by Bret Harte
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL
I.
As Mr. Herbert Bly glanced for the first time at the house which was tobe his future abode in San Francisco, he was somewhat startled. Inthat early period of feverish civic improvement the street before ithad been repeatedly graded and lowered until the dwelling--originally apioneer suburban villa perched upon a slope of Telegraph Hill--nowstood sixty feet above the sidewalk, superposed like some Swiss chaleton successive galleries built in the sand-hill, and connected by ahalf-dozen distinct zigzag flights of wooden staircase. Stimulated,however, by the thought that the view from the top would be a fine one,and that existence there would have all the quaint originality ofRobinson Crusoe's tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheerfully to mount thesteps. It should be premised that, although a recently appointed clerkin a large banking house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful andimaginative, and regarded the ascent as part of that "Excelsior"climbing pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy function ofambitious youth.
Reaching at last the level of the veranda, he turned to the view. Thedistant wooded shore of Contra Costa, the tossing white-caps anddancing sails of the bay between, and the foreground at his feet ofwharves and piers, with their reed-like jungles of masts and cordage,made up a bright, if somewhat material, picture. To his right rose thecrest of the hill, historic and memorable as the site of the oldsemaphoric telegraph, the tossing of whose gaunt arms formerly thrilledthe citizens with tidings from the sea. Turning to the house, herecognized the prevailing style of light cottage architecture, althoughincongruously confined to narrow building plots and the civicregularity of a precise street frontage. Thus a dozen other villas,formerly scattered over the slope, had been laboriously displaced andmoved to the rigorous parade line drawn by the street surveyor, nomatter how irregular and independent their design and structure.Happily, the few scrub-oaks and low bushes which formed the scantvegetation of this vast sand dune offered no obstacle and suggested noincongruity. Beside the house before which Mr. Bly now stood, aprolific Madeira vine, quickened by the six months' sunshine, had alonesurvived the displacement of its foundations, and in its untrimmedluxuriance half hid the upper veranda from his view.
Still glowing with his exertion, the young man rang the bell and wasadmitted into a fair-sized drawing-room, whose tasteful andwell-arranged furniture at once prepossessed him. An open piano, asheet of music carelessly left on the stool, a novel lying facedownwards on the table beside a skein of silk, and the distant rustleof a vanished skirt through an inner door, gave a suggestion of refineddomesticity to the room that touched the fancy of the homeless andnomadic Bly. He was still enjoying, in half embarrassment, that vagueand indescribable atmosphere of a refined woman's habitual presence,when the door opened and the mistress of the house formally presentedherself.
She was a faded but still handsome woman. Yet she wore that peculiarlong, limp, formless house-shawl which in certain phases of Anglo-Saxonspinster and widowhood assumes the functions of the recluse's veil andannounces the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resignedindifference to external feminine contour. The most audaciousmasculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless void in whichthe flatness of asceticism or the heavings of passion might alike lieburied. She had also in some mysterious way imported into the freshand pleasant room a certain bombaziny shadow of the past, and asuggestion of that appalling reminiscence known as "better days."Though why it should be always represented by ashen memories, or whybetter days in the past should be supposed to fix their fitting symbolin depression in the present, Mr. Bly was too young and too preoccupiedat the moment to determine. He only knew that he was a littlefrightened of her, and fixed his gaze with a hopeless fascination on aletter which she somewhat portentously carried under the shawl, andwhich seemed already to have yellowed in its arctic shade.
"Mr. Carstone has written to me that you would call," said Mrs. Brookswith languid formality. "Mr. Carstone was a valued friend of my latehusband, and I suppose has told you the circumstances--the onlycircumstances--which admit of my entertaining his proposition of takinganybody, even temporarily, under my roof. The absence of my dear sonfor six months at Portland, Oregon, enables me to place his room at thedisposal of Mr. Carstone's young protege, who, Mr. Carstone tells me,and I have every reason to believe, is, if perhaps not so seriouslyinclined nor yet a church communicant, still of a character andreputation not unworthy to follow my dear Tappington in our littlefamily circle as he has at his desk in the bank."
The sensitive Bly, struggling painfully out of an abstraction as to howhe was ever to offer the weekly rent of his lodgings to such a remoteand respectable person, and also somewhat embarrassed at being appealedto in the third person, here started and bowed.
"The name of Bly is not unfamiliar to me," continued Mrs. Brooks,pointing to a chair and sinking resignedly into another, where herbaleful shawl at once assumed the appearance of a dust-cover; "some ofmy dearest friends were intimate with the Blys of Philadelphia. Theywere a branch of the Maryland Blys of the eastern shore, of whom myUncle James married. Perhaps you are distantly related?"
Mrs. Brooks was perfectly aware that her visitor was of unknown Westernorigin, and a poor but clever protege of the rich banker; but she wasone of a certain class of American women who, in the midst of a fiercedemocracy, are more or less cat-like conservators of family pride andlineage, and more or less felinely inconsistent and treacherous torepublican principles. Bly, who had just settled in his mind to sendher the rent anonymously--as a weekly valentine--recovered himself andhis spirits in his usual boyish fashion.
"I am afraid, Mrs. Brooks," he said gayly, "I cannot lay claim to anydistinguished relationship, even to that 'Nelly Bly' who, you remember,'winked her eye when she went to sleep.'" He stopped in consternation.The terrible conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from apopular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remembered by a ladyas refined as his hostess, or even known to her superior son. Theconviction was intensified by Mrs. Brooks rising with a smileless face,slightly shedding the possible vulgarity with a shake of her shawl, andremarking that she would show him her son's room, led the way upstairsto the apartment recently vacated by the perfect Tappington.
Preceded by the same distant flutter of unseen skirts in the passagewhich he had first noticed on entering the drawing-room, and whichevidently did not proceed from his companion, whose self-composedcerements would have repressed any such indecorous agitation, Mr. Blystepped timidly into the room. It was a very pretty apartment,suggesting the same touches of tasteful refinement in its furniture andappointments, and withal so feminine in its neatness and regularity,that, conscious of his frontier habits and experience, he felt at oncerepulsively incongruous. "I cannot expect, Mr. Bly," said Mrs. Brooksresignedly, "that you can share my son's extreme sensitiveness todisorder and irregularity; but I must beg you to avoid as much aspossible disturbing the arrangement of the book-shelves, which, youobserve, comprise his books of serious reference, the Biblicalcommentaries, and the sermons which were his habitual study. I mustbeg you to exercise the same care in reference to the valuableofferings from his Sabbath-school scholars which are upon the mantel.The embroidered book-marker, the gift of the young ladies of hisBible-class in Dr. Stout's church, is also, you perceive, kept forornament and affectionate remembrance. The harmonium--even if you arenot yourself given to sacred song--I trust you will not find in yourway, nor object to my daughter continuing her practice during yourdaily absence. Thank you. The door you are looking at leads by aflight of steps to the side street."
"A very convenient arrangement," said Bly hopefully, who saw a chancefor an occasional unostentatious escape from a too protractedcontemplation of Tappington's perfections. "I mean," he addedhurriedly, "to avoid disturbing you at night."
"I believe my son had neither the necessity nor desire to use it forthat purpose," returned Mrs. Brooks severely; "although he found itsometimes a convenient short cut to church on Sabbath when he w
as late."
Bly, who in his boyish sensitiveness to external impressions had bythis time concluded that a life divided between the past perfections ofTappington and the present renunciations of Mrs. Brooks would beintolerable, and was again abstractedly inventing some delicate excusefor withdrawing without committing himself further, was here suddenlyattracted by a repetition of the rustling of the unseen skirt. Thistime it was nearer, and this time it seemed to strike even Mrs.Brooks's remote preoccupation. "My daughter, who is deeply devoted toher brother," she said, slightly raising her voice, "will take uponherself the care of looking after Tappington's precious mementoes, andspare you the trouble. Cherry, dear! this way. This is the younggentleman spoken of by Mr. Carstone, your papa's friend. My daughterCherubina, Mr.