The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 30

But developments did not seem likely to come overwhelmingly. Mrs. Page made a fast friend of the landlady of the Silver Brick, by means of little household arts peculiarly her own, and, before a fortnight was gone, had become as indispensable to all the boarders as she was to Mrs.

Shaughnessy herself. If she had a history, she kept it carefully from curious ears. Mrs. Shaughnessy was evidently satisfied, and quite challenged criticism of her favorite. Indeed, there was nothing to criticise. It was generally understood that she was a widow, who had to get on in the world as best she could, and thus the public sympathy was secured, and an embargo laid upon gossip. To be sure, there were certain men in Lucky-dog, of a cla.s.s which has its representatives everywhere, who regarded all unappropriated women, especially pretty women, very much as the hunter regards game, and the more difficult the approach, the more exciting the chase. But these moral Nimrods had not half the chance with self-possessed Mrs. Dolly Page that they would have had with a different style of woman. The grosser sort got a sudden _conge_; and with the more refined sportsmen she coquetted just enough to show them that two could play at a game of "make-believe," and then sent them off with a lofty scorn edifying to behold--to the mingled admiration and amus.e.m.e.nt of Mrs. Shaughnessy.

The only affair which seemed to have a kernel of seriousness in it, was that of Mr. Samuel Rice. Regularly, when the stage was in, on Sam's night, he paid his respects to Mrs. Page. And Mrs. Page always received him with a graceful friendliness, asking after the horses, and even sometimes going so far as to accompany him to their stables. On these occasions she never failed to carry several lumps of sugar in her pocket, which she fed to the handsome brutes off her own pink palm, until there was not one of them she could not handle at her will.

Thus pa.s.sed many weeks, until summer was drawing to a close. Two or three times she had gone down to Piney-woods Station and back, on Sam's coach, and always sat on the box, and drove a part of the way, but never where her driving would excite remark. It is superfluous to state, that on these occasions there was a happy heart beneath Sam's linen-duster, or that the bantering remarks of his brother-drivers were borne with smiling equanimity, not to say pride; for Sam was well aware that Mrs.

Dolly Page's brunette beauty, and his blonde-bearded style, together furnished a not unpleasing _tableau_ of personal charms. Besides, Sam's motto was, "Let those laugh who win;" and he seemed to himself to be on the road to heights of happiness beyond the ken of ordinary mortals--especially ordinary stage-drivers.

"I don't calkelate to drive stage more than a year or two longer," Sam said to Mrs. Page, confidentially, on the return from their last trip together to Piney-woods Station. "I've got a little place down in Amador, and an interest in the Nip-and-tuck gold-mine, besides a few hundreds in bank. I've a notion to settle down some day, in a cottage with vines over the porch, with a little woman to tend the flowers in the front-garden."

As if Sam's heightened color and s.h.i.+ning eyes had not sufficiently pointed this confession of his desires, it chanced that at this moment the eyes of both were attracted to a way-side picture: a cottage, a flower-bordered walk, a fair young woman standing at the gate, with a crowing babe in her arms lifting its little white hands to the sun-browned face of a stalwart young farmer who was smiling proudly on the two. At this sudden apparition of his inmost thoughts, Sam's heart gave a great bound, and there was a simultaneous ringing in his ears.

His first instinctive act was to crack his whip so fiercely as to set the leaders off prancing; and when, by this diversion, he had partly recovered self-possession to glance at the face of his companion, a new embarra.s.sment seized him when he discovered two little rivers of tears running over the crimsoned cheeks. But a coach-box is not a convenient place for sentiment to display itself; and, though the temptation was great to inquire into the cause of the tears, with a view of offering consolation, Sam prudently looked the other way, and maintained silence.

The reader, however, knows that those tears sank into the beholder's soul, and caused to germinate countless tender thoughts and emotions, which were, on some future occasion, to be laid upon the alter of his devotion to Mrs. Dolly Page. And none the less, that, in a few minutes, the eyes which shed them resumed their roguish brightness, and the lady was totally unconscious of having heard, seen, or felt any embarra.s.sment. Sentiment between them was successfully _tabooed_, so far as utterance was concerned, for that time. And so Sam found, somewhat to his disappointment, it continued to fall out, that whenever he got upon delicate ground, the lady was off like a humming-bird, darting hither and yon, so that it was impossible to put a finger upon her, or get so much as a look at her brilliant and restless wings. But n.o.body ever tired of trying to find a humming-bird at rest; and so Sam never gave up looking for the opportune moment of speaking his mind.

Meanwhile, Lucky-dog Camp was having a fresh sensation. An organized band of gamblers, robbers, and "road-agents" had made a swoop upon its property, of various kinds, and had succeeded in making off with it. The very night after the ride just mentioned, the best horses in Sam Rice's team were stolen, making it necessary to subst.i.tute what Sam called "a pa'r of ornery cayuses." To put the climax to his misfortunes, the "road-agents" attacked him next morning, when, the "ornery cayuses"

becoming unmanageable, Sam was forced to surrender the treasure-box, and the pa.s.sengers their bullion. The excitement in Lucky-dog was intense. A vigilance committee, secretly organized, lay in waiting for the offenders, and, after a week or two, made a capture of a well-known sporting-man, whose presence in camp had for some time been regarded with suspicion. Short shrift was afforded him. That same afternoon his gentlemanly person swung dangling from a gnarled pine-tree limb, and his frightened soul had fled into outer darkness.

When this event became known to Mrs. Dolly Page, she turned ghostly white, and then fainted dead away. Mrs. Shanghnessy was very much concerned for her friend; berating in round terms, the brutishness of people who could talk of such things before a tender-hearted lady like that. To Mr. Rice, particularly, she expatiated upon the coa.r.s.eness of certain people, and the refined sensitiveness of others; and Sam was much inclined to agree with her, so far as her remarks applied to her friend, who was not yet recovered sufficiently to be visible. Indeed, Mrs. Page was not visible for so many days, that Sam's soul began to long for her with a mighty longing. At length, she made her appearance, considerably paler and thinner than was her wont; but doubly interesting and lovely to the eyes of so partial an observer as Sam, who would willingly have sheltered her weakness in his strong, manly arms. Sam, naturally enough, would never have hinted at the event which had so distressed her; but she relieved him of all embarra.s.sment on that subject, by saying to him almost at once:

"Mr. Rice, I am told they have not buried the man they hung, so shockingly, the other day. They certainly will not leave him _there_?"

she added, with a shudder.

"I don't know--I suppose," stammered Sam, "it is their way, with them fellows."

"But you will not allow it? You _cannot_ allow it!"--excitedly.

"I couldn't prevent them," said Sam, quite humbly.

"Mr. Rice," and her voice was at once a command and an entreaty, "you _can_ and _must_ prevent it. You are not afraid? I will go with you--this very night--and will help you. Don't say you will not; for I cannot sleep until it is done. I have not slept for a week."

She looked so white and so wild, as she uttered this confession, that Sam would have been the wretch he was not, to refuse her. So he said:

"Don't you fret. I'll bury him, if it troubles you so. But you needn't go along. You couldn't; it's too far, and you're too weak,"--seeing how she trembled.

"I am not weak--only nervous. I prefer to go along. But we must be secret, I suppose? Oh!"--with a start that was indeed "nervous."

"Yes, we must be secret," said Sam; and he looked as if he did not half like the business, but would not refuse.

"You are a good man, Mr. Rice, and I thank you." And with that, Mrs.

Dolly Page caught up one of his hands, and kissing it hastily, began to cry, as she walked quickly away.

"Don't cry, and don't go until I have promised to do whatever you ask, if it will make you well again," Sam said, following her to the door.

"Then call for me to take a walk with you to-night. The moon is full, but no one will observe us. They would not think of our going _there_,"--with another shudder--and she slipped away from his detaining hand.

That evening Mr. Samuel Rice and Mrs. Page took a walk by moonlight.

Laughing gossips commented on it after their fas.h.i.+on; and disagreeable gossips remarked that they came home very late, after _their_ fas.h.i.+on.

But n.o.body, they believed, saw where they went, or what they did. Yet those two came from performing an act of Christian charity, each with a sense of guilt and unworthiness very irritating to endure, albeit from very different causes. One, because an unwelcome suspicion had thrust itself into his mind; and the other----

The ground of Sam's suspicion was a photograph, which, in handling the gambler's body somewhat awkwardly, by reason of its weight--Mrs. Page had found, at the last, she could not render any a.s.sistance--had slipped from some receptacle in its clothing. A hasty glance, under the full light of the moon, had shown him the features of the lady who sat twelve paces away, with her hands over her face. It is not always those that sin who suffer most from the consciousness of sin; and Sam, perhaps, with that hint of possible--nay, almost certain--wickedness in his breast-pocket, was more burdened by the weight of it than many a criminal about to suffer all the terrors of the law; for the woman that he loved stood accused, if not convicted, before his conscience and her own, and he could not condemn, because his heart refused to judge her.

When the two stood together under the light of the lamp in the deserted parlor of the Silver Brick Hotel, the long silence which, by her quick perceptions, had been recognized as accusing her, upon what evidence she did not yet know, was at length broken by Sam's voice, husky with agitation.

"Mrs. Page," he said, a.s.suming an unconscious dignity of mien and sternness of countenance, "I shall ask you some questions, sometime, which you may not think quite polite. And you must answer me: you understand. I'm bound to know the truth about this man."

"About this man!" Then he suspected her of connection with the wretched criminal whose body had only just now been hidden from mocking eyes? How much did he suspect? how much did he _know_? Her pale face and frightened eyes seemed to ask these questions of him; but not a sound escaped her lips. The imploring look, so strange upon her usually bright face, touched all that was tender in Sam's romantic nature. In another moment he would have recalled his demand, and trusted her infinitely; but in that critical moment she fainted quite away, to his mingled sorrow and alarm; and Mrs. Shaughnessy being summoned, Sam received a wordy reprimand for having no more sense than to keep a sick woman up half of the night; smarting under which undeserved censure, he retired, to think over the events of the evening.

The hour of departure from Luckydog, for Sam's coach, was four o'clock in the morning; and its driver was not a little surprised, when about to mount the box, to discover Mrs. Page waiting to take a seat beside him.

After the adventure of the previous night, it was with some restraint that he addressed her; and there was wanting, also, something of his cheerful alacrity of manner, when he requested the stranger who had taken the box-seat, to yield it to a lady. The stranger's mood seemed uncongenial, for he declined to abdicate, intimating that there was room for the lady between himself and the driver, if she insisted upon an outside seat.

But Mrs. Page did not insist. She whispered Sam to open the coach-door, and quietly took a seat inside; and Sam, with a sense of irritation very unusual with him, climbed reluctantly to his place, giving the "cayuses"

the lash in a way that set them off on a keen run. By the time he had gotten his team cooled down, the unusual mood had pa.s.sed, and the longing returned to hear the sweet voice, and watch the bright eyes that had made his happiness on former occasions. Puzzled as he was, and pained by the evidence he possessed of her connection, in some way, with the victim of lynch-law, _that_ seemed like a dream in the clear, sunny air of morning, while the more blissful past a.s.serted its claim to be considered reality. Not a lark, warbling its flute-notes by the way-side, not a pretty bit of the familiar landscape, nor glimpse of brook, that leaped sparkling down the mountain, but recalled some charming utterance of Mrs. Dolly Page, as he first knew her; as he could not now recognize her in the pale, nervous, and evidently suffering woman, sitting, closely veiled, inside the coach.

Occupied with these thoughts, Sam felt a disagreeable shock when the outside pa.s.senger--in a voice that contrasted roughly with that other voice which was murmuring in his ear--began a remark about the mining prospects of Lucky-dog.

"Some rich discoveries made in the neighborhood, eh? Did you ever try your luck at mining?"

"Waal, no. I own a little stock, though," answered Sam, carelessly.

"In what mine?"

"In the Nip-and-tuck."

"Good mine, from all I hear about it. Never did any prospecting?" asked the stranger, in that tone which denotes only a desire to make talk, with a view to kill time.

"No," in the same tone.

"That's odd," stuffing a handful of cut tobacco into his mouth. "I'd have sworn 'twas you I saw swinging a pick in the canon east of camp last night."

"I'm not much on picks," Sam returned, with a slowness that well counterfeited indifference. "I was visiting a lady last evening, which is a kind of prospecting more in my line."

"Yes, I understand; that lady inside the coach. She's a game one."

"It strikes me you're devilish free in your remarks," said Sam, becoming irritated again.

"No offense meant, I'm sure. Take a cigar? We may as well talk this matter over calmly, Mr. Rice. You see it's ten to one that you are implicated in this business. Been very attentive to Mrs. Page. Made several trips together. Let her handle your horses, so she could take them out of the stable for them thieves. Buried her thieving, gambling husband for her. You see the case _looks_ bad, anyway; though I'm inclined to think you've just been made a tool of. I know she's a smart one. Tain't often you find one smarter."

Sam's eyes scintillated. He was strangely minded to pitch the outside pa.s.senger off the coach. The struggle in his breast between conviction and resistance to conviction amounted to agony. He could not, in that supreme moment, discriminate between the anger he felt at being falsely accused, and the grief and rage of being so horrible disillusioned.

Their combined anguish paled his cheeks, and set his teeth on edge: of all of which the outside pa.s.senger was coolly cognizant. As they were, at that moment, in sight of the first station, he resumed.

"Let her get up here, if she wants to; I can ride inside. I don't want to be hard on her; but mind, if you breathe a word to her about my being an officer, I'll arrest you on suspicion. Let every tub stand on its own bottom. If she's guilty, you can't help her, and don't want to, either; if she's innocent, she'll come out all right, never fear. Are you on the square, now?"

"Have you got a warrant?" asked Sam, in a low tone, as he wound the lines around the break, previous to getting down.

"You bet! but I'm in no hurry to serve it. Piney-woods station 'ill do just as well. Telegraph office there."

Mr. Rice was not in any haste this morning, being, as he said, ahead of time. He invited Mrs. Page to take her usual place on the box, telling her the gentleman had concluded to go inside; and brought her a gla.s.s of water from the bar. While he was returning the gla.s.s, the pa.s.sengers, including him of the outside, being busied a.s.suaging their thirst with something stronger than water, a rattle of wheels and a clatter of hoofs was heard, and, lo! Mrs. Dolly Page was discovered to be practicing her favorite accomplishment of driving six-in-hand!

When the "outside" recovered from his momentary surprise, he clapped his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Rice, and said, in a voice savage with spite and disappointment: