by Bret Harte
honorarium he had just sent to hisportionless daughter. But he only said, coolly, "No," and then, raisinghis pale face and audacious eyes, continued in his laziest and mostinsulting manner, "no: the fact is, my mind is just now preoccupied inwondering if the gas is leaking anywhere, and if anything is ever servedover this bar except elegant conversation. When the gentleman who mixesdrinks comes back, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell him to send awhisky sour to Mr. Jack Hamlin in the parlor. Meantime, you can turn offyour soda fountain: I don't want any fizz in mine."
Having thus quite recovered himself, Mr. Hamlin lounged gracefullyacross the hall into the parlor. As he did so, a darkish young man, witha slim boyish figure, a thin face, and a discontented expression,rose from an armchair, held out his hand, and, with a saturnine smile,said:--
"Jack!"
"Fred!"
The two men remained gazing at each other with a half-amused,half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. "I didn't thinkYOU'D be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred," he said,half seriously.
"Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I huntedyou up," said the editor, mischievously. "Read that. I got it an hourafter you left." And he placed a little triumphantly in Jack's hand theletter he had received from White Violet.
Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two handson the editor's shoulders. "Yes, my young friend, and you sat down andwrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollars--which, permit meto say, was d----d poor pay! But that isn't your fault, I reckon: it'sthe meanness of your proprietors."
"But it isn't the question, either, just now, Jack, however you havebeen able to answer it. Do you mean to say seriously that you want toknow anything more of a woman who could write such a letter?"
"I don't know," said Jack, cheerfully. "She might be a devilish sightfunnier than if she hadn't written it--which is the fact."
"You mean to say SHE didn't write it?"
"Yes."
"Who did, then?"
"Her brother Bob."
After a moment's scrutiny of his friend's bewildered face, Mr. Hamlinbriefly related his adventures, from the moment of his meeting Bob atthe mountain-stream to the barkeeper's gossiping comment and sequel."Therefore," he concluded, "the author of 'Underbrush' is Miss CynthiaDelatour, one of four daughters of a widow who lives two miles fromhere at the crossing. I shall see her this evening and make sure;but to-morrow morning you will pay me the breakfast you owe me. She'sgood-looking, but I can't say I fancy the poetic style: it's a littletoo high-toned for me. However, I love my love with a C, because she isyour Contributor; I hate her with a C, because of her Connections; I mether by Chance and treated her with Civility; her name is Cynthia, andshe lives on a Cross-road."
"But you surely don't expect you will ever see Bob, again!" said theeditor, impatiently. "You have trusted him with enough to start him forthe Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you haveestablished in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised thata man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp thesecond time."
"My knowledge of the world," returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, "tellsme that's the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesn't make a habit,nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had nevertried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishmentby doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is strongerthan any other. 'Tisn't everybody that gets that chance," he added, withan odd laugh.
Nevertheless, three hours passed without bringing Bob. The two men hadgone to the billiard-room, when a waiter brought a note, which hehanded to Mr. Hamlin with some apologetic hesitation. It bore nosuperscription, but had been brought by a boy who described Mr. Hamlinperfectly, and requested that the note should be handed to him with theremark that "Bob had come back."
"And is he there now?" asked Mr. Hamlin, holding the letter unopened inhis hand.
"No, sir; he run right off."
The editor laughed, but Mr. Hamlin, having perused the note, put awayhis cue. "Come into my room," he said.
The editor followed, and Mr. Hamlin laid the note before him on thetable. "Bob's all right," he said, "for I'll bet a thousand dollars thatnote is genuine."
It was delicately written, in a cultivated feminine hand, utterly unlikethe scrawl that had first excited the editor's curiosity, and ran asfollows:--
He who brought me the bounty of your friend--for I cannot call arecompense so far above my deserts by any other name--gives me also tounderstand that you wished for an interview. I cannot believe that thisis mere idle curiosity, or that you have any motive that is not kindlyand honorable, but I feel that I must beg and pray you not to seek toremove the veil behind which I have chosen to hide myself and mypoor efforts from identification. I THINK I know you--I KNOW Iknow myself--well enough to believe it would give neither of us anyhappiness. You will say to your generous friend that he has alreadygiven the Unknown more comfort and hope than could come from anypersonal compliment or publicity, and you will yourself believe that youhave all unconsciously brightened a sad woman's fancy with a Dream and aVision that before today had been unknown to
WHITE VIOLET.
"Have you read it?" asked Mr. Hamlin.
"Yes."
"Then you don't want to see it any more, or even remember you ever sawit," said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces andletting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.
"But, I say, Jack! look here; I don't understand! You say you havealready seen this woman, and yet"--
"I HAVEN'T seen her," said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right hereand leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, and--that Iowe you that dinner."
CHAPTER IV
When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr.Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupantof a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tallfigure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. JamesBowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had justabandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, butMr. Bowers's resources were a life-long experience and technical skill;he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and hisknowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr.Hamlin's luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormalgrowths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they werenot remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided bythe sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers'svisit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not evenfiguratively accept the omen.
He baited and rested his horse at the hotel, where his bucolic exterior,however, did not elicit that attention which had been accorded to Mr.Hamlin's charming insolence or the editor's cultivated manner. But heglanced over a township map on the walls of the reading-room, and tooknote of the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches,passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in thedirection of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a youngsapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling butfamiliar woodman's step.
It is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to follow Mr. Bowers inhis professional diagnosis of the locality. He recognized Nature in oneof her moods of wasteful extravagance,--a waste that his experiencedeye could tell was also sapping the vitality of those outwardly robustshafts that rose around him. He knew, without testing them, that half ofthese fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he coulddetect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirredby the wind that streamed through their long aisles,--like incensemingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then topart the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeingagain, as he had told the editor, the weird SECON
D twilight throughtheir miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But,even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess,he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphereand melody of her verse. Its spell was upon him, too. Unlike Mr. Hamlin,he did not sing. He only halted once or twice, silently combing hisstraight narrow beard with his three fingers, until the action seemedto draw down the lines of his face into limitless dejection, and aninscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds whichhad hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before thegrotesque and angular half-length