
 figure stood without in the darkness. 
 
 " I have lost my way," it said. 
 
 " That is what they all say," said Dr. Morse, 
 dryly. 
 
 " I 'm not going to beg of you," said the man, 
 answering the spirit as well as the words. " I 
 only want permission to sleep in one of your 
 barns or outhouses." 
 
 " You can't have it," said the Doctor, harden- 
 ing his heart. " I Ve done sheltering tramps. 
 It 's not four months since one of them tried to 
 set my house on fire, after I had taken him in, 
 in order that he might have a chance to plunder 
 in the confusion. Be off ! " 
 
 The man still hesitated. 
 
 " Do you want me call my dogs ? " said the 
 Doctor, sharply. " They 're not pleasant fel- 
 lows to meet on a dark night, unless you 're 
 intimately acquainted with them." 
 
 " I don't much care," said the stranger, 
 wearily. "They 'd make quick work of me, 
 and so much the better. I don't know how to 
 circumvent them. I have n't the luck to be a 
 tramp by profession."
 
 LV THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 89 
 
 The Doctor's battered old heart was touched 
 by something in the tone more than the words 
 of this speech. He lifted his candle higher, so 
 that the light fell full on the face of the man, 
 who stood patiently still under the scrutiny. 
 
 " Why, you are young ! " he exclaimed, for 
 the drifting beard and stooping figure had 
 given an impression of middle age, at least. 
 
 The man broke into a fatigued laugh. 
 
 " I do not feel so," he said. 
 
 " Nor look so, unless you examine pretty 
 closely," retorted the Doctor. " Here, come 
 in. I won't turn you in loose among my barns 
 and outhouses, but you may lie down on that 
 bunk before the fire. My bed commands a 
 good view of it, you see. I have a trick of 
 sleeping with one eye open, and if I see you 
 stir in a way that runs counter to my ideas of 
 what 's honest in motions, I '11 shoot you. Are 
 you hungry ? " 
 
 " No," said the stranger, with a gesture of 
 disgust, " I could n't eat." 
 
 The Doctor eyed him closely. " I guess you 
 had n't better try until you 've rested," he said. 
 "You are tired." 
 
 He turned away and threw himself on "his 
 bed, and, looking across the expanse of the 
 great room, saw the other slowly divest himself
 
 go TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 of his coat and throw himself down on the rude 
 couch. The eyes closed for a moment, then 
 opened with that strained, nervous stare which 
 shows that nature has been too hardly taxed to 
 find ready relief in her healing potion of slum- 
 ber. For a long time they lay there in silence, 
 the stranger gazing out into the fire-lit room, 
 the Doctor gazing at the stranger. At last the 
 warmth, the .quiet, the unwonted sense of 
 security began to take effect on the over- 
 wrought frame. The lids fluttered down over 
 the dark eyes, and with a gradual relaxing of 
 the tense limbs, the young man slowly turned, 
 flinging his arms above his head, and letting 
 his cheek fall against one of them, with a rest- 
 ful sigh, like that of a child spent with play. 
 
 What was there in that attitude that brought 
 the Doctor to his feet ? He stood for a mo- 
 ment stiff and straight in the dimness, then, 
 trembling, sank back on his bed again. After 
 a while he raised himself up cautiously, and 
 propped himself up by pillows into a position 
 which brought the face of the sleeping man 
 into view. Hours slipped by, and still he 
 stared on, though the fire had long since died 
 out and left the room in darkness. 
 
 When the full morning light was streaming 
 in at the windows, the stranger wakened sud-
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. Ql 
 
 denly from deep sleep to find the Doctor stand- 
 ing over him. He had food in his hands, and 
 immediately proffered it, saying only, in an 
 abrupt fashion, " Eat ! " 
 
 His guest ate gladly enough. The pro- 
 found slumber had refreshed him greatly, and 
 he looked up once or twice from his breakfast 
 with a confiding smile. 
 
 " Where do you come from ? " asked the Doc- 
 tor, as he finished, taking an empty cup from him. 
 
 " San Francisco," was the answer. 
 
 " All tramps come from San Francisco," said 
 Dr. Morse, grimly. "You don't look like 
 a Californian." 
 
 " I 'm not," said the stranger, falling back on 
 his pillow again ; " my home is in Illinois." 
 
 " What are you doing out here ? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " Like the rest of your brethren whom you 
 repudiate." 
 
 " Can't you see a difference between necessity 
 and choice, my friend ? " asked the young man, 
 pleasantly. " It is because I can find nothing 
 to do that I am going back to hard work and 
 poor pay and a disappointed wife in Illinois." 
 
 " Yours seems to be a hard case." 
 
 " I 'm in the same box with a good many 
 others."
 
 92 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 " What brought you out here ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is n't much of a story. I live on a 
 farm a little one in Illinois. It is a poor 
 neighborhood. We work like dogs, all of us. 
 The crops go from bad to worse. The few 
 that own stock have the devil's own luck with 
 it. There was a man came our way a while 
 ago ; he used to be the worthless fellow of the 
 township. He passed through on his way to 
 the East ; he had grown too grand to live in 
 his old home. He was a rich man, sir, and 
 he 'd made every cent of it out here in Cali- 
 fornia. He told us such fine stories that a lot 
 of us got together and made up a purse ; then 
 we drew lots, and the one that got the lucky 
 strip was to come out here and look around, 
 and see what chance there was for a number of 
 us to come and colonize. We 're all about 
 worn out with work, to say nothing of ague. 
 But I 'm going back to tell them not to go 
 from bad to worse. We 're too late for the 
 show. I would n't mind so much for my part, 
 if it was n't for my wife. She 's had too much 
 put upon her, and our three babies seem to 
 have drained the courage with the milk." 
 
 " Poor child ! " 
 
 " Ah, vraiment ! Ma petite Helene ! " 
 
 Dr. Morse started violently. A deep crim- 
 son flush stained his face.
 
 IN Tf/E SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 93 
 
 " Do all Illinois farmers speak French ? " he 
 said, with difficulty. 
 
 " Not much. But I was n't born or brought 
 up in Illinois. I Ve only lived there for ten 
 years." 
 
 "Where did you live before that time?" 
 
 " In Ottawa." 
 
 " You are a Canadian, then ? " 
 
 " Yes, by birth, though my father was an 
 American." 
 
 " Were you born in Ottawa ? " 
 
 " No, in Pere Lachine, near Montreal." 
 
 The color had fled from the Doctor's face and 
 left it deadly pale as he asked in a whisper : 
 
 " Is your father living? " 
 
 "No," answered the young man, turning a 
 wondering regard on the questioner. The Doc- 
 tor fell on his knees by the couch, and his 
 shaking, yearning hands hovered above the 
 figure there. 
 
 " Your mother ? " he gasped. 
 
 " She has been dead these many years." 
 
 "Yes! " cried the old man, beating his breast 
 and wringing his thin hands wildly, " these 
 many, many years ! " 
 
 The stranger raised himself and gazed with 
 alarm into the sad, wild eyes of his host. 
 
 " You are ill," he said, " let me help you."
 
 94 . TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 " No, no. Not ill. One moment more. Tell 
 me your name." 
 
 " Charles Morse." 
 
 "Ah! and ask mine." 
 
 " What is your name ? " said the young man, 
 mechanically. 
 
 " Charles Morse." 
 
 " You are very ill," said the stranger, rising 
 hastily. " Let me call some one." 
 
 " Another moment ! Where did your father 
 die?" 
 
 " He was killed in the Mexican war.' 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the other. But he had begun to 
 tremble. 
 
 " Listen ! " said the Doctor. He had dragged 
 himself up from the floor, and seated himself 
 on the side of the couch. He took one of the 
 young man's hands in his own and began, in a 
 low, still rich voice, to sing a sad little Norman 
 air. It was an old, old chanson, and its light 
 measure dealt with roses and terraces and a 
 lady's glove, but one knew, in listening, that 
 weeds had long overrun the forgotten terraces, 
 that the little hand that wore the glove had 
 dropped to dust a century ago, and that nothing 
 was left of the roses but a faint, sorrowful scent 
 lurking in the depths of an old pot-pourri jar.
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONTE DIABLO. 95 
 
 Many, many years ago a little child had been 
 lulled to sleep by the quaint melody that had 
 wooed the infant slumbers of his mother and 
 grandmother. As the old man with his white 
 hair and his mournful eyes sang on, the younger 
 voice, awakened by a tremulous throng of memo- 
 ries, took up the refrain. After a while it bore 
 the burden of the song alone. The other was 
 silent. The young man sang on softly to the 
 end, then turned his face, all broken by hope 
 and fear and wonder, to find himself clasped to 
 the breast where he had rested in infancy, 
 while the father with trembling lips, murmured 
 Marie's lullaby to her son. 
 
 * ****** 
 
 Peaceful years passed calmly away. The 
 Doctor, his wanderings ended, slept in the 
 shadow of Monte Diablo. And on spring days 
 little children trooping reverently about the 
 green grave would drop flowers above the quiet 
 heart of their father's father. And the Suisun 
 still empties its waters into San Pablo ; and 
 San Pablo flows on to San Francisco ; and San 
 Francisco, out by the Golden Gate to the sea.
 
 IV. 
 
 " THAT is beautiful," said Mrs. Percy. 
 "Thank you so much, Mr. Lenox. I am 
 glad the old man's stormy life ended so peace- 
 fully and pleasantly." 
 
 Mr. Lenox said nothing. 
 
 " Did he live long after that ? " asked the 
 lady. 
 
 " No, not long." 
 
 " Tell us about the meeting with the grand- 
 children," said the Bud, timidly. 
 
 " I never heard about it, my dear." 
 
 " Ah, Lenox ! " said the Judge, suddenly, 
 "was n't that man Morse the California physi- 
 cian, whose case brought the question as to 
 what constitutes a legal marriage before the 
 courts for the first time in that State?" 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Lenox. 
 
 ' Why, he was murdered in fifty-three ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Bud, with a plaintive note 
 of grief. 
 
 " Ponderous old idiot ! " muttered Harry, 
 glancing savagely at the distinguished jurist. 
 96
 
 A POINT OF LA W. 97 
 
 "Was he really murdered, Mr. Lenox?" 
 
 asked Mrs. Percy, regretfully. 
 
 " I am sorry to say that he was." 
 
 " Oh, and what became of the son ?" 
 
 " Ah, that 's another story, and not a pleasant 
 
 one in the telling." 
 
 " I think we are willing to risk the chances 
 
 of unpleasantness in any thing you may tell us." 
 " Indeed we are. Please let us hear to the 
 
 bitter end." 
 
 " Fortunately the end was not bitter." 
 
 " Then all the more we wish to hear it." 
 
 " Yes, Lenox, let us have the rest of it ; as I 
 
 recall it, it was a very interesting case," said 
 
 the Judge, weightily. 
 
 " Did it ever occur to you that a man may 
 
 weary of the sound of his own voice?" asked 
 
 Mr. Lenox, with a good-humored glance at the 
 
 waiting group. 
 
 " A man may," said Van, with a sinister 
 
 smile. " Now if you had said " 
 
 " Oh, there, my boy ; no cheap jokes. I will 
 
 speak, to stop them, on 
 
 " A POINT OF LAW." 
 
 It was late in the day when the younger 
 Charles Morse had told his tale to the ears that 
 waited greedily to hear it. It was a simple
 
 98 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 little story enough, and sad, as most simple 
 stories are. 
 
 The Pentiers had left Pere Lachine while the 
 Doctor was still a prisoner in the city of Mex- 
 ico. His name had been on the list of those 
 killed. Joseph had sighed at the thought that 
 the remittances would cease, and Louise had 
 tied a little black ribbon about the child's 
 throat, and that was all. They had gone to 
 Illinois to live, and there the good foster-mother 
 had died. Pentier was kind to the boy, but 
 he had begun to work for himself when he was 
 scarcely more than an infant, and did not see 
 why his charge should not do the same. Charles 
 was bound out to a farmer, and early and late, 
 scantily fed and clothed, treated with indiffer- 
 ence and severity, though never with harshness, 
 he toiled like a little slave from morning until 
 night through many thankless years. After a 
 while Pentier's health became impaired, and he 
 gladly went to the home of his daughter in 
 Ohio. Charles had never seen him since. He 
 knew for a certainty that he had never received 
 any letters after the last one from New Orleans, 
 for he had dealt fairly with the boy always, 
 and would besides have had a motive, after the 
 remittances ceased, for writing in order to 
 have them renewed. The fortunes of war, the
 
 A POINT OF LA W. 99 
 
 treachery of attendants, the frequent robberies 
 of mails, and the ill favor of chance had all com- 
 bined to defeat the Doctor's efforts to find his 
 son. 
 
 At nineteen, the young fellow, thinking to 
 lighten the burdens of this hard world by help- 
 ing to overcrowd it, had married. He had, of 
 course, chosen the one among all the village 
 maidens least calculated to be a sturdy help- 
 mate. It was the clergyman's daughter, poor 
 and simple as himself, finer in fibre and sweet- 
 er in nature than any of the neighboring farm- 
 ers' daughters, willing to die for him if need 
 be, but, not having vitality enough for so de- 
 cisive a step, only able to work herself into a 
 state of great delicacy and suffering. The rest 
 had been already told in the early part of their 
 interview. He was a fine young fellow, but'he 
 had inherited something of his mother's yield- 
 ing nature, and he was tired, discouraged, and 
 beaten. He had meant to go back to his wife 
 and children and hold out as best he could to 
 the end, his only hope being that the end 
 would come speedily, and to all at once. 
 
 But now all was changed. Genuinely hap- 
 py as he was to find the father of whom he had 
 had nothing but a dim memory, I think the 
 chief sense in that gentle and disheartened na-
 
 100 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 ture had been one of unspeakable relief that 
 the burden of life could be lifted for a while 
 from his tired shoulders by stronger hands than 
 his, that he could be directed and helped and 
 cared for as he had not been since good moth- 
 er Pentier died. 
 
 Into the father's heart we dare not enter. 
 The door into that shrine of sacred joy is shut 
 against all our cold and careless world. But 
 after a week he grew restless in his happiness. 
 He wanted the final arrangements made ; he 
 could not be content until his son should have 
 gone back to close up affairs at the dreary farm 
 and bring away the wife and children. The 
 shadow of that brief impending separation 
 distressed the Doctor. He wanted to have it 
 over. He could feel no security in the posses- 
 sion of his recovered treasure until he and his 
 were established at the foot of Monte Diablo. 
 
 It was soon arranged that young Morse 
 should start eastward, and two days before his 
 intended departure, the Doctor started over the 
 familiar trail for Martinez, en route for San 
 Francisco, where some necessary business 
 claimed his presence. Before another sun had 
 risen, his dead body was found, lying in the 
 shadow of Monte Diablo, with its face turned 
 up to the morning sky. Happiness and he
 
 A POINT OF LAW. IOI 
 
 could not travel long together. She had fled 
 from him now and again during his life, and 
 when at last it seemed that he had bound her 
 into secure captivity, he was called away. 
 
 His watch and money had been taken from 
 him. He had no known enemy. All things 
 pointed to the crime as the vulgar, oft-repeated 
 murder prompted by greed of a little gain, and 
 the usual inquest was held and verdict ren- 
 dered. 
 
 The son, stricken with grief and awe, tended 
 his sickly half-sister, and offered a reward of 
 thousands for the apprehension of the mur- 
 derer. There seemed nothing more to do for 
 the old man who had mourned his joys per- 
 ished untimely, and was now snatched untime- 
 ly from his joys. But no long luxury of woe 
 was permitted him. The young cousin, Henry 
 Morse, who had come on from San Francisco 
 to the funeral, had never chosen to recognize 
 him, and now applied for letters of administra- 
 tion on the estate as nearest male relative of 
 the deceased, and natural guardian of his 
 daughter and heiress, an infant. In making his 
 application he did not choose to contest the 
 statement made by Doctor Morse before his 
 death, that the young man now in possession 
 of the adobe house was his son, a fact made
 
 102 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 startlingly evident by the close personal resem- 
 blance between them, but simply claimed 
 that the mother had never been married to 
 the Doctor, which, there being no will in exist- 
 ence, excluded the new-found son from all 
 share in the estate. 
 
 Now the question as to what constituted a 
 legal marriage arose. There was no prece- 
 dent in California, and the county judge, after 
 giving the matter due consideration, decided 
 that the proper way was to grant the letters 
 applied for on the filing of the usual bonds, 
 and await the contest which would probably 
 ensue, when all the allegations of both sides 
 would be placed before him. 
 
 Charles Morse was notified that he could no 
 longer reside at the ranch, but that, as an act of 
 charity, the executor, his cousin in fact though 
 not in law, would furnish him with means to 
 return to his home. But the son, stirred by 
 regard for the wishes of his father and the 
 memory of his mother, as well as by the in- 
 stinct to battle for his rights, was not so easily 
 to be put out of the way. He took counsel 
 with his father's closest friend, a retired sea- 
 captain of Martinez, and by his advice consult- 
 ed with Messrs. Merritt and Page, a legal firm 
 of high local fame. Mr. Page, the junior part-
 
 A POINT OF LA W. 103 
 
 ner was a shrewd man, and good. He saw a 
 chance for a fine profit, and he was pleased to 
 aid the young fellow with the worn, honest face. 
 
 " The case is one of great uncertainty, Mr. 
 Morse," he said, " and you have not money 
 enough even to pay ordinary expenses. But 
 we are willing to undertake it for you on these 
 terms : we will give our services, make the 
 necessary disbursements, and, if we succeed, 
 send you a bill for twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 If we lose, we renounce all claims. I am about 
 to go east. I will visit Pere Lachine, obtain 
 such proofs for your case as I can, and return 
 in time for the trial." 
 
 The offer was accepted, and Page lost no 
 time in reaching Pere Lachine. He was fortu- 
 nate enough to find a few of the old inhabi- 
 tants to whom Dr. Morse was not a tradition 
 but a memory, and he found himself in a po- 
 sition to be very hopeful for his friendless 
 young client. The necessary affidavits were 
 prepared and sworn to, and he returned to New 
 York, where for a brief while business and 
 pleasure claimed him. 
 
 When at last he was ready to depart, the 
 fancy to go by sea seized him. The Pacific 
 Mail Steamship Company was then fitting up 
 a new ship to go to San Francisco by way of
 
 IO4 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 Cape Horn, and, finding that he had time to 
 make the voyage before the case would be 
 called, Page took passage in the San Francisco. 
 
 On the twenty-second day of December the 
 beautiful ship passed out of the harbor, and 
 the little waves caressingly receded before her 
 treacherous little waves that gave no hint of 
 their cruel kindred waiting beyond. In two 
 days they were beating and dashing furiously 
 at the disabled ship, battling impotently with 
 a heavy gale, the engines helpless from the 
 breaking of the air-pump piston rod, the 
 spanker blown away, and the foremast gone 
 over the side. On they rushed, clambering 
 higher, until at last, massed together in one 
 overwhelming volume, they swept over the 
 wreck, and receded, bearing one-hundred and 
 fifty people away with them. 
 
 A little later the survivors were rescued by 
 the ship Antarctic and the barques Kilby and 
 Three Bells and with the New Year the brave 
 San Francisco sank out of sight forever. 
 
 Many hopes went down with her, among 
 them those of poor Charles Morse, for that 
 cruel first wave had swept Mr. Page far out to 
 sea. He gave up his cause as lost, for though 
 the circumstances were such that the court 
 would have been justified in granting addition-
 
 A POINT OF LA W. 105 
 
 al time for the production of proofs, California 
 in her new and exciting career as a State rarely 
 consented to postpone a trial. Like a young 
 housewife, she hurried her affairs in brisk im- 
 portance, with a sense that the days were not 
 going to be long enough for her to finish all 
 her work. 
 
 The old Captain, Dr. Morse's friend was very 
 downcast. " When I know the store Charley 
 Morse set by that boy, jest found as he was, and 
 how he hated that coyote, Henry, I 'm about 
 sick. That poor child, Juanita, too. She '11 have 
 a fine time with sech a guardian." 
 
 But Juanita did not need his pity. The con- 
 scientious care for her which her half-brother 
 seemed to have inherited from his father was 
 not coupled with the father's experience, and 
 one day, her cross little face softening with its 
 first expression of satisfaction, Juanita slipped 
 away from a world where she had never felt at 
 home. Soft-hearted Charles, remembering hi3 
 own little girls on the farm, grieved over the 
 little coffin, but Henry Morse triumphantly 
 announced himself as sole heir to all the vast 
 fortune. 
 
 A day or two before that set for the trial the 
 Captain crossed dejectedly over to Benicia to 
 make some purchases, and had not the heart for
 
 106 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 his usual chat with the grocer, whose wares were 
 his chief object. He answered the good man's 
 loquacious comments on existing affairs rather 
 shortly and sadly, until, looking back to the 
 rear of the shop, he perceived a very venerable 
 old man, whose lint-white locks showed fair in 
 the dimness. Now, in that period of Califor- 
 nia's history old men were as rare as " snakes in 
 Norway " ; the wild life called for the young 
 and strong. 
 
 " Who is he ? " he asked of the proprietor. 
 
 " My wife's father," was the answer. " Come, 
 and speak to him, Captain. He '11 like it." 
 
 Pleased, as the aged usually are with any at- 
 tention, the old man became very garrulous. 
 Yes, he was visiting, he told the Captain. He 
 was getting quite a traveller. He meant to go 
 around more than he had done. He had been 
 living for years in Ohio, with his brother, a 
 widower like himself. His brother and he kept 
 house together, and on Sundays they always 
 took dinner with his brother's daughter, as nice 
 a woman with as fine children as one would 
 wish to see. 
 
 "You were not born in Ohio, Mr. Lambert," 
 said the Captain, noticing a quaint and pretty 
 accent in the tremulous old voice which puzzled 
 him not a little.
 
 A POINT OF LA}}'. IO/ 
 
 " Oh, no, I was born in France. A long time 
 ago, my boy, a long time ago. But I 'm strong, 
 very strong. There 's wear in me yet. I 'm 
 sounder than my brother Pentier, though he 's 
 four years younger than I. He 's never been 
 himself since he left Pere Lachine." 
 
 " Good God ! " cried the Captain. " Is Joseph 
 Pentier, of Pere Lachine, your brother?" 
 
 " My half-brother." 
 
 " And did you ever hear him speak of Dr. 
 Morse ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, and I knew Dr. Morse very well. 
 I was living in Pere Lachine when he was there. 
 A fine man, a very fine man. It 's a pity he was 
 killed in that Texan war. Did you know him?" 
 
 " Know him ! He was the best friend I had. 
 And he was not killed in the Texan war. He 
 was murdered here a few months ago. How is 
 it you have not heard of the case ; we 're all 
 wild about it?" 
 
 " I only came last night," said the old man. 
 
 " When did you last see Dr. Morse's son ? " 
 
 " When he was about twelve years old, in 
 Illinois," said Mr. Lambert. " He was a fine 
 boy, very like his father, and like his mother 
 too. Pretty Marie ! " 
 
 " See here, old man," exclaimed the Captain, 
 breathlessly, " it looks like a Design from
 
 108 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 above, your coming here just now. Wait till I 
 tell you a story." 
 
 So he related the experiences of the Doctor 
 and his son, and Father Lambert, his old eyes 
 bright and his old cheeks pink with excited in- 
 terest, listened and gladly promised all that the 
 Captain asked when he had finished the tale. 
 
 On the following Wednesday, a bright, sunny 
 day, the court-house was crowded with a mass 
 of sympathetic people, for popular feeling was 
 all on the side of the son so romantically re- 
 stored to the father who had been so soon 
 snatched from his brief happiness. When the 
 great case of the Morse estate was called, the 
 attorney for the executor arose and opened his 
 address with a manner of easy and almost con- 
 temptuous confidence. 
 
 " May it please your honor," he said, " I re- 
 gret that the time of the court should be taken 
 up by a case of this character, when there is not 
 a shadow of evidence to sustain the allegation:: 
 made by the parties on the other side. That 
 Dr. Morse recognized this young man as his 
 son we are willing to admit, but do not regard 
 the admission as proof that he was married to 
 the mother or ever recognized her as his wife. 
 We are aware that efforts have been made to 
 obtain evidence from old residents of the town
 
 A POINT OF LA IV. 109 
 
 where they formerly resided, and it is asserted 
 that the affidavits in proof were in the posses- 
 sion of a distinguished member of our bar and 
 with him were lost on the steamer San Francisco. 
 But does it seem probable that if such 
 were the fact the deceased gentleman would 
 have neglected to have copies made and sent 
 here as an ordinary precaution against loss ? It 
 can only be regarded as an artifice to gain time. 
 The great value of the estate makes it impor- 
 tant there should be a speedy settlement, and 
 we here rest our plea," confident that the de- 
 cision will be such as to establish a precedent 
 in all cases of the kind which may hereafter 
 arise in the State of California." 
 
 There was deep silence in the court-room 
 when Colonel Merritt, the former partner of 
 the unfortunate Page, rose to reply. 
 
 " I shall not," he said, " waste time in argu- 
 ment, but proceed immediately to disprove the 
 assertion of my learned brother, that there is 
 no evidence for our side. We have at hand a 
 witness, discovered by a fortunate accident, 
 whose testimony it will be impossible to im- 
 peach. I will call Alexandre Lambert." 
 
 The old man came to the stand and took the 
 oath with tremulous importance. He testified 
 that he had known Dr. Morse and remembered
 
 HO TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 the time when he came to live in Pere Lachine 
 as the husband of the French girl, Marie 
 LaCroix. The Doctor had always recognized 
 her as his wife, always speaking of her as such, 
 and their devotion to each other was well-known 
 to the villagers, by whom they were highly re- 
 spected. He could not say that they had ever 
 gone through any formal marriage rite, but 
 thought it probable that some ceremony had 
 taken place between them. Among the people 
 of Pere Lachine, marriages were often made 
 by mutual consent, and were always accepted 
 as regular and binding by the simple commu- 
 nity. He remembered the birth of the boy 
 and death of the young mother, and also of 
 hearing from his brother Pentier that the 
 Doctor had been killed in the Texan war. He 
 had last seen the boy when he was about 
 twelve years old, and remembered his striking 
 resemblance to both parents. 
 
 " Would you know him if you were to see 
 him now?" "Yes, for I do see him," was the 
 answer. " He is sitting there to the left of 
 Colonel Merritt." 
 
 The effect of this statement was electrical, 
 and, with a few more questions satisfactorily 
 answered, the case for that side was closed. 
 The attorney for Henry Morse closely and
 
 A POINT OF LAW. Ill 
 
 trickily cross-examined the venerable witness, 
 but failed to shake his stoutly given testimony 
 in the least. The summing up was brief on 
 both sides, and the judge arose to announce 
 his decision. 
 
 He first stated the law in such cases as it ex- 
 isted in some of the older States, and alluded to 
 the various decisions which had been quoted by 
 the counsel for both sides. He then dwelt 
 with insistance on the peculiar customs obtain- 
 ing among the people from whom Dr. Morse 
 had taken his wife, his love for and recognition 
 of his son, and finally the unimpeachable testi- 
 mony of the witness, Alexandre Lambert. In 
 conclusion he said : 
 
 " This is the first case of the kind which has 
 come before the courts of the State. The in- 
 terests at stake are so large that whatever the 
 present decision may be, it will be taken to a 
 higher court for review. The testimony for 
 both sides has been duly weighed and sifted, 
 and the judgment of the court is that Marie 
 LaCroix was to all intents and purposes the 
 wife of Charles Morse, that the union was 
 recognized as lawful by the community in which 
 the parties lived, and that the young man rec- 
 ognized by Dr. Morse as his son was born in 
 wedlock and is therefore sole heir to his father's 
 estate."
 
 1 1 2 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 The audience which had listened in breath- 
 less silence now broke into tumultuous applause, 
 and it was long before the officers could restore 
 order. In a few weeks after the notice of 
 appeal was given, a decision was rendered con- 
 firming that of the lower court, and Charles 
 Morse came into his father's kingdom. 
 
 Eleven years after a man was dying in the 
 county prison in Mariposa. He was a native 
 Californian, who awaited his trial for a daring 
 mail robbery. When it became evident that 
 he had but a few hours to live, he sent for the 
 sheriff and confessed that he and a Sandwich 
 Islander known as Chiloha had been accessory 
 to the murder of Dr. Morse, the principal 
 being Henry Morse, who had long since left 
 San Francisco. Warrants were immediately 
 issued for the arrest of Chiloha and Morse, and 
 the authorities succeeded in tracing both men. 
 It was found that Chiloha had been killed in a 
 brawl in Sacramento, but Morse was discovered 
 living under the name of Roderiguez, in the 
 southern part of the State, and was hanged for 
 the crime which he believed had crumbled out 
 of sight with the ashes of his victim, long 
 dropped to dust in that grave at the foot of 
 Monte Diablo.
 
 V. 
 
 THE party had lunched and broken into les- 
 ser groups, and divided again into couples, and 
 a man who walked up and down the piazza 
 with Mrs. Percy said gravely : " You ladies 
 have had no voice in this matter of tale tell- 
 ing." 
 
 " We have not wanted it," said the lady. 
 
 " Is n't that a bit selfish ? " 
 
 " Not from my point of view." 
 
 "What is your point of view?" 
 
 " Oh, I see what certain critics tell me to see, 
 that women have no gift for story-telling." 
 
 " You must change your critics, dear lady. 
 They are unworthy of you, since the two 
 greatest artists in fiction that the world has 
 known have been women George Sand and 
 George Eliot." 
 
 " You place them above Balzac and Thack- 
 eray?" 
 
 " In certain characteristics of passion and im- 
 magination, yes." 
 
 " You are generous to women always, I 
 
 "3
 
 ! 14 TOLD A T TUXEDO. 
 
 know," said Mrs. Percy, very gently, for she 
 knew that he more than most men might have 
 been pardoned a bitter word for her sex. 
 
 " They do not need my generosity, while I 
 have gained much from theirs," he said, kindly. 
 
 The lady was silent for a while, then spoke 
 suddenly : 
 
 " I cannot tell you a story," she said, " but I 
 can read you one. When Mrs. Brayton went 
 abroad, she left, among other things, a manu- 
 script with me, of which she charged me to 
 take especial care. You know with how many 
 lives her sweet and catholic sympathy brings 
 her in contact. I know nothing of this manu- 
 script. It may have been written for publi- 
 cation, though that does not seem probable ; 
 it may be the record of a most unhappy life. 
 She told me to read it ; when I asked her if it 
 was for my eyes alone, she smiled and said she 
 was not afraid that I would bring it to any eyes 
 that would fail to read it reverently. I have 
 only shared it with one other person. Would 
 you like to hear it?" 
 
 " Indeed I would," was the answer. 
 
 Mrs. Percy tripped away and came back 
 holding the little roll of paper with gentle 
 care. They found a quiet green corner, out of 
 the sound of gay voices and the tread of pac-
 
 IN SOLITL'DE. 115 
 
 ing feet, and the lady read aloud the written 
 words, wondering what hand had traced them. 
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 
 
 I have always been interested in myself, 
 both on general and particular grounds. For 
 the first, my one passion until that night 
 has been the study of character. No phase of 
 human nature is without fascination. I love to 
 be in the midst of crowds, to see face after 
 face flash past with its revealing, concealing 
 hieroglyph, giving me a chance to half guess, 
 half decipher its meaning. In what slighting 
 regard have I always held those who find their 
 only inspiration in wooded slopes and purling 
 brooks and leafy ways. For me, I sleep among 
 these gentle influences. Give to me the roar- 
 ing street, the surging crowd ; let me feel my- 
 self borne on these throbbing arteries to the 
 heart of humanity. Why, how these people 
 prate of nature, nature! What is the very 
 crown of nature so far as we have gone but 
 man ? The dam built by the working beaver, 
 the waxen labyrinth, honey stored by the 
 bee, these are called natural. How brief a 
 part of the road men see ! So also is the 
 domed cathedral, the towered castle, the chisel- 
 fretted mausoleum, ay, the spanning bridge of
 
 U6 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 which I see the slender, solid arch with my fad- 
 ing eyes from my high window. Ah, kindly 
 curve of lights, gleaming with magnificent re- 
 sponse to my little taper, I see in you the 
 workings of nature as I see them in the opales- 
 cent thread the spider swings from tremulous 
 grass-blade to nodding flower-plume. They 
 have called me blind to the face of the Great 
 Mother, seeing not that I caught the higher 
 radiance of her inscrutable smile. Let them 
 love her in her lesser manifestations of bud and 
 blossom and sky-dappling cloud, and small, 
 swift denizen of wood and stream ; I find her 
 at her best in her last production, man and his 
 achievement. Why, look you, our furred and 
 feathered brethren do but use with lesser in- 
 telligence the material they find to carry on life 
 with ; shall I stop at that and say here nature 
 ends ? Nay, I leave you if you will, to rest in 
 this elementary knowledge. I will take the 
 higher branches. I will search the hearts of my 
 fellows in the little time that is left me, and it 
 is nature, nature worship still. 
 
 Why, how I wander! Well, why not? 
 There are none to care if I speak or cease. If 
 I riot for a while in expression, it is the last 
 indulgence of a sometimes meagre life. 
 
 To begin again and wander off again soon,
 
 IN SOLITUDE. I I / 
 
 I dare say. I have been interested in myself as 
 a unit in the innumerable host of men and 
 women, a unit also which I have peculiar ad- 
 vantages for studying and understanding. So 
 much for the general ground. For the particu- 
 lar, I have had the dispassionateness to see 
 that mine is in some respects a unique nature ; 
 so, perhaps, because these marked individuali- 
 ties have flourished well in a soil richly common- 
 place. 
 
 I was an odd child enough, yet with all a 
 child's love for toys and sweets and playmates; 
 strangely precocious in some phases of intel- 
 lect and emotion ; painfully normal in those 
 acquisitive and predatory instincts which caused 
 me to weep if my sister's doll was redder of 
 cheek and longer of curl than mine, and to sur- 
 reptiously exchange my dull slate pencil for her 
 sharp one. In short, I was without much miti- 
 gation the selfish, greedy, turbulent little ani- 
 mal called a child. Those " trailing clouds of 
 glory ! " Shade of Wordsworth, ever spent you 
 a day in a well-stocked nursery ? The ones I 
 drew after me from the heaven which was my 
 home bore storms in their bosoms ; tempests 
 in a teapot, but still tempests. We children at 
 home had our impulses of fidelity and affection 
 and graceful sportiveness, like the puppies
 
 H8 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 which we alternately caressed and tormented. 
 Like them we cringed and fawned where a ques- 
 tion of merited blows arose ; like them, were 
 marvellously quick to discern the biggest bone 
 on the platter. 
 
 My brothers and sisters were fine little ani- 
 mals ; great, serene, rosy creatures who played 
 and fought- and ate and slept in regular rota- 
 tion. I was a little black wild elf. I fought 
 and played and ate and slept my share also, 
 but with less method and more ingenuity. But 
 almost with the dawn of consciousness of the 
 visible world around me came a recogition of 
 difference from the rest which invaded my baby 
 soul, which I could not define, which to this 
 day, with my much widened intellectual horizon 
 my greatly enlarged vocabulary, I cannot better 
 express than by calling a sense of loneliness. 
 
 " Do we know any one ? " says Thackeray 
 great kindly shade, all good be with you ! "Ah, 
 dear me ! We are most of us very lonely in the 
 world. You, who have any one to love you, 
 cling to them and thank God." But it was not 
 that loneliness. I had plenty to love me, more 
 than I deserved. It was a sense of complete 
 isolation, which neither the affections which 
 have surrounded many of my years, nor the in- 
 tellectual companionships which have marked
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 119 
 
 most of them, have ever dissipated. It was al- 
 ways with me until that night. And I have 
 never known it since. 
 
 I remember being taken one day to a church 
 where I heard a remarkably eloquent and bril- 
 liant preacher or so he seemed to my seven 
 years' old comprehension, and feeling that this 
 might be lessened, that there might be some- 
 thing which would leave me less solitary in the 
 midst of recognized but unexplained facts, if 
 by some chance I could be brought within the 
 range of that stored intelligence. 
 
 In the afternoon, long and still and sunny 
 as no week-day afternoon ever is, following the 
 service and the special bounty of the Sunday 
 dinner, I fell to imagining a drama replete with 
 charm, in which the not impossible freaks of 
 fate might allot me a leading part. The pro- 
 gramme I laid out for myself, gloriously free 
 from restraining probabilities, ran in this wise : 
 I would have strayed from my unsympatheti- 
 cally practical nurse, an initial violation of pos- 
 sibilities, and would have been discovered in 
 the devious paths of the park by the exceptional 
 clergyman who would be opportunely com- 
 muning with nature, but imperfectly though 
 laudably copied by the city fathers in divers 
 uncomfortable arrangements in rock designed
 
 120 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 on the least improbable supposition to repre- 
 sent grottos, and sundry delicate vines elaborate- 
 ly arranged to simulate a wildness of which the 
 poor things were most incapable. The clergy- 
 man would instantly be attracted by my spirit- 
 iiclle beauty. I knew I was not pretty, but I 
 always hoped to find some one who would be 
 familiar with certain laws, not yet popularly ac- 
 cepted, which would so construe my irregulari- 
 ties. He would ask me in winning tones why 
 I wandered alone. I would answer with aston- 
 ishing readiness : " I am never less alone than 
 when alone." You see, my range of reading 
 was really surprisingly wide for my years. The 
 eminent divine would be stricken dumb with 
 admiring wonder. He would take the tiny hand 
 of this infant prodigy in his own and prepare, 
 with regretful envy doubtless, to lead her to 
 her rightful owners. As we walked amicably 
 along, from my pocket in felicitous accident 
 would fall copies of " Hiawatha," " The Yellow- 
 plush Papers," and " Pilgrim's Progress." By 
 what further wrenching of existing conditions 
 I expected to get these volumes contempora- 
 neously into the microscopic pocket of the ex- 
 tremely abbreviated frock in which I was pre- 
 sented to the public in those early days, I know 
 not. Perhaps, like the canny old writers of fairy
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 121 
 
 tales, I had a glimmering consciousness, never 
 formulated into an idea, of a " fourth dimension," 
 which along about the thirtieth century A. D. 
 shall leave the laugh on the side of the now fan- 
 tastic romancers. Then the clergymen would 
 say : " And these, you care for these, my child ? " 
 I would answer in all sincerity that I did, for 
 dearly I loved that odd trinity, and many others 
 as strangely assorted, according to my compre- 
 hension of them. After that he would, with 
 many exclamations of delight and surprise, con- 
 vey me to my parents, on whom I had sedulous- 
 ly striven in vain to impress my unimportant 
 little personality. They would be duly wrought 
 upon by this distinguished man's notice of me, 
 and would yield a rapturously flattered consent 
 to his impassioned entreaty that he might be 
 permitted to instruct me, during an hour of each 
 day, in Latin and various illuminating branches 
 of knowledge. And then, O rapture ! I should 
 know what it all meant. I should no longer be 
 told to go and play, that I would know when I 
 was older, that little children should be seen 
 and not heard ; I, poor mite, who was conscious 
 of being no particular delight to the eye and a 
 burning desire to be " heard " responsively. And 
 in the midst of this blissful dream came my moth- 
 er's reproving voice, asking me why I wasted
 
 122 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 the time in idleness and did not betake me to 
 some " nice Sunday book." Dear woman ! It 
 was a cruel awakening, but I would like well to 
 hear that chiding voice now. I could hope for 
 her sweet sake that the old gaudy dream of a 
 paradise alight with gold and pearls, and many- 
 colored gems, and flashing white plumes bear- 
 ing lordly angels, might be realized. No 
 other, more ethereal perspective of eternal bliss 
 would be homelike to her imagination, long 
 fastened to that solid conception of a reward 
 to the faithful. 
 
 Ah, she has made the grass greener with 
 her grave these many years, and I shall lie 
 down by her soon. It 's not such a bad thing 
 to sleep by the side of one's mother, is it ? But 
 I am passing glad of that one waking moment 
 in the dream called life which prefaces the un- 
 broken slumber of death. 
 
 I wonder why that absurd little incident 
 stands out so clear to-night. And yet I think 
 I know. They say that as one is about to leave 
 this world, a sudden clearance of the mist dim- 
 ming the early part of one's stay here, however 
 much later years may remain shrouded, is apt 
 to come. Other recollections of that long for- 
 gotten time crowd thick upon me ; my gentle 
 memory of my mother is exchanged for a sud-
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 123 
 
 den sense that is like the consciousness of an 
 unseen presence. I need not erase the childish 
 retrospect. It soon will be among the fading 
 signs of what was and is not. 
 
 I passed through the troublous time of my 
 childhood rapidly, so rapidly, in fact, that I 
 carried some of its attributes on into woman- 
 hood with me, and have never wholly gotten 
 rid of them. When I was fifteen I was a 
 woman in some things, a very baby in others. 
 It was a sad, precocious, unguided develop- 
 ment, but that root in the ordinary which my 
 nature sent down so lustily, saved me from 
 much. 
 
 I read what I pleased, for the most part. 
 Now and then a book was capriciously forbid- 
 den me, needlessly, I think now, for I had not 
 the quickness in such matters to detect the 
 evil in them. When the days of fairy tales 
 were done the poets claimed me first. A glori- 
 ous company of strong singers, they caught 
 my puny soul and whirled it aloft in a flame of 
 sound. That was all I knew at first. The 
 clash and clang, the sway and swerve, the 
 delicious, ear-satisfying pleasure of measured 
 melody. Then the thought that was the 
 motive of this thunderous music stole upon me, 
 and I read and read and cared only, after a
 
 124 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 while, for the theme of the melody, forgetting 
 in that its harmonious utterance. I can see 
 myself now, a slight, spare creature with owl's 
 eyes beneath wise, classic brows, and the sad- 
 dest curved baby mouth set above an indeter- 
 minate chin, bending over The Idyls of the 
 King. I well remember the thrill of half ter- 
 rified delight with which I discovered that I 
 found Lancelot more to be desired than Arthur, 
 thinking so unique a preference shared with 
 every school-girl. 
 
 Now comes an endless procession of story- 
 tellers. What shadowy, narrow figures of ex- 
 cellent women, armed with little creeds, ribbon- 
 tied-like compositions, dot the ranks where 
 lordly shapes tower! I see myself turning 
 from Vanity Fair to The Heir of Redclyffe, 
 from David Copperfield to The Wide, Wide 
 World, ay even, O last profanity of unequal 
 youth ! from Hamlet to The Lamplighter ; 
 laughing at myself the while, yet appeasing the 
 commonplace child in me with the simple, 
 prejudiced tales that bore more relation to my 
 dull, daily life than the larger moving histories 
 of people who lived in the world. 
 
 Now is my world of books invaded by a living 
 presence, yet less real, after all, than any figure 
 I find therein. This figure has blue eyes that
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 125 
 
 are very large and clear and inexpressive. Also, 
 it has yellow curls, hyacinthine, and a band of 
 golden down across its cherry-red upper lip. I 
 am, perhaps, seventeen now, and it smiles 
 graciously upon me. It speaks little, but that 
 is true of it at all times. I think about it by 
 day and by night. I cherish the inevitable 
 faded rosebud. Ah, must I confess it ? He 
 has never given me any rosebud at all, this 
 beautiful young man, but I know that withered 
 blossoms are among the conditions of thought 
 for one glorified by the sentiments which have 
 taken posession of me. I procure the flower 
 with coin of the realm and it fades beautifully. 
 I tie together with pink ribbon a number of 
 notes from my girl friends, and passionately 
 pretend that they are love-letters from him. I 
 am sure now, looking back upon that time of 
 folly, that I should have been disturbed and 
 even shocked had this radiant youth ever come 
 a-courting me with definite words of proffered 
 love. To have brought him into that position 
 would have spoiled my ideal of him. It was 
 love I loved, or what stands for it at seventeen. 
 At last, -when we have met perhaps a dozen 
 times in all, he goes away from our town. I 
 proceed to break my heart in the most ap- 
 proved fashion, and enjoy it immensely. 1
 
 126 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 brood over that crumbling bud for which I 
 paid ten cents to a neighboring florist, and I 
 bedew those cheats of letters with successful 
 tears. Then, all at once, I become very much 
 ashamed of myself, and return to my books with 
 new, apologetic zest. Yet it is curious that I 
 never had the heart to toss away that fraudulent 
 rosebud or burn those misrepresented notes. 
 
 I lose myself among my beloved authors 
 again. Soon amid the throng a vast, serene wo- 
 man's figure arises. With delighted awe I read 
 of Romola, of Dorothea, of Adam Bede, of 
 Lydgate. I begin to find Sir Guy Morville a 
 less fitting companion for Colonel Newcome 
 and Pendennis. The striking incompatibility 
 between John Humphreys and Grandcourt 
 makes me see that the evangelical hero has as 
 little in common with Dobbin. Of no one can 
 it be more truly said than of this mighty wo- 
 man, that it is a liberal education to love her. 
 I begin to put away childish things, and devel- 
 op with surprising rapidity in this new favor- 
 ing atmosphere, the most adapted to my needs 
 of any that I have yet found. 
 
 One day, guided by that wise, gentle hand 
 which fell on my young shoulders with a more 
 impelling touch than any other, I meet, in one 
 of my prolonged browsings through the book-
 
 IN SOLITUDE 127 
 
 case, with a philosopher. I open the book with 
 a self-flattering consciousness of my exception- 
 al tastes. I read for a little while with a sense 
 of absorbing culture in this agreeably miscel- 
 laneous manner. Then, suddenly, sorry and 
 arrested with startled shame in my vain dream- 
 ing, I begin to delve with earnest purpose into 
 the quarried 'depths of thought. Ah, how I 
 read ! I stumbled along a path made rocky 
 by the fallen stones of my early idols. I sat 
 dowa often and wept as if I would weep my 
 very heart away, as I saw the temples of my 
 young faith invaded by a conquering host of 
 facts ; and again I would leap forward exultant, 
 as the world widened around me and I saw the 
 great thing that life, just human life, is. I was 
 still with awe as I groped trembling to the edge 
 of nature's mysteries, and I laughed aloud in 
 delight when old puzzles were made plain. I 
 lived with them, my philosophers, and I loved 
 them ; but I turned back at last to my novel- 
 ists, dear masters in the supreme science of 
 human nature, I have always loved them best 
 of all. 
 
 Oh, my books ! my books ! In these days, 
 when I am sometimes too weak to stand, I like 
 to crawl from case to case, laden with my treas- 
 ures, and pass my hands lovingly across the
 
 128 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 lettered rows. Not even the blinding memory 
 of that night can make me forget that all my 
 life through these have been my best friends, 
 my silent, faithful companions. 
 
 When I was three and twenty I married. 
 During these years of study I do not mean 
 that that young folly had remained unique. I 
 fear I was always most catholic in my affec- 
 tions. Many an interrupting fancy came, and 
 some brought pain and some brought pleasure, 
 but they passed and left me, unchanged save 
 by the gradual growth of years, in my dear and 
 quiet world again. 
 
 Then, when I was deepest in my books, came 
 one who said with more meaning than the 
 others, that he loved me. Indeed I think he 
 did, dear man. He was much older than I, 
 quiet, grave, studious. He told me that this 
 love was born of no passing passion that was 
 for boys, but of his belief that there existed 
 between us a fine and enduring sympathy which 
 promised well for a joint life of that serene satis- 
 faction which is the best medium for all intellec- 
 tual achievement. And I told him he was 
 right, and besides, that I was very fond of him. 
 At that he seemed well pleased, and kissed me, 
 more like a lover than a scholar for the moment, 
 and then we fell to studying again a new writer
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 129 
 
 for whom he had a great regard, and whom we 
 were reading aloud together. For all this took 
 place in an interval between chapters. 
 
 He was not very rich, but he had money 
 enough, and my father was glad to give me into 
 that wise, gentle keeping ; glad enough, for he 
 had spent many days by my mother's grave of 
 late, and saw that already his shadow fell 
 warningly on one of the vacant spaces left by 
 her side. So we were married. It was what 
 I wished, and would have chosen for very pride 
 alone, yet never in all my life have I felt so 
 lonely as when I held my husband's hand and 
 heard him say : " Till death us do part." 
 
 I think he grew to love me very much more 
 than he had dreamed was in him to love, before 
 he died. I remember well one day when he 
 looked up at me as he bent his dear, round 
 shoulders over his laden desk. 
 
 " My dear," he said, his near-sighted eyes 
 wandering over my large, round arms and un- 
 covered neck, we were to dine out that night, 
 and I was already dressed, " My dear, have 
 you always been so handsome? " 
 
 I dropped a light caress on his gray hair. 
 
 " No, doctor," I said, " indeed no. My father 
 said last night that he had no notion his thin, 
 dark girl would ever make so fine a woman."
 
 I 3 O TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 He turned quite around in his chair and gazed 
 at me steadily. 
 
 " Nor I, nor I," he said, after a while. "And 
 yet you have always that look of a little lost 
 child which has glanced up at me so often from 
 our books. My beautiful wife," he cried, with 
 a sudden break in his voice, " do I not make 
 you happy ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said, in all honesty, " as happy as I 
 can be. Why, what is there that we have not, 
 you and I, you foolish doctor ? Mutual for- 
 bearance, solid affection, absolute sympathy, 
 fair health, enough of this world's goods, no 
 cares if only my father were stronger what 
 else is there ? " 
 
 " Ay, to be sure," he said, thoughtfully, 
 " what else is there ? " 
 
 "Nothing," I said, and the world was very 
 empty as I spoke. 
 
 " I have delayed you, loitering over these 
 papers," he said, rising suddenly and arrang- 
 ing his coat, that would never look fashion- 
 able after he had worn it an hour, let who 
 would make it. " Come, my dear, come. I 
 forget sometimes how young you are." 
 
 Ah, my kind, kind friend ! only a year later I 
 stood in the long black robes that swept around 
 me in perpetual reminder that my father had
 
 Iff SOLITUDE. 131 
 
 passed over to the majority, and saw the lids 
 close over the wise, thoughtful eyes that had 
 never fallen on me but to shed a benediction. 
 
 He was ill so short a time, but I knew from 
 the first how it would be with him, and my 
 heart was like to break when he called me to 
 him and said in quite his own fashion : 
 
 " It is curious how this process of disin- 
 tegration acquires a new interest when what 
 one has termed one's own personality is con- 
 cerned." 
 
 " Don't leave me ! " I pleaded. 
 
 " Ah," he answered, with his patient, melan- 
 choly smile, " one forgets the race and dwells 
 on the individual in an hour like this. I would 
 blot out all the laborious gleaning of years to 
 stay with you a little longer, my poor orphaned 
 lamb." 
 
 So speaking, he fell asleep. He said no more, 
 my dear old man, who had said so much, and, 
 in all his long and useful life, never one ill 
 word. For twelve hours after that I watched 
 him as his breath grew short and shorter. At 
 last, when the midnight hour was nearing, I 
 saw his face suddenly soften into that of a 
 younger, fairer man. Catching that glimpse of 
 the youth in him that I had never known, I 
 bent over him, and with that pleasant look of
 
 132 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 forgotten boyhood fixed upon his sober feat- 
 ures, he ceased from among men. 
 
 I was left quite alone in the world. 
 
 I grieved for him deeply, deeply, but it was 
 upon the new grass on my father's grave that 
 my tears fell fastest. There came a time when 
 all was dark around me, and it was not a short 
 time. Then the impulse of my healthful youth 
 asserted itself, and I went back again to my 
 waiting world of books. 
 
 I studied patiently, and, I think now, with 
 some ability. My husband had taught me 
 faithfully and well. The tempestuous morning 
 of my youth, the noon calm of my married life, 
 were followed by what promised to be an early 
 and long afternoon of untroubled thought. I 
 gave to myself great comfort from the thought 
 that the spiritual struggles of my early days 
 were ended. I could say whatever is is right 
 and mean it too. I learned the law of averages 
 so much happiness here, so much misery 
 there. I led the scholar's impersonal life for 
 three years, and I saw the future stretch out 
 before me, a life of lettered ease. 
 
 It was at the beginning of my fourth year of 
 widowhood that a friend, who often sought to 
 draw me with her into the busy current of her 
 full life, came begging me to dine with her on
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 133 
 
 the following night. That curious disinclination 
 to break into routine which grows upon us with 
 each successive day of quiet habit, made me 
 feel, as I did always in those days, an annoy- 
 ance at the mere suggestion, for I saw at once 
 that it was an occasion. There was a light in 
 her eye and a flush of importance on her cheek 
 that showed she meant more than just a friend- 
 ly chat over bread. 
 
 " You deserve to be punished by an immedi- 
 ate reconsideration on my part of all hospitable 
 intentions," she said, as I hesitated, " but I am 
 always more just than generous. Pray do not 
 believe I flatter myself that you would come 
 to us for love of me or mine. I come with a 
 bribe in my hand. Calthorpe is to be with us." 
 
 My eyes did open then. Calthorpe, strongest 
 and saddest of the singers of the day. 
 
 " Come ! " urged my friend, " your eyes will 
 never scan the poems clearly until you have 
 seen the poet. He is very beautiful." 
 
 " So many are beautiful." 
 
 " One might know that you seldom visit 
 the outer world," and she laughed lightly, " but 
 you will for this once." 
 
 And indeed I did mean to heed this call. 
 But the next morning I awoke weighed down 
 with a sense of something unwonted. I grudged
 
 134 TOLD AT TUXEDO, 
 
 the break in my tranquil, monotonous existence. 
 When I looked from my window and saw wild 
 skeins of rain unravelling in the blast of a driv- 
 ing storm, I was insensibly relieved. I have al- 
 ways been peculiarly sensitive to atmosphere, 
 and never ventured out in ill weather, even in 
 closed carriages. 
 
 " I will send a note when I have breakfasted," 
 I said. But when I had breakfasted there was 
 a curious break in the heavy clouds, that showed 
 a deep vista of intense blue just veiled by an 
 unconquered drift, and by noon a strong sun 
 poured its gold over all the wet and shining 
 streets. 
 
 As I drove through the late twilight to the 
 house where I was bidden, I ceased to resent 
 this invasion of my calm. It always was so 
 with me. I hated the thought of change ; 
 once undertaken, it had its pleasure. My friend 
 was awaiting me alone. 
 
 " You are our only guest, save the poet," 
 she said, herself tossing the lace drapery from 
 off my hair. " Oh, I am glad you wore white ! " 
 touching with dainty finger tips the mass of 
 snowy crape. " Robert is coming with our 
 friend," she said, presently. Quick ! stand 
 against that pomegranate curtain. O you 
 wilful wretch ! " Her husband entered with
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 13$ 
 
 their guest. Robert Sard is a handsome man. 
 So handsome that he has no time for aught 
 else, nor, to tell the truth, has she, so hard 
 must she struggle, poor soul, to engross that 
 beauty and keep at bay the fluttering competi- 
 tors for his regard. 
 
 But I never saw his blue and gold, and rose 
 and snow, shining with the light radiance that 
 might endue a girlish god, though my eyes had 
 been used to dwell with pleasure on those won- 
 drous tints and contours. I saw only the 
 great figure beside him : the head, shaggy with 
 large waves of hair, just frosted ; the massive 
 features, grim and fine ; the strange, deep eyes 
 into which I looked with a sudden dread. 
 I had never seen any one like him. Never! 
 Never ! 
 
 That love of beauty which had determined 
 my friend's life in her choice of a husband was 
 shown in all her surroundings. When my host 
 led me in to the room where we were to dine, 
 I could but smile with pleasure. All my life 
 long I have loved color, revelled in it, been al- 
 most maddened by certain hues. I have not 
 that finer instinct which puts form first. The 
 place glowed like a jewel : the pomegranate 
 shades dear to my heart deepened to russet and 
 faded to yellowing rose, and were outlined by
 
 136 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 old blues and burnished sages ; rare woods tor- 
 tured into odd shapes of beauty ; plush hang- 
 ings where the color seemed to pulse beneath 
 a silvery frost, dim and rich as the bloom on a 
 grape ; curious vases, bits of pottery, and in the 
 centre of all a round table, the point from which 
 all seemed to radiate, with its jewelled china 
 and gold plate, its plumes and clusters of strange 
 flowers, its gorgeous masses of tropical fruits, 
 and heaped sweetmeats sparkling in tinted 
 crystals of sugar. I had seen it all often enough 
 and it always enriched my mood. To-night 
 the room seemed too full. Or was it that Cal- 
 thorpe's presence was too intense ? I wanted to 
 be farther off from him, in a larger, quieter 
 space. 
 
 His face and voice disturbed me. They 
 seemed to hold some force which would nullify 
 the slow work of many years in me, and turn 
 my honest effort into a vain beating of empty 
 air. I was afraid. It would be terrible to 
 learn that my whole life was cheapened by the 
 discovery of a false foundation. What was it 
 that made me feel that I must set at naught all 
 that had gone before ? It was not much that 
 he said, and that little was spoken in pleasant 
 words, salted with that fine humor born of the 
 educated perception of congruities. It was the
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 137 
 
 tone and the look that accompanied it that 
 shook me. There was infinite distress in it all ; 
 unspeakable pain, yet a pain better worth the 
 bearing than all the sober joys my life had 
 known. Soon this sweet anguish urged me on 
 to speech, and it seemed that my mind unfolded 
 all at once, as a century plant blooms, and I 
 spoke as I had never spoken before. They 
 were quiet, those good friends of mine and a 
 bit proud, I think, and Calthorpe watched me 
 and watched me. 
 
 The hours passed, not with the fleetness that 
 marks most special seasons of delight. So re- 
 plete were they with spiritual incident, so full 
 of crowding life, so brimmed with the concen- 
 trated development of years, that when we 
 rose from the board my coming there seemed 
 something already far in the past. 
 
 " Your carriage waits," said my friend ; " send 
 it away." 
 
 " No, no, I must go ! " I cried, hurriedly, 
 with a sense of escape. 
 
 " May I attend you to your door?" Calthorpe 
 asked, bending before me. 
 
 " Yes," I said. 
 
 So we drove together through the city 
 streets between the shining rows of lights that 
 seemed to meet in the distance, the point ever
 
 138 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 receding before us as we rolled along. Did I 
 bid him enter when we reached my home? 
 What need ? We stood within my sober little 
 study, all the grave lines of books showing 
 white in the moonlight that poured in through 
 the broad window, vanquishing the dim rosy 
 glow from my solitary lamp. We stood irreso- 
 lute for a while, speaking only dull words, void 
 of meaning. My hands crushed the heavily 
 fragrant waxen bells of the hyacinth at my 
 breast. I felt it rushing upon me the moment 
 when I must meet his eyes, but I held it away 
 from me while I could. Strange thrills of ex- 
 quisite awe shot through me. All the old, dis- 
 regarded myths were taking on new life ; all 
 the knowledge my feeble intelligence had been 
 gleaning with painful care for years was blown 
 like chaff before the blast in the stormy sense 
 of forces newly created. Heaven and hell, God 
 and Devil, angel and seer, good and evil all 
 these hinted, primitive symbols of the myste- 
 ries of a Law that governs these mortals who 
 have discerned all but that the meaning of all 
 swept upon me. Then I lifted my eyes to that 
 wonderful face. My soul cried out to him, and 
 he answered. 
 
 Did we talk until the stars merged their 
 special light into the wide splendor of dawn ?
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 139 
 
 I do not know. Time was no longer then. 
 Lonely ! Ah, homely little word, never again. 
 The hoarded thoughts of a lifetime rushed to 
 my lips. Oh, and with them those ineffable pos- 
 sessions of the soul which transcend thought ! 
 At last I was I, myself, full, expanded, expressed. 
 The blinding light broke in upon me. I saw 
 what had been and would be. Phenomena too 
 were clear to me. I knew, that as the world 
 counts meeting, we two should meet no more. 
 What did it matter? These bodies are acci- 
 dents. Through " this corpse which is man " 
 we had discerned each other. 
 
 There was one moment, I remember, when 
 we stood so close together that the soul seemed 
 to escape in sighs from each mortal frame, then 
 he was gone ; gone from the sight of these 
 fleshly eyes forever, but he, himself, is always 
 with me. 
 
 As day by day this flimsy tenement of clay 
 grows less strong to hold me, we enter into 
 more complete possession of each other. He 
 still walks the earth and sings its chosen songs 
 for it. Ah, worshipping world ! The songs, 
 unsung that alone express him are what I hear. 
 He is all mine, though you crown him and 
 claim him. 
 
 That night I knew I was soon to escape
 
 140 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 from the body. I shut myself away from every 
 one. We could not be interrupted, he and I. 
 No one from the outer world sees me save the 
 faithful servants who have tended me for many 
 years. They weep often of late, as they look 
 at these dwindling features. Ah the pen has 
 dropped once too often. I will write again to- 
 morrow. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 I have crawled to my dead husband's old 
 leather chair. I have gathered some of his 
 books in my weak arms and laid them on it. I 
 can sit on the floor and hide my face against 
 them. I am so frightened, so frightened. And 
 so solitary. It has all gone. I know it now. I 
 see. He is nothing to me, that poet, that man 
 who explained creation to me. That night 
 which seemed to make all clear to me was a 
 delirium. No, it was the revolt, the tumult of 
 forces desperately resisting death in a young 
 frame. I had begun to die then. There was 
 no other meaning in it. None. But it has 
 destroyed all that went before. I cannot get 
 back to my old self. I do not know why I 
 came to this world. I do not know where I am 
 going. And it is so soon now. I am afraid. 
 And so desolate. I think if I had some small, 
 warm animal to hold in my arms and stroke I 
 could bear this better,
 
 IN SOLITUDE. 141 
 
 He broke my hold on the dear, familiar, toil- 
 ing, blessed world Calthorpe. I have fallen 
 from that world of dreams to which he lifted 
 me. That was fever. Is this stupor ? Which 
 was right ? Which is true ? O, what an empty 
 world ! Never mind, I do not care. I only 
 want breath breath. I would not care if I 
 could breathe. See, I can still beat open the 
 book on which my cheek rests my hand is not 
 so weak. It is " Pendennis," I think. But I can- 
 not read I cannot see the words. They were 
 old friends, every one I miss them. O, for 
 one breath ! It is all I ask of time or eterni- 
 ty ! One breath more !
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 MRS. PERCY had finished her reading, and she 
 and her companion had parted very silently 
 and gone their ways. But there was a rustle 
 and stir about all the wide hall. The snow 
 had ceased, and off in the west a deep, fervent 
 rose color was flushing the massed clouds. 
 Clearer and nearer it burned, and at last the 
 mist curtains parted, and a flood of ruddy 
 sunlight poured over all the white winter 
 world. 
 
 " Hurrah ! " shouted Harry, in the very same 
 tone with which he had welcomed fair weather 
 a dozen years ago. He stood, elate and 
 flushed, on the steps, cap in hand, then sud- 
 denly softened and sobered as he looked 
 up and saw a little figure standing on the 
 other side of the glass door. He opened it 
 gently. 
 
 " Would n't you would n't you come out 
 and try the slide just once before dinner? " he 
 asked, shyly. 
 
 142
 
 EPILOGUE. 143 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Are the others com- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Do you mind coming with me alone, Eth- 
 el ? " he said, so soberly that she blushed and 
 answered hastily : 
 
 " Oh no, no indeed! " 
 
 Now not since they were children together 
 had he called her Ethel. 
 
 In a little while she appeared, her shy face 
 peeping out from a wicked hood in rosy 
 content. 
 
 They trotted off over the snow. "You see," 
 said Harry, confidentially, " I have more faith 
 in my own ' bob ' than in all their new tobog- 
 gans, and I Ve had it done up until it 's just as 
 fit ! And now if you don't mind there 's 
 no one else here I 'm going to take you 
 down in that. You need n't be afraid ; that 
 thing is as wise as a horse, and answers to my 
 hand as well." 
 
 Ethel was very much afraid, but so many 
 conflicting emotions were taking possession of 
 that gentle little heart that she could not speak 
 for the rout of them. 
 
 Then Harry seated her carefully on his " bob," 
 which was a very original and jaunty tobog- 
 gan, though thus ignominiously named. She 
 trembled a little, but it was not all with fear.
 
 144 TOLD AT TUXEDO. 
 
 " One, two, three, and away ! " cried Harry, 
 as he had cried on the top of the hill behind 
 the academy of his youth, and away they went, 
 with a dart and a rush down the long slide, 
 over the sparkling snow, sweeping like descend- 
 ing swallows to the end. Ethel sat pink and 
 breathless, looking up at him as he scrambled 
 to his feet and shook himself like a young 
 dog. 
 
 " We came down safely," she said, with rather 
 a tremulous little laugh. 
 
 "You were n't afraid to trust yourself to 
 me ? " said Harry, not much more steadily. 
 
 " No," she said, so softly that he had to 
 stoop his curly head to hear her. 
 
 " They call that a long slide ; it 's idiotically, 
 uselessly short. Ethel, it did n't take us but a 
 little while to come down, but upon my soul, 
 I think if you 'd trust yourself to me for a 
 longer trip and perhaps one more danger- 
 ous, you know, I 'd take as good care you came 
 out all right as you did this time. I can't say 
 what I feel. Perhaps if I could I would n't 
 be even as half way worth your taking as 
 I am now." 
 
 Little Ethel had never a word to say, but 
 Harry looked under the cunning hood and saw 
 a rainbow of promise shining for him through
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 145 
 
 the mingled tears and smiles of the sweet face. 
 He held out his hand to her, and she laid her 
 own confidingly in it, and so they began to 
 climb the hill together.
 
 UNIVERSITY of CAL1FUJ 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 T|fX
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 Form L-9 20m 
 
 illil