The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

Rand stood looking after her neat figure, less concerned in the advent of the strangers than in her sudden caprice. He was not so young and inexperienced but that he noted certain ambiguities in her dress and manner: he was by no means impressed by her dignity. But he could not help watching her as she appeared to be volubly recounting her late interview to her companions; and, still unconscious of any impropriety or obtrusiveness, he lounged down lazily towards her. Her humor had evidently changed; for she turned an honest, pleased face upon him, as she girlishly attempted to drag the strangers forward.

The man was plump and short; unlike the natives of the locality, he was closely cropped and shaven, as if to keep down the strong blue-blackness of his beard and hair, which nevertheless asserted itself over his round cheeks and upper lip like a tattooing of Indian ink. The woman at his side was reserved and indistinctive, with that appearance of being an unenthusiastic family servant peculiar to some men’s wives. When Rand was within a few feet of him, he started, struck a theatrical attitude, and, shading his eyes with his hand, cried, “What, do me eyes deceive me!” burst into a hearty laugh, darted forward, seized Rand’s hand, and shook it briskly.

“Pinkney, Pinkney, my boy! how are you? And this is your little ‘prop’? your quarter-section, your country-seat, that we’ve been trespassing on, eh? A nice little spot, cool, sequestered, remote,—a trifle unimproved; carriage-road as yet unfinished. Ha, ha! But to think of our making a discovery of this inaccessible mountain, climbing it, sir, for two mortal hours, christening it ‘Sol’s Peak,’ getting up a flag-pole, unfurling our standard to the breeze, sir, and then, by Gad, winding up by finding Pinkney, the festive Pinkney, living on it at home!”

Completely surprised, but still perfectly good-humored, Rand shook the stranger’s right hand warmly, and received on his broad shoulders a welcoming thwack from the left, without question. “She don’t mind her friends making free with ME evidently,” said Rand to himself, as he tried to suggest that fact to the young lady in a meaning glance.

The stranger noted his glance, and suddenly passed his hand thoughtfully over his shaven cheeks. “No,” he said—“yes, surely, I forget—yes, I see; of course you don’t! Rosy,” turning to his wife, “of course Pinkney doesn’t know Phemie, eh?”

“No, nor ME either, Sol,” said that lady warningly.

“Certainly!” continued Sol. “It’s his misfortune. You weren’t with me at Gold Hill.—Allow me,” he said, turning to Rand, “to present Mrs. Sol Saunders, wife of the undersigned, and Miss Euphemia Neville, otherwise known as the ‘Marysville Pet,’ the best variety actress known on the provincial boards. Played Ophelia at Marysville, Friday; domestic drama at Gold Hill, Saturday; Sunday night, four songs in character, different dress each time, and a clog-dance. The best clog-dance on the Pacific Slope,” he added in a stage aside. “The minstrels are crazy to get her in ‘Frisco. But money can’t buy her—prefers the legitimate drama to this sort of thing.” Here he took a few steps of a jig, to which the “Marysville Pet” beat time with her feet, and concluded with a laugh and a wink—the combined expression of an artist’s admiration for her ability, and a man of the world’s scepticism of feminine ambition.

Miss Euphemia responded to the formal introduction by extending her hand frankly with a re-assuring smile to Rand, and an utter obliviousness of her former hauteur. Rand shook it warmly, and then dropped carelessly on a rock beside them.

“And you never told me you lived up here in the attic, you rascal!” continued Sol with a laugh.

“No,” replied Rand simply. “How could I? I never saw you before, that I remember.”

Miss Euphemia stared at Sol. Mrs. Sol looked up in her lord’s face, and folded her arms in a resigned expression. Sol rose to his feet again, and shaded his eyes with his hand, but this time quite seriously, and gazed at Rand’s smiling face.

“Good Lord! Do you mean to say your name isn’t Pinkney?” he asked, with a half embarrassed laugh.

“It IS Pinkney,” said Rand; “but I never met you before.”

“Didn’t you come to see a young lady that joined my troupe at Gold Hill last month, and say you’d meet me at Keeler’s Ferry in a day or two?”

“No-o-o,” said Rand, with a good-humored laugh. “I haven’t left this mountain for two months.”

He might have added more; but his attention was directed to Miss Euphemia, who during this short dialogue, having stuffed alternately her handkerchief, the corner of her mantle, and her gloves, into her mouth, restrained herself no longer, but gave way to an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “O Sol!” she gasped explanatorily, as she threw herself alternately against him, Mrs. Sol, and a bowlder, “you’ll kill me yet! O Lord! first we take possession of this man’s property, then we claim HIM.” The contemplation of this humorous climax affected her so that she was fain at last to walk away, and confide the rest of her speech to space.

Sol joined in the laugh until his wife plucked his sleeve, and whispered something in his ear. In an instant his face became at once mysterious and demure. “I owe you an apology,” he said, turning to Rand, but in a voice ostentatiously pitched high enough for Miss Euphemia to overhear: “I see I have made a mistake. A resemblance—only a mere resemblance, as I look at you now—led me astray. Of course you don’t know any young lady in the profession?”

“Of course he doesn’t, Sol,” said Miss Euphemia. “I could have told you that. He didn’t even know ME!”

The voice and mock-heroic attitude of the speaker was enough to relieve the general embarrassment with a laugh. Rand, now pleasantly conscious of only Miss Euphemia’s presence, again offered the hospitality of his cabin, with the polite recognition of her friends in the sentence, “and you might as well come along too.”

“But won’t we incommode the lady of the house?” said Mrs. Sol politely.

“What lady of the house”? said Rand almost angrily.

“Why, Ruth, you know!”

It was Rand’s turn to become hilarious. “Ruth,” he said, “is short for Rutherford, my brother.” His laugh, however, was echoed only by Euphemia.

“Then you have a brother?” said Mrs. Sol benignly.

“Yes,” said Rand: “he will be here soon.” A sudden thought dropped the color from his cheek. “Look here,” he said, turning impulsively upon Sol. “I have a brother, a twin-brother. It couldn’t be HIM—”

Sol was conscious of a significant feminine pressure on his right arm. He was equal to the emergency. “I think not,” he said dubiously, “unless your brother’s hair is much darker than yours. Yes! now I look at you, yours is brown. He has a mole on his right cheek hasn’t he?”

The red came quickly back to Rand’s boyish face. He laughed. “No, sir: my brother’s hair is, if any thing, a shade lighter than mine, and nary mole. Come along!”

And leading the way, Rand disclosed the narrow steps winding down to the shelf on which the cabin hung. “Be careful,” said Rand, taking the now unresisting hand of the “Marysville Pet” as they descended: “a step that way, and down you go two thousand feet on the top of a pine-tree.”

But the girl’s slight cry of alarm was presently changed to one of unaffected pleasure as they stood on the rocky platform. “It isn’t a house: it’s a NEST, and the loveliest!” said Euphemia breathlessly.

“It’s a scene, a perfect scene, sir!” said Sol, enraptured. “I shall take the liberty of bringing my scene-painter to sketch it some day. It would do for ‘The Mountaineer’s Bride’ superbly, or,” continued the little man, warming through the blue-black border of his face with professional enthusiasm, “it’s enough to make a play itself. ‘The Cot on the Crags.’ Last scene—moonlight—the struggle on the ledge! The Lady of the Crags throws herself from the beetling heights!—A shriek from the depths—a woman’s wail!”

“Dry up!” sharply interrupted Rand, to whom this speech recalled his brother’s half-forgotten strangeness. “Look at the prospect.”

In the full noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea of pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost itself in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon. The thronging woods choked every defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with its dark-green tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit and bare. Here and there were profound olive depths, over which the gray hawk hung lazily, and into which blue jays dipped. A faint, dull yellowish streak marked an occasional watercourse; a deeper reddish ribbon, the mountain road and its overhanging murky cloud of dust.

“Is it quite safe here?” asked Mrs. Sol, eying the little cabin. “I mean from storms?”

“It never blows up here,” replied Rand, “and nothing happens.”

“It must be lovely,” said Euphemia, clasping her hands.

“It IS that,” said Rand proudly. “It’s four years since Ruth and I took up this yer claim, and raised this shanty. In that four years we haven’t left it alone a night, or cared to. It’s only big enough for two, and them two must be brothers. It wouldn’t do for mere pardners to live here alone,—they couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be exactly the thing for man and wife to shut themselves up here alone. But Ruth and me know each other’s ways, and here we’ll stay until we’ve made a pile. We sometimes—one of us—takes a pasear to the Ferry to buy provisions; but we’re glad to crawl up to the back of old ‘Table’ at night.”

“You’re quite out of the world here, then?” suggested Mrs. Sol.

“That’s it, just it! We’re out of the world,—out of rows, out of liquor, out of cards, out of bad company, out of temptation. Cussedness and foolishness hez got to follow us up here to find us, and there’s too many ready to climb down to them things to tempt ‘em to come up to us.”

There was a little boyish conceit in his tone, as he stood there, not altogether unbecoming his fresh color and simplicity. Yet, when his eyes met those of Miss Euphemia, he colored, he hardly knew why, and the young lady herself blushed rosily.

When the neat cabin, with its decorated walls, and squirrel and wild-cat skins, was duly admired, the luncheon-basket of the Saunders party was re-enforced by provisions from Rand’s larder, and spread upon the ledge; the dimensions of the cabin not admitting four. Under the potent influence of a bottle, Sol became hilarious and professional. The “Pet” was induced to favor the company with a recitation, and, under the plea of teaching Rand, to perform the clog-dance with both gentlemen. Then there was an interval, in which Rand and Euphemia wandered a little way down the mountain-side to gather laurel, leaving Mr. Sol to his siesta on a rock, and Mrs. Sol to take some knitting from the basket, and sit beside him.

When Rand and his companion had disappeared, Mrs. Sol nudged her sleeping partner. “Do you think that WAS the brother?”

Sol yawned. “Sure of it. They’re as like as two peas, in looks.”

“Why didn’t you tell him so, then?”

“Will you tell me, my dear, why you stopped me when I began?”

“Because something was said about Ruth being here; and I supposed Ruth was a woman, and perhaps Pinkney’s wife, and knew you’d be putting your foot in it by talking of that other woman. I supposed it was for fear of that he denied knowing you.”

“Well, when HE—this Rand—told me he had a twin-brother, he looked so frightened that I knew he knew nothing of his brother’s doings with that woman, and I threw him off the scent. He’s a good fellow, but awfully green, and I didn’t want to worry him with tales. I like him, and I think Phemie does too.”

“Nonsense! He’s a conceited prig! Did you hear his sermon on the world and its temptations? I wonder if he thought temptation had come up to him in the person of us professionals out on a picnic. I think it was positively rude.”

“My dear woman, you’re always seeing slights and insults. I tell you he’s taken a shine to Phemie; and he’s as good as four seats and a bouquet to that child next Wednesday evening, to say nothing of the eclat of getting this St. Simeon—what do you call him?—Stalactites?”

“Stylites,” suggested Mrs. Sol.

“Stylites, off from his pillar here. I’ll have a paragraph in the paper, that the hermit crabs of Table Mountain—”

“Don’t be a fool, Sol!”

“The hermit twins of Table Mountain bespoke the chaste performance.”

“One of them being the protector of the well-known Mornie Nixon,” responded Mrs. Sol, viciously accenting the name with her knitting-needles.

“Rosy, you’re unjust. You’re prejudiced by the reports of the town. Mr. Pinkney’s interest in her may be a purely artistic one, although mistaken. She’ll never make a good variety-actress: she’s too heavy. And the boys don’t give her a fair show. No woman can make a debut in my version of ‘Somnambula,’ and have the front row in the pit say to her in the sleepwalking scene, ‘You’re out rather late, Mornie. Kinder forgot to put on your things, didn’t you? Mother sick, I suppose, and you’re goin’ for more gin? Hurry along, or you’ll ketch it when ye get home.’ Why, you couldn’t do it yourself, Rosy!”

To which Mrs. Sol’s illogical climax was, that, “bad as Rutherford might be, this Sunday-school superintendent, Rand, was worse.”

Rand and his companion returned late, but in high spirits. There was an unnecessary effusiveness in the way in which Euphemia kissed Mrs. Sol,—the one woman present, who UNDERSTOOD, and was to be propitiated,—which did not tend to increase Mrs. Sol’s good humor. She had her basket packed all ready for departure; and even the earnest solicitation of Rand, that they would defer their going until sunset, produced no effect.

“Mr. Rand—Mr. Pinkney, I mean—says the sunsets here are so lovely,” pleaded Euphemia.

“There is a rehearsal at seven o’clock, and we have no time to lose,” said Mrs. Sol significantly.

“I forgot to say,” said the “Marysville Pet” timidly, glancing at Mrs. Sol, “that Mr. Rand says he will bring his brother on Wednesday night, and wants four seats in front, so as not to be crowded.”

Sol shook the young man’s hand warmly. “You’ll not regret it, sir: it’s a surprising, a remarkable performance.”

“I’d like to go a piece down the mountain with you,” said Rand, with evident sincerity, looking at Miss Euphemia; “but Ruth isn’t here yet, and we make a rule never to leave the place alone. I’ll show you the slide: it’s the quickest way to go down. If you meet any one who looks like me, and talks like me, call him ‘Ruth,’ and tell him I’m waitin’ for him yer.”

Miss Phemia, the last to go, standing on the verge of the declivity, here remarked, with a dangerous smile, that, if she met any one who bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him with her,—a playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand’s cheek. When she added to this the greater audacity of kissing her hand to him, the young hermit actually turned away in sheer embarrassment. When he looked around again, she was gone, and for the first time in his experience the mountain seemed barren and lonely.

The too sympathetic reader who would rashly deduce from this any newly awakened sentiment in the virgin heart of Rand would quite misapprehend that peculiar young man. That singular mixture of boyish inexperience and mature doubt and disbelief, which was partly the result of his temperament, and partly of his cloistered life on the mountain, made him regard his late companions, now that they were gone, and his intimacy with them, with remorseful distrust. The mountain was barren and lonely, because it was no longer HIS. It had become a part of the great world, which four years ago he and his brother had put aside, and in which, as two self-devoted men, they walked alone. More than that, he believed he had acquired some understanding of the temptations that assailed his brother, and the poor little vanities of the “Marysville Pet” were transformed into the blandishments of a Circe. Rand, who would have succumbed to a wicked, superior woman, believed he was a saint in withstanding the foolish weakness of a simple one.

He did not resume his work that day. He paced the mountain, anxiously awaiting his brother’s return, and eager to relate his experiences. He would go with him to the dramatic entertainment; from his example and wisdom, Ruth should learn how easily temptation might be overcome. But, first of all, there should be the fullest exchange of confidences and explanations. The old rule should be rescinded for once, the old discussion in regard to Mornie re-opened, and Rand, having convinced his brother of error, would generously extend his forgiveness.

The sun sank redly. Lingering long upon the ledge before their cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand still wrapped in revery. Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly up; but Ruth came not. The moon rose, a silver gleam on the farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother’s prolonged absence, resolved to break another custom, and leave the summit, to seek him on the trail. He buckled on his revolvers, seized his gun, when a cry from the depths arrested him. He leaned over the ledge, and listened. Again the cry arose, and this time more distinctly. He held his breath: the blood settled around his heart in superstitious terror. It was the wailing voice of a woman.

“Ruth, Ruth! for God’s sake come and help me!”

The blood flew back hotly to Rand’s cheek. It was Mornie’s voice. By leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving along the almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned trail, long since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion of the ledge, stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him. Rand knew the trail, a dangerous one always: in its present condition a single mis-step would be fatal. Would she make that mis-step? He shook off a horrible temptation that seemed to be sealing his lips, and paralyzing his limbs, and almost screamed to her, “Drop on your face, hang on to the chaparral, and don’t move!”

In another instant, with a coil of rope around his arm, he was dashing down the almost perpendicular “slide.” When he had nearly reached the level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of the rope to a jutting splinter of granite, and began to “lay out,” and work his way laterally along the face of the mountain. Presently he struck the regular trail at the point from which the woman must have diverged.

“It is Rand,” she said, without lifting her head.

“It is,” replied Rand coldly. “Pass the rope under your arms, and I’ll get you back to the trail.”

“Where is Ruth?” she demanded again, without moving. She was trembling, but with excitement rather than fear.

“I don’t know,” returned Rand impatiently. “Come! the ledge is already crumbling beneath our feet.”

“Let it crumble!” said the woman passionately.

Rand surveyed her with profound disgust, then passed the rope around her waist, and half lifted, half swung her from her feet. In a few moments she began to mechanically help herself, and permitted him to guide her to a place of safety. That reached, she sank down again.

The rising moon shone full upon her face and figure. Through his growing indignation Rand was still impressed and even startled with the change the few last months had wrought upon her. In place of the silly, fanciful, half-hysterical hoyden whom he had known, a matured woman, strong in passionate self-will, fascinating in a kind of wild, savage beauty, looked up at him as if to read his very soul.

“What are you staring at?” she said finally. “Why don’t you help me on?”

“Where do you want to go?” said Rand quietly.

“Where! Up there!”—she pointed savagely to the top of the mountain,—“to HIM! Where else should I go?” she said, with a bitter laugh.

“I’ve told you he wasn’t there,” said Rand roughly. “He hasn’t returned.”

“I’ll wait for him—do you hear?—wait for him; stay there till he comes. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone.”

She made a step forward but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to lean against the mountain for support. Stains of travel were on her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half supporting her, began the ascent. Her head dropped wearily on his shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly, lay across his breast and hands; her grateful eyes were close to his; her breath was upon his cheek: and yet his only consciousness was of the possibly ludicrous figure he might present to his brother, should he meet him with Mornie Nixon in his arms. Not a word was spoken by either till they reached the summit. Relieved at finding his brother still absent, he turned not unkindly toward the helpless figure on his arm. “I don’t see what makes Ruth so late,” he said. “He’s always here by sundown. Perhaps—”

“Perhaps he knows I’m here,” said Mornie, with a bitter laugh.

“I didn’t say that,” said Rand, “and I don’t think it. What I meant was, he might have met a party that was picnicking here to-day,—Sol. Saunders and wife, and Miss Euphemia—”

Mornie flung his arm away from her with a passionate gesture. “THEY here!—picnicking HERE!—those people HERE!”

“Yes,” said Rand, unconsciously a little ashamed. “They came here accidentally.”

Mornie’s quick passion had subsided: she had sunk again wearily and helplessly on a rock beside him. “I suppose,” she said, with a weak laugh—“I suppose, they talked of ME. I suppose they told you how, with their lies and fair promises, they tricked me out, and set me before an audience of brutes and laughing hyenas to make merry over. Did they tell you of the insults that I received?—how the sins of my parents were flung at me instead of bouquets? Did they tell you they could have spared me this, but they wanted the few extra dollars taken in at the door? No!”

“They said nothing of the kind,” replied Rand surlily.

“Then you must have stopped them. You were horrified enough to know that I had dared to take the only honest way left me to make a living. I know you, Randolph Pinkney! You’d rather see Joaquin Muriatta, the Mexican bandit, standing before you to-night with a revolver, than the helpless, shamed, miserable Mornie Nixon. And you can’t help yourself, unless you throw me over the cliff. Perhaps you’d better,” she said, with a bitter laugh that faded from her lips as she leaned, pale and breathless, against the bowlder.

“Ruth will tell you—” began Rand.

“D—n Ruth!”

Rand turned away.

“Stop!” she said suddenly, staggering to her feet. “I’m sick—for all I know, dying. God grant that it may be so! But, if you are a man, you will help me to your cabin—to some place where I can lie down NOW, and be at rest. I’m very, very tired.”

She paused. She would have fallen again; but Rand, seeing more in her face than her voice interpreted to his sullen ears, took her sullenly in his arms, and carried her to the cabin. Her eyes glanced around the bright party-colored walls, and a faint smile came to her lips as she put aside her bonnet, adorned with a companion pinion of the bright wings that covered it.

“Which is Ruth’s bed?” she asked.

Rand pointed to it.

“Lay me there!”

Rand would have hesitated, but, with another look at her face, complied.

She lay quite still a moment. Presently she said, “Give me some brandy or whiskey!”

Rand was silent and confused.

“I forgot,” she added half bitterly. “I know you have not that commonest and cheapest of vices.”

She lay quite still again. Suddenly she raised herself partly on her elbow, and in a strong, firm voice, said, “Rand!”

“Yes, Mornie.”

“If you are wise and practical, as you assume to be, you will do what I ask you without a question. If you do it AT ONCE, you may save yourself and Ruth some trouble, some mortification, and perhaps some remorse and sorrow. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the nearest doctor, and bring him here with you.”

“But YOU!”

Her voice was strong, confident, steady, and patient. “You can safely leave me until then.”

In another moment Rand was plunging down the “slide.” But it was past midnight when he struggled over the last bowlder up the ascent, dragging the half-exhausted medical wisdom of Brown’s Ferry on his arm.