The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, and Other Stories

“Have you seen Mr. Gray since his return from the Mediterranean?”

Ah! one of the brooches had slipped from her fingers to the bottom of the case. There was an interval or two of pathetic murmuring, with her fair head under the glass, before she could find it; then she lifted her eyes to the consul. They were still slightly suffused with her sympathetic concern. The stone, which was set in a thistle—the national emblem—did he not know it?—had dropped out. But she could put it in. It was pretty and not expensive. It was marked twelve shillings on the card, but he could have it for ten shillings. No, she had not seen Mr. Gray since they had lost their fortune. (It struck the consul as none the less pathetic that she seemed really to believe in their former opulence.) They could not be seeing him there in a small shop, and they could not see him elsewhere. It was far better as it was. Yet she paused a moment when she had wrapped up the brooch. “You’d be seeing him yourself some time?” she added gently.

“Perhaps.”

“Then you’ll not mind saying how my father and myself are sometimes thinking of his goodness and kindness,” she went on, in a voice whose tenderness seemed to increase with the formal precision of her speech.

“Certainly.”

“And you’ll say we’re not forgetting him.”

“I promise.”

As she handed him the parcel her lips softly parted in what might have been equally a smile or a sigh.

He was able to keep his promise sooner than he had imagined. It was only a few weeks later that, arriving in London, he found Gray’s hatbox and bag in the vestibule of his club, and that gentleman himself in the smoking-room. He looked tanned and older.

“I only came from Southampton an hour ago, where I left the yacht. And,” shaking the consul’s hand cordially, “how’s everything and everybody up at old St. Kentigern?”

The consul thought fit to include his news of the Callenders in reference to that query, and with his eyes fixed on Gray dwelt at some length on their change of fortune. Gray took his cigar from his mouth, but did not lift his eyes from the fire. Presently he said, “I suppose that’s why Callender declined to take the shares I offered him in the fishing scheme. You know I meant it, and would have done it.”

“Perhaps he had other reasons.”

“What do you mean?” said Gray, facing the consul suddenly.

“Look here, Gray,” said the consul, “did Miss Callender or her father ever tell you she was engaged?”

“Yes; but what’s that to do with it?”

“A good deal. Engagements, you know, are sometimes forced, unsuitable, or unequal, and are broken by circumstances. Callender is proud.”

Gray turned upon the consul the same look of gravity that he had worn on the yacht—the same look that the consul even fancied he had seen in Ailsa’s eyes. “That’s exactly where you’re mistaken in her,” he said slowly. “A girl like that gives her word and keeps it. She waits, hopes, accepts what may come—breaks her heart, if you will, but not her word. Come, let’s talk of something else. How did he—that man Gow—lose Callender’s money?”

The consul did not see the Callenders again on his return, and perhaps did not think it necessary to report the meeting. But one morning he was delighted to find an official document from New York upon his desk, asking him to communicate with David Callender of St. Kentigern, and, on proof of his identity, giving him authority to draw the sum of five thousand dollars damages awarded for the loss of certain property on the Skyscraper, at the request of James Gow. Yet it was with mixed sensations that the consul sought the little shop of the optician with this convincing proof of Gow’s faithfulness and the indissolubility of Ailsa’s engagement. That there was some sad understanding between the girl and Gray he did not doubt, and perhaps it was not strange that he felt a slight partisanship for his friend, whose nature had so strangely changed. Miss Ailsa was not there. Her father explained that her health had required a change, and she was visiting some friends on the river.

“I’m thinkin’ that the atmosphere is not so pure here. It is deficient in ozone. I noticed it myself in the early morning. No! it was not the confinement of the shop, for she never cared to go out.”

He received the announcement of his good fortune with unshaken calm and great practical consideration of detail. He would guarantee his identity to the consul. As for James Gow, it was no more than fair; and what he had expected of him. As to its being an equivalent of his loss, he could not tell until the facts were before him.

“Miss Ailsa,” suggested the consul venturously, “will be pleased to hear again from her old friend, and know that he is succeeding.”

“I’m not so sure that ye could call it ‘succeeding,’” returned the old man, carefully wiping the glasses of a pair of spectacles that he held critically to the light, “when ye consider that, saying nothing of the waste of valuable time, it only puts James Gow back where he was when he went away.”

“But any man who has had the pleasure of knowing Mr. and Miss Callender would be glad to be on that footing,” said the consul, with polite significance.

“I’m not agreeing with you there,” said Mr. Callender quietly; “and I’m observing in ye of late a tendency to combine business wi’ compleement. But it was kind of ye to call; and I’ll be sending ye the authorization.”

Which he did. But the consul, passing through the locality a few weeks later, was somewhat concerned to find the shop closed, with others on the same block, behind a hoarding that indicated rebuilding and improvement. Further inquiry elicited the fact that the small leases had been bought up by some capitalist, and that Mr. Callender, with the others, had benefited thereby. But there was no trace nor clew to his present locality. He and his daughter seemed to have again vanished with this second change in their fortunes.

It was a late March morning when the streets were dumb with snow, and the air was filled with flying granulations that tinkled against the windows of the Consulate like fairy sleigh-bells, when there was the stamping of snow-clogged feet in the outer hall, and the door was opened to Mr. and Miss Callender. For an instant the consul was startled. The old man appeared as usual—erect, and as frigidly respectable as one of the icicles that fringed the window, but Miss Ailsa was, to his astonishment, brilliant with a new-found color, and sparkling with health and only half-repressed animation. The snow-flakes, scarcely melting on the brown head of this true daughter of the North, still crowned her hood; and, as she threw back her brown cloak and disclosed a plump little scarlet jacket and brown skirt, the consul could not resist her suggested likeness to some bright-eyed robin redbreast, to whom the inclement weather had given a charming audacity. And shy and demure as she still was, it was evident that some change had been wrought in her other than that evoked by the stimulus of her native sky and air.

To his eager questioning, the old man replied briefly that he had bought the old cottage at Loch Dour, where they were living, and where he had erected a small manufactory and laboratory for the making of his inventions, which had become profitable. The consul reiterated his delight at meeting them again.

“I’m not so sure of that, sir, when you know the business on which I come,” said Mr. Callender, dropping rigidly into a chair, and clasping his hands over the crutch of a shepherd-like staff. “Ye mind, perhaps, that ye conveyed to me, osteensibly at the request of James Gow, a certain sum of money, for which I gave ye a good and sufficient guarantee. I thought at the time that it was a most feckless and unbusiness-like proceeding on the part of James, as it was without corroboration or advice by letter; but I took the money.”

“Do you mean to say that he made no allusion to it in his other letters?” interrupted the consul, glancing at Ailsa.

“There were no other letters at the time,” said Callender dryly. “But about a month afterwards we DID receive a letter from him enclosing a draft and a full return of the profits of the invention, which HE HAD SOLD IN HONDURAS. Ye’ll observe the deescrepancy! I then wrote to the bank on which I had drawn as you authorized me, and I found that they knew nothing of any damages awarded, but that the sum I had drawn had been placed to my credit by Mr. Robert Gray.”

In a flash the consul recalled the one or two questions that Gray had asked him, and saw it all. For an instant he felt the whole bitterness of Gray’s misplaced generosity—its exposure and defeat. He glanced again hopelessly at Ailsa. In the eye of that fresh, glowing, yet demure, young goddess, unhallowed as the thought might be, there was certainly a distinctly tremulous wink.

The consul took heart. “I believe I need not say, Mr. Callender,” he began with some stiffness, “that this is as great a surprise to me as to you. I had no reason to believe the transaction other than bona fide, and acted accordingly. If my friend, deeply sympathizing with your previous misfortune, has hit upon a delicate, but unbusiness-like way of assisting you temporarily—I say TEMPORARILY, because it must have been as patent to him as to you, that you would eventually find out his generous deceit—you surely can forgive him for the sake of his kind intention. Nay, more; may I point out to you that you have no right to assume that this benefaction was intended exclusively for you; if Mr. Gray, in his broader sympathy with you and your daughter, has in this way chosen to assist and strengthen the position of a gentleman so closely connected with you, but still struggling with hard fortune”—

“I’d have ye know, sir,” interrupted the old man, rising to his feet, “that ma frien’ Mr. James Gow is as independent of yours as he is of me and mine. He has married, sir, a Mrs. Hernandez, the rich widow of a coffee-planter, and now is the owner of the whole estate, minus the encumbrance of three children. And now, sir, you’ll take this,”—he drew from his pocket an envelope. “It’s a draft for five thousand dollars, with the ruling rate of interest computed from the day I received it till this day, and ye’ll give it to your frien’ when ye see him. And ye’ll just say to him from me”—

But Miss Ailsa, with a spirit and independence that challenged her father’s, here suddenly fluttered between them with sparkling eyes and outstretched hands.

“And ye’ll say to him from ME that a more honorable, noble, and generous man, and a kinder, truer, and better friend than he, cannot be found anywhere! And that the foolishest and most extravagant thing he ever did is better than the wisest and most prudent thing that anybody else ever did, could, or would do! And if he was a bit overproud—it was only because those about him were overproud and foolish. And you’ll tell him that we’re wearying for him! And when you give him that daft letter from father you’ll give him this bit line from me,” she went on rapidly as she laid a tiny note in his hand. “And,” with wicked dancing eyes that seemed to snap the last bond of repression, “ye’ll give him THAT too, and say I sent it!”

There was a stir in the official apartment! The portraits of Lincoln and Washington rattled uneasily in their frames; but it was no doubt only a discreet blast of the north wind that drowned the echo of a kiss.

“Ailsa!” gasped the shocked Mr. Callender.

“Ah! but, father, if it had not been for HIM we would not have known Robin.”

It was the last that the consul saw of Ailsa Callender; for the next summer when he called at Loch Dour she was Mrs. Gray.

THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU

I.

On the fifteenth of August, 1854, what seemed to be the entire population of Wynyard’s Bar was collected upon a little bluff which overlooked the rude wagon road that was the only approach to the settlement. In general appearance the men differed but little from ordinary miners, although the foreign element, shown in certain Spanish peculiarities of dress and color, predominated, and some of the men were further distinguished by the delicacy of education and sedentary pursuits. Yet Wynyard’s Bar was a city of refuge, comprised among its inhabitants a number who were “wanted” by the State authorities, and its actual attitude at that moment was one of open rebellion against the legal power, and of particular resistance to the apprehension by warrant of one of its prominent members. This gentleman, Major Overstone, then astride of a gray mustang, and directing the movements of the crowd, had, a few days before, killed the sheriff of Siskyou county, who had attempted to arrest him for the double offense of misappropriating certain corporate funds of the State and the shooting of the editor who had imprudently exposed him. The lesser crime of homicide might have been overlooked by the authorities, but its repetition upon the body of their own over-zealous and misguided official could not pass unchallenged if they expected to arrest Overstone for the more serious offense against property. So it was known that a new sheriff had been appointed and was coming to Wynyard’s Bar with an armed posse. But it was also understood that this invasion would be resisted by the Bar to its last man.

All eyes were turned upon a fringe of laurel and butternut that encroached upon the road half a mile away, where it seemed that such of the inhabitants who were missing from the bluff were hidden to give warning or retard the approach of the posse. A gray haze, slowly rising between the fringe and the distant hillside, was recognized as the dust of a cavalcade passing along the invisible highway. In the hush of expectancy that followed, the irregular clatter of hoofs, the sharp crack of a rifle, and a sudden halt were faintly audible. The men, scattered in groups on the bluff, exchanged a smile of grim satisfaction.

Not so their leader! A quick start and an oath attracted attention to him. To their surprise he was looking in another direction, but as they looked too they saw and understood the cause. A file of horsemen, hitherto undetected, were slowly passing along the little ridge on their right. Their compact accoutrements and the yellow braid on their blue jackets, distinctly seen at that distance, showed them to be a detachment of United States cavalry.

Before the assemblage could realize this new invasion, a nearer clatter of hoofs was heard along the high road, and one of the ambuscading party dashed up from the fringe of woods below. His face was flushed, but triumphant.

“A reg’lar skunk—by the living hokey!” he panted, pointing to the faint haze that was again slowly rising above the invisible road. “They backed down as soon as they saw our hand, and got a hole through their new sheriff’s hat. But what are you lookin’ at? What’s up?”

The leader impatiently pointed with a darkening face to the distant file.

“Reg’lars, by gum!” ejaculated the other. “But Uncle Sam ain’t in this game. Wot right have THEY”—

“Dry up!” said the leader.

The detachment was now moving at right angles with the camp, but suddenly halted, almost doubling upon itself in some evident commotion. A dismounted figure was seen momentarily flying down the hillside dodging from bush to bush until lost in the underbrush. A dozen shots were fired over its head, and then the whole detachment wheeled and came clattering down the trail in the direction of the camp. A single riderless horse, evidently that of the fugitive, followed.

“Spread yourselves along the ridge, every man of you, and cover them as they enter the gulch!” shouted the leader. “But not a shot until I give the word. Scatter!”

The assemblage dispersed like a startled village of prairie dogs, squatting behind every available bush and rock along the line of bluff. The leader alone trotted quietly to the head of the gulch.

The nine cavalrymen came smartly up in twos, a young officer leading. The single figure of Major Overstone opposed them with a command to halt. Looking up, the young officer drew rein, said a word to his file leader, and the four files closed in a compact square motionless on the road. The young officer’s unsworded hand hung quietly at his thigh, the men’s unslung carbines rested easily on their saddles. Yet at that moment every man of them knew that they were covered by a hundred rifles and shot guns leveled from every bush, and that they were caught helplessly in a trap.

“Since when,” said Major Overstone with an affectation of tone and manner different from that in which he had addressed his previous companions, “have the Ninth United States Cavalry helped to serve a State court’s pettifogging process?”

“We are hunting a deserter—a half-breed agent—who has just escaped us,” returned the officer. His voice was boyish—so, too, was his figure in its slim, cadet-like smartness of belted tunic—but very quiet and level, although his face was still flushed with the shock and shame of his surprise.

The relaxation of relief went through the wrought and waiting camp. The soldiers were not seeking THEM. Ready as these desperate men had been to do their leader’s bidding, they were well aware that a momentary victory over the troopers would not pass unpunished, and meant the ultimate dispersion of the camp. And quiet as these innocent invaders seemed to be they would no doubt sell their lives dearly. The embattled desperadoes glanced anxiously at their leader; the soldiers, on the contrary, looked straight before them.

“Process or no process,” said Major Overstone with a sneer, “you’ve come to the last place to recover your deserter. We don’t give up men in Wynyard’s Bar. And they didn’t teach you at the Academy, sir, to stop to take prisoners when you were outflanked and outnumbered.”

“Bedad! They didn’t teach YOU, Captain Overstone, to engage a battery at Cerro Gordo with a half company, but you did it; more shame to you now, sorr, commandin’ the thayves and ruffians you do.”

“Silence!” said the young officer.

The sleeve of the sergeant who had spoken—with the chevrons of long service upon it—went up to a salute, and dropped again over his carbine as he stared stolidly before him. But his shot had told. A flush of mingled pride and shame passed over Overstone’s face.

“Oh! it’s YOU, Murphy,” he said with an affected laugh, “and you haven’t improved with your stripes.”

The young officer turned his head slightly.

“Attention!”

“One moment more,” said Overstone coming forward. “I have told you that we don’t give up any man who seeks our protection. But,” he added with a half-careless, half-contemptuous wave of his hand, and a significant glance at his followers, “we don’t prevent you from seeking him. The road is clear; the camp is before you.”

The young officer continued without looking at him. “Forward—in two files—open order. Ma-arch!”

The little troop moved forward, passed Major Overstone at the head of the gully, and spread out on the hillside. The assembled camp, still armed, lounging out of ambush here and there, ironically made way for them to pass. A few moments of this farcical quest, and a glance at the impenetrably wooded heights around, apparently satisfied the young officer, and he turned his files again into the gully. Major Overstone was still lingering there.

“I hope you are satisfied,” he said grimly. He then paused, and in a changed and more hesitating voice added: “I am an older soldier than you, sir, but I am always glad to make the acquaintance of West Point.” He paused and held out his hand.

West Point, still red and rigid, glanced at him with bright clear eyes under light lashes and the peak of a smartly cocked cap, looked coolly at the proffered hand, raised his own to a stiff salute, said, “Good afternoon, sir,” and rode away.

Major Overstone wheeled angrily, but in doing so came sharply upon his coadjutor—the leader of the ambushed party.

“Well, Dawson,” he said impatiently. “Who was it?”

“Only one of them d–d half-breed Injin agents. He’s just over there in the brush with Simpson, lying low till the soldiers clear out.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Not much!” returned Dawson scornfully. “He ain’t my style.”

“Fetch him up to my cabin; he may be of some use to us.”

Dawson looked skeptical. “I reckon he ain’t no more gain here than he was over there,” he said, and turned away.

II.

The cabin of Major Overstone differed outwardly but little from those of his companions. It was the usual structure of logs, laid lengthwise, and rudely plastered at each point of contact with adobe, the material from which the chimney, which entirely occupied one gable, was built. It was pierced with two windows and a door, roofed with smaller logs, and thatched with long half cylinders of spruce bark. But the interior gave certain indications of the distinction as well as the peculiar experiences of its occupant. In place of the usual bunk or berth built against the wall stood a small folding camp bedstead, and upon a rude deal table that held a tin wash-basin and pail lay two ivory-handled brushes, combs, and other elegant toilet articles, evidently the contents of the major’s dressing-bag. A handsome leather trunk occupied one corner, with a richly caparisoned silver-mounted Mexican saddle, a mahogany case of dueling pistols, a leather hat-box, locked and strapped, and a gorgeous gold and quartz handled ebony “presentation” walking stick. There was a certain dramatic suggestion in this revelation of the sudden and hurried transition from a life of ostentatious luxury to one of hidden toil and privation, and a further significance in the slow and gradual distribution and degradation of these elegant souvenirs. A pair of silver boot-hooks had been used for raking the hearth and lifting the coffee kettle; the ivory of the brushes was stained with coffee; the cut-glass bottles had lost their stoppers, and had been utilized for vinegar and salt; a silver-framed hand mirror hung against the blackened wall. For the major’s occupancy was the sequel of a hurried flight from his luxurious hotel at Sacramento—a transfer that he believed was only temporary until the affair blew over, and he could return in safety to brow-beat his accusers, as was his wont. But this had not been so easy as he had imagined; his prosecutors were bitter, and his enforced seclusion had been prolonged week by week until the fracas which ended in the shooting of the sheriff had apparently closed the door upon his return to civilization forever. Only here was his life and person secure. For Wynyard’s Bar had quickly succumbed to the domination of his reckless courage, and the eminence of his double crime had made him respected among spendthrifts, gamblers, and gentlemen whose performances had never risen above a stage-coach robbery or a single assassination. Even criticism of his faded luxuries had been delicately withheld.

He was leaning over his open trunk—which the camp popularly supposed to contain State bonds and securities of fabulous amount—and had taken some letters from it, when a figure darkened the doorway. He looked up, laying his papers carelessly aside. WITHIN Wynyard’s Bar property was sacred.

It was the late fugitive. Although some hours had already elapsed since his arrival in camp, and he had presumably refreshed himself inwardly, his outward appearance was still disheveled and dusty. Brier and milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers. What could be seen of the skin of his face and hands under its stains and begriming was of a dull yellow. His light eyes had all the brightness without the restlessness of the mongrel race. They leisurely took in the whole cabin, the still open trunk before the major, and then rested deliberately on the major himself.

“Well,” said Major Overstone abruptly, “what brought you here?”

“Same as brought you, I reckon,” responded the man almost as abruptly.

The major knew something of the half-breed temper, and neither the retort nor its tone affected him.

“You didn’t come here just because you deserted,” said the major coolly. “You’ve been up to something else.”

“I have,” said the man with equal coolness.

“I thought so. Now, you understand you can’t try anything of that kind HERE. If you do, up you go on the first tree. That’s Rule 1.”

“I see you ain’t pertickler about waiting for the sheriff here, you fellers.”

The major glanced at him quickly. He seemed to be quite unconscious of any irony in his remark, and continued grimly, “And what’s Rule 2?”