The Spinners' Book of Fiction Part 2

M'siu, that laugh stop on his face like it been freeze, his mouth is open, his eyes curl up. It is terrible, that dead laugh in the midst of the black water that run down from his hair.

"Raoul," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"

Then he take one step, and I hear the sand suck. I see Filon s.h.i.+ver like a reed in the swift water.

"_My G.o.d_," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"

M'siu, I do not know how it is with me. When I throw Filon in the pool, I have not known it is quick-sand; but when I hear that, I think I am glad. I kneel down by that log in the ford and watch Filon. He speak to me very quiet:

"You must get a rope and make fast to that pine and throw the end to me.

There is a rope in my pack."

"Yes," say I, "there is a rope."

So I take my flocks across the ford, since Filon is in the water, and take all those silly ones toward La Creva.s.se, and after I think about that business. Three days after, I meet P'tee Pete. I tell him I find the sheep of Filon in the pine wood below Sentinel Rock. Pete, he say that therefore Filon is come to some hurt, and that he look for him.

That make me scare lest he should look by the ford of Crevecoeur. So after that, five or six days, when Narcisse Duplin is come up with me, I tell him Filon is gone to Sacramento where his money is; therefore I keep care of his sheep. That is a better tale--eh, M'siu,--for I have to say something. Every shepherd in that range is know those sheep of Filon. All this time I think me to take the sheep to Pierre Jullien in the meadow of Black Mountain. He is not much, that Pierre. If I tell him it is one gift from _Le bon Dieu_, that is explain enough for Pierre Jullien. Then I will be quit of the trouble of Filon Geraud.

So, M'siu, would it have been, but for that dog Helene. That is Filon's she-dog that he raise from a pup. She is--she is _une femme_, that dog!

All that first night when we come away from the ford, she cry, cry in her throat all through the dark, and in the light she look at me with her eyes, so to say:

"I know, Raoul! I know what is under the water of Crevecoeur." M'siu, is a man to stand that from a dog? So the next night I beat her, and in the morning she is gone. I think me the good luck to get rid of her. That Helene! M'siu, what you think she do? She have gone back to look in the water for Filon. There she stay, and all sheepmen when they pa.s.s that way see that she is a good sheepdog, and that she is much hungry; so they wonder that she will not leave off to look and go with them. After while all people in those parts is been talkin' about that dog of Filon's that look so keen in the water of Crevecoeur. Mebbe four, five weeks after that I have killed Filon, one goes riding by that place and sees Helene make mourn by the waterside over something that stick in the sand. It is Filon. Yes. That quick-sand have spit him out again. So you say; but me, I think it is the devil.

For the rest the sheriff has told you. Here they have brought me, and there is much talk. Of that I am weary, but for this I tell you all how it is about Filon; M'siu, I would not hang. Look you, so long as I stay in this life I am quit of that man, but if I die--there is Filon. So will he do unto me all that I did at the ford of Crevecoeur, and more; for he is a bad one, Filon. Therefore it is as I tell you, M'siu, I, Raoul. By the help of G.o.d. Yes.

A CALIFORNIAN

BY

GERALDINE BONNER

From _Harper's Magazine_ _Copyright_, 1905, by Harper and Brothers

IT WAS nearly ten o'clock when Jack Faraday ascended the steps of Madame Delmonti's bow-windowed mansion and pressed the electric bell. He was a little out of breath and nervous, for, being young and a stranger to San Francisco, and almost a stranger to Madame Delmonti, he did not exactly know at what hour his hostess's _conversazione_ might begin, and had upon him the young man's violent dread of being conspicuously early or conspicuously late.

It did not seem that he was either. As he stood in the doorway and surveyed the field, he felt, with a little rising breath of relief, that no one appeared to take especial notice of him. Madame Delmonti's rooms were lit with a great blaze of gas, which, thrown back from many long mirrors and the gold mountings of a quant.i.ty of furniture and picture frames, made an effect of dazzling yellow brightness, as brilliantly glittering as the transformation scene of a pantomime.

In the middle of the glare Madame Delmonti's company had disposed themselves in a circle, which had some difficulty in accommodating itself to the long narrow shape of the drawing-room. Now and then an obstinate sofa or extra large plush-covered arm-chair broke the harmonious curve of the circle, and its occupant looked furtively ill at ease, as if she felt the embarra.s.sment of her position in not conforming to the general harmony of the curving line.

The eyes of the circle were fixed on a figure at the piano, near the end of the room--a tall dark Jewess in a brown dress and wide hat, who was singing with that peculiar vibrant richness of tone that is so often heard in the voices of the Californian Jewesses. She was perfectly self-possessed, and her velvet eyes, as her impa.s.sioned voice rose a little, rested on Jack Faraday with a cheerful but not very lively interest. Then they swept past him to where on a sofa, quite out of the circle, two women sat listening.

One was a young girl, large, well-dressed, and exceedingly handsome; the other a peaked lady, pa.s.see and thin, with her hair bleached to a canary yellow. The Jewess, still singing, smiled at them, and the girl gave back a lazy smile in return. Then as the song came to a deep and mellow close, Madame Delmonti, with a delicate rustling of silk brus.h.i.+ng against silk, swept across the room and greeted her guest.

Madame Delmonti was an American, very rich, a good deal made up, but still pretty, and extremely well preserved. Signor Delmonti, an Italian baritone, whom she had married, and supported ever since, was useful about the house, as he now proved by standing at a little table and ladling punch into small gla.s.ses, which were distributed among the guests by the two little Delmonti girls in green silk frocks. Madame Delmonti, with her rouged cheeks and merry grey eyes, as full of sparkle as they had been twenty years ago, was very cordial to her guest, asking him, as they stood in the doorway, whom he would best like to meet.

"Maud Levy, who has been singing," she said, "is one of the belles in Hebrew society. She has a fine voice. You have no objection, Mr.

Faraday, to knowing Jews?"

Faraday hastily disclaimed all race prejudices, and she continued, discreetly designating the ladies on the sofa:

"There are two delightful girls. Mrs. Peck, the blonde, is the society writer for the _Morning Trumpet_. She is an elegant woman of a very fine Southern family, but she has had misfortunes. Her marriage was unhappy.

She and Peck are separated now, and she supports herself and her two children. There was no hope of getting alimony out of that man."

"And that is Genevieve Ryan beside her," Madame Delmonti went on. "I think you'd like Genevieve. She's a grand girl. Her father, you know, is Barney Ryan, one of our millionaires. He made his money in a quick turn in Con. Virginia, but before that he used to drive the Marysville coach, and he was once a miner. He's crazy about Genevieve and gives her five hundred a month to dress on. I'm sure you'll get on very well together.

She's such a refined, pleasant girl"----and Madame Delmonti, chattering her praises of Barney Ryan's handsome daughter, conducted the stranger to the shrine.

Miss. Genevieve smiled upon him, much as she had upon the singer, and brus.h.i.+ng aside her skirts of changeable green and heliotrope silk, showed him a little golden-legged chair beside her. Mrs. Peck and Madame Delmonti conversed with unusual insight and knowledge on the singing of Maud Levy, and Faraday was left to conduct the conversation with the heiress of Barney Ryan.

She was a large, splendid-looking girl, very much corseted, with an ivory-tinted skin, eyes as clear as a young child's and smooth freshly red lips. She was a good deal powdered on the bridge of her nose, and her rich hair was slightly tinted with some reddish dye. She was a picture of health and material well being. Her perfectly fitting clothes sat with wrinkleless exact.i.tude over a figure which in its generous breadth and finely curved outline might have compared with that of the Venus of Milo. She let her eyes, shadowed slightly by the white lace edge of her large hat, whereon two pink roses trembled on large stalks, dwell upon Faraday with a curious and frank interest entirely devoid of coquetry. Her manner, almost boyish in its simple directness, showed the same absence of this feminine trait. While she looked like a G.o.ddess dressed by Worth, she seemed merely a good-natured, phlegmatic girl just emerging from her teens.

Faraday had made the first commonplaces of conversation, when she asked, eyeing him closely, "Do you like it out here?"

"Oh, immensely," he responded, politely. "It's such a fine climate."

"It is a good climate," admitted Miss. Ryan, with unenthusiastic acquiescence; "but we are not so proud of that as we are of the good looks of the Californian women. Don't you think the women are handsome?"

Faraday looked into her clear and earnest eyes.

"Oh splendid," he answered, "especially their eyes."

Miss. Ryan appeared to demur to this commendation. "It's generally said by strangers that their figures are unusually handsome. Do you think they are?"

Faraday agreed to this too.

"The girls in the East," said Miss. Ryan, sitting upright with a creaking sound, and drawing her gloves through one satin-smooth, bejeweled hand, "are very thin, aren't they? Here, I sometimes think"--she raised her eyes to his in deep and somewhat anxious query--"that they are too fat?"

Faraday gallantly scouted the idea. He said the California woman was a G.o.ddess. For the first time in the interview Miss. Ryan gave a little laugh.

"That's what all you Eastern men say," she said. "They're always telling me I'm a G.o.ddess. Even the Englishmen say that."

"Well," answered Faraday, surprised at his own boldness, "what they say is true."

Miss. Ryan silently eyed him for a speculating moment; then, averting her glance, said, pensively: "Perhaps so; but I don't think it's so stylish to be a G.o.ddess as it is to be very slim. And then, you know----" Here she suddenly broke off, her eyes fixed upon the crowd of ladies that blocked an opposite doorway in exeunt. "There's mommer. I guess she must be going home, and I suppose I'd better go too, and not keep her waiting."

She rose as she spoke, and with a pat of her hand adjusted her glimmering skirts.

"Oh, Mr. Faraday," she said, as she peered down at them, "I hope you'll give yourself the pleasure of calling on me. I'm at home almost any afternoon after five, and Tuesday is my day. Come whenever you please.

I'll be real glad to see you, and I guess popper'd like to talk to you about things in the East. He's been in Ma.s.sachusetts too."

She held out her large white hand and gave Faraday a vigorous hand-shake.

"I'm glad I came here tonight," she said, smiling. "I wasn't quite decided, but I thought I'd better, as I had some things to tell Mrs.

Peck for next Sunday's _Trumpet_. If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have met you. You needn't escort me to Madame Delmonti. I'd rather go by myself.

I'm not a bit a ceremonious person. Good-by. Be sure and come and see me."