by Bret Harte
and is playing him for all he's worth. You won't get much morepoetry out of her, I reckon."
Is was not long after this conversation that one afternoon, when theeditor was alone, Mr. James Bowers entered the editorial room with muchof the hesitation and irresolution of his previous visit. As the editorhad not only forgotten him, but even, dissociated him with the poetess,Mr. Bowers was fain to meet his unresponsive eye and manner with someexplanation.
"Ye disremember my comin' here, Mr. Editor, to ask you the name o' thelady who called herself 'White Violet,' and how you allowed you couldn'tgive it, but would write and ask for it?"
Mr. Editor, leaning back in his chair, now remembered the occurrence,but was distressed to add that the situation remained unchanged, andthat he had received no such permission.
"Never mind THAT, my lad," said Mr. Bowers, gravely, waving his hand. "Iunderstand all that; but, ez I've known the lady ever since, and am nowvisiting her at her house on the Summit, I reckon it don't make muchmatter."
It was quite characteristic of Mr. Bowers's smileless earnestness thathe made no ostentation of this dramatic retort, nor of the undisguisedstupefaction of the editor.
"Do you mean to say that you have met White Violet, the author of thesepoems?" repeated the editor.
"Which her name is Delatour,--the widder Delatour,--ez she has herselfgive me permission to tell you," continued Mr. Bowers, with a certainabstracted and automatic precision that dissipated any suggestion ofmalice in the reversed situation.
"Delatour!--a widow!" repeated the editor.
"With five children," continued Mr. Bowers. Then, with unalterablegravity, he briefly gave an outline of her condition and thecircumstances of his acquaintance with her.
"But I reckoned YOU might have known suthin' o' this; though she neverlet on you did," he concluded, eying the editor with troubled curiosity.
The editor did not think it necessary to implicate Mr. Hamlin. He said,briefly, "I? Oh, no!"
"Of course, YOU might not have seen her?" said Mr. Bowers, keeping thesame grave, troubled gaze on the editor.
"Of course not," said the editor, somewhat impatient under the singularscrutiny of Mr. Bowers; "and I'm very anxious to know how she looks.Tell me, what is she like?"
"She is a fine, pow'ful, eddicated woman," said Mr. Bowers, with slowdeliberation. "Yes, sir,--a pow'ful woman, havin' grand ideas of herown, and holdin' to 'em." He had withdrawn his eyes from the editor, andapparently addressed the ceiling in confidence.
"But what does she look like, Mr. Bowers?" said the editor, smiling.
"Well, sir, she looks--LIKE--IT! Yes,"--with deliberate caution,--"Ishould say, just like it."
After a pause, apparently to allow the editor to materialize thisravishing description, he said, gently, "Are you busy just now?"
"Not very. What can I do for you?"
"Well, not much for ME, I reckon," he returned, with a deeperrespiration, that was his nearest approach to a sigh, "but suthin'perhaps for yourself and--another. Are you married?"
"No," said the editor, promptly.
"Nor engaged to any--young lady?"--with great politeness.
"No."
"Well, mebbe you think it a queer thing for me to say,--mebbe you reckonyou KNOW it ez well ez anybody,--but it's my opinion that White Violetis in love with you."
"With me?" ejaculated the editor, in a hopeless astonishment that atlast gave way to an incredulous and irresistible laugh.
A slight touch of pain passed over Mr. Bowers's dejected face, but leftthe deep outlines set with a rude dignity. "It's SO," he said, slowly,"though, as a young man and a gay feller, ye may think it's funny."
"No, not funny, but a terrible blunder, Mr. Bowers, for I give you myword I know nothing of the lady and have never set eyes upon her."
"No, but she has on YOU. I can't say," continued Mr. Bowers, withsublime naivete, "that I'd ever recognize you from her description, buta woman o' that kind don't see with her eyes like you and me, but withall her senses to onct, and a heap more that ain't senses as we know'em. The same eyes that seed down through the brush and ferns in theSummit woods, the same ears that heerd the music of the wind trailin'through the pines, don't see you with my eyes or hear you with my ears.And when she paints you, it's nat'ril for a woman with that pow'ful mindand grand idees to dip her brush into her heart's blood for warmth andcolor. Yer smilin', young man. Well, go on and smile at me, my lad, butnot at her. For you don't know her. When you know her story as I do,when you know she was made a wife afore she ever knew what it was to bea young woman, when you know that the man she married never understoodthe kind o' critter he was tied to no more than ef he'd been a steeryoked to a Morgan colt, when ye know she had children growin' up aroundher afore she had given over bein' a sort of child herself, when yeknow she worked and slaved for that man and those children about thehouse--her heart, her soul, and all her pow'ful mind bein' all the timein the woods along with the flickering leaves and the shadders,--whenye mind she couldn't get the small ways o' the ranch because she had thebig ways o' Natur' that made it,--then you'll understand her."
Impressed by the sincerity of his visitor's manner, touched by theunexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdityof an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the editor gaspedalmost hysterically,--
"But why should all this make her in love with ME?"
"Because ye are both gifted," returned Mr. Bowers, with sad butunconquerable conviction; "because ye're both, so to speak, in a lineo' idees and business that draws ye together,--to lean on each other andtrust each other ez pardners. Not that YE are ezakly her ekal," he wenton, with a return to his previous exasperating naivete, "though I'veheerd promisin' things of ye, and ye're still young, but in matterso' this kind there is allers one ez hez to be looked up to bythe other,--and gin'rally the wrong one. She looks up to you, Mr.Editor,--it's part of her po'try,--ez she looks down inter the brushand sees more than is plain to you and me. Not," he continued, with acourteously deprecating wave of the hand, "ez you hain't bin kind toher--mebbe TOO kind. For thar's the purty letter you writ her, thar'sthe perlite, easy, captivatin' way you had with her gals andthat boy--hold on!"--as the editor made a gesture of despairingrenunciation,--"I ain't sayin' you ain't right in keepin' it toyourself,--and thar's the extry money you sent her every time. Stop! sheknows it was EXTRY, for she made a p'int o' gettin' me to find out themarket price o' po'try in papers and magazines, and she reckons you'vebin payin' her four hundred per cent. above them figgers--hold on! Iain't sayin' it ain't free and liberal in you, and I'd have done thesame thing; yet SHE thinks"--
But the editor had risen hastily to his feet with flushing cheeks.
"One moment, Mr. Bowers," he said, hurriedly. "This is the most dreadfulblunder of all. The gift is not mine. It was the spontaneous offeringof another who really admired our friend's work,--a gentleman who"--Hestopped suddenly.
The sound of a familiar voice, lightly humming, was borne along thepassage; the light tread of a familiar foot was approaching. The editorturned quickly towards the open door,--so quickly that Mr. Bowers wasfain to turn also.
For a charming instant the figure of Jack Hamlin, handsome, careless,and confident, was framed in the doorway. His dark eyes, with theirhabitual scorn of his average fellow-man, swept superciliously overMr. Bowers, and rested for an instant with caressing familiarity on theeditor.
"Well, sonny, any news from the old girl at the Summit?"
"No-o," hastily stammered the editor, with a half-hysterical laugh. "No,Jack. Excuse me a moment."
"All right; busy, I see. Hasta manana."
The picture vanished, the frame was empty.
"You see," continued the editor, turning to Mr. Bowers, "there has beena mistake. I"--but he stopped suddenly at the ashen face of Mr. Bowers,still fixed in the direction of the vanished figure.
"Are you ill?"
Mr. Bowers did not reply, but slowly withdrew his eyes, and turned themheavily on the editor
. Then, drawing a longer, deeper breath, he pickedup his soft felt hat, and, moulding it into shape in his hands as ifpreparing to put it on, he moistened his dry, grayish lips, and said,gently:--
"Friend o' yours?"
"Yes," said the editor--"Jack Hamlin. Of course, you know him?"
"Yes."
Mr. Bowers here put his hat on his head, and, after a pause, turnedround slowly once or twice, as if he had forgotten it, and was stillseeking it. Finally he succeeded in finding the editor's hand, and shookit, albeit his own trembled slightly. Then he said:--
"I reckon you're right. There's bin a mistake. I see it now. Good-by.If you're ever up my way, drop in and see me." He then walked to thedoorway, passed out, and seemed to melt into the afternoon shadows ofthe hall.
He never again entered the office of the "Excelsior Magazine," neitherwas any further contribution ever received from White Violet. To apolite entreaty from the editor, addressed first to "White Violet"and then to Mrs. Delatour, there was no response. The thought of Mr.Hamlin's cynical prophecy disturbed him, but that gentleman, preoccupiedin filling some professional engagements in Sacramento, gave him nochance to acquire further explanations as to the past or the future. Theyouthful editor was at first in despair and filled with a vague remorseof some unfulfilled duty. But, to his surprise, the readers of themagazine seemed to survive their talented contributor, and the feverishlife that had been thrilled by her song, in two months had apparentlyforgotten her. Nor was her voice lifted from any alien quarter; thedomestic and foreign press that had echoed her lays seemed to respond nolonger to her utterance.
It is possible that some readers of these pages may remember a previouschronicle by the same historian wherein it was recorded that thevolatile spirit of Mr. Hamlin, slightly assisted by circumstances,passed beyond these voices at the Ranch of the Blessed Fisherman, sometwo years later. As the editor stood beside the body of his friend onthe morning of the funeral, he noticed among the flowers laid upon hisbier by loving hands a wreath of white violets. Touched and disturbedby a memory long since forgotten, he was further embarrassed, as thecortege dispersed in the Mission graveyard, by the apparition of thetall figure of Mr. James Bowers from behind a monumental column. Theeditor turned to him quickly.
"I am glad to see you here," he said, awkwardly, and he knew notwhy; then, after a pause, "I trust you can give me some news of Mrs.Delatour. I wrote to her nearly two years ago, but had no response."
"Thar's bin no Mrs. Delatour for two years," said Mr. Bowers,contemplatively stroking his beard; "and mebbe that's why. She's bin fortwo years Mrs. Bowers."
"I congratulate you," said the editor; "but I hope there still remainsa White Violet, and that, for the sake of literature, she has not givenup"--
"Mrs. Bowers," interrupted Mr. Bowers, with singular deliberation,"found that makin' po'try and tendin' to the cares of a growin'-upfamerly was irritatin' to the narves. They didn't jibe, so to speak.What Mrs. Bowers wanted--and what, po'try or no po'try, I've bin tryin'to give her--was Rest! She's bin havin' it comfor'bly up at my ranchat Mendocino, with her children and me. Yes, sir"--his eye wanderedaccidentally to the new-made grave--"you'll excuse my sayin' it to a manin your profession, but it's what most folks will find is a heap betterthan readin' or writin' or actin' po'try--and that's Rest!"