Bret Harte
Under the Redwoods
“There was a solid body in that paper,” said Paul quietly; “a parallelogram exactly nine inches long and three wide.”
“I say! you’re wonderfully clever, don’t you know,” said the stranger, with unaffected wonder. “I see it all—a brick.”
Paul smiled gently and shook his head. “That is the hasty inference of an inexperienced observer. You will observe at the point of impact of your wheel the parallel crease is CURVED, as from the yielding of the resisting substances, and not BROKEN, as it would be by the crumbling of a brick.”
“I say, you’re awfully detective, don’t you know! just like that fellow—what’s his name?” said the stranger admiringly.
The words recalled Paul to himself. Why was he acting like a detective? and what was he seeking to discover? Nevertheless, he felt impelled to continue. “And that queer old chap whom you met—why didn’t he help you?”
“Because I passed him before I ran into the—the parallelogram, and I suppose he didn’t know what happened behind him?”
“Did he have anything in his hand?”
“Can’t say.”
“And you say you were unconscious afterwards?”
“Yes!”
“Long enough for the culprit to remove the principal evidence of his crime?”
“Come! I say, really you are—you know you are!”
“Have you any secret enemy?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know Mr. Bunker, the man who owns this vast estate?”
“Not at all. I’m from Upper Tooting.”
“Good afternoon,” said Paul abruptly, and turned away.
It struck him afterwards that his action might have seemed uncivil, and even inhuman, to the bruised cyclist, who could hardly walk. But it was getting late, and he was still far from the Hall, which, oddly enough, seemed to be no longer visible from the road. He wandered on for some time, half convinced that he had passed the lodge gates, yet hoping to find some other entrance to the domain. Dusk was falling; the rounded outlines of the park trees beyond the wall were solid masses of shadow. The full moon, presently rising, restored them again to symmetry, and at last he, to his relief, came upon the massive gateway. Two lions ramped in stone on the side pillars. He thought it strange that he had not noticed the gateway on his previous entrance, but he remembered that he was fully preoccupied with the advancing figure of his uncle. In a few minutes the Hall itself appeared, and here again he was surprised that he had overlooked before its noble proportions and picturesque outline. Its broad terraces, dazzlingly white in the moonlight; its long line of mullioned windows, suffused with a warm red glow from within, made it look like part of a wintry landscape—and suggested a Christmas card. The venerable ivy that hid the ravages time had made in its walls looked like black carving. His heart swelled with strange emotions as he gazed at his ancestral hall. How many of his blood had lived and died there; how many had gone forth from that great porch to distant lands! He tried to think of his father—a little child—peeping between the balustrades of that terrace. He tried to think of it, and perhaps would have succeeded had it not occurred to him that it was a known fact that his uncle had bought the estate and house of an impoverished nobleman only the year before. Yet—he could not tell why—he seemed to feel higher and nobler for that trial.
The terrace was deserted, and so quiet that as he ascended to it his footsteps seemed to echo from the walls. When he reached the portals, the great oaken door swung noiselessly on its hinges—opened by some unseen but waiting servitor—and admitted him to a lofty hall, dark with hangings and family portraits, but warmed by a red carpet the whole length of its stone floor. For a moment he waited for the servant to show him to the drawing-room or his uncle’s study. But no one appeared. Believing this to be a part of the characteristic simplicity of the Quaker household, he boldly entered the first door, and found himself in a brilliantly lit and perfectly empty drawing-room. The same experience met him with the other rooms on that floor—the dining-room displaying an already set, exquisitely furnished and decorated table, with chairs for twenty guests! He mechanically ascended the wide oaken staircase that led to the corridor of bedrooms above a central salon. Here he found only the same solitude. Bedroom doors yielded to his touch, only to show the same brilliantly lit vacancy. He presently came upon one room which seemed to give unmistakable signs of HIS OWN occupancy. Surely there stood his own dressing-case on the table! and his own evening clothes carefully laid out on another, as if fresh from a valet’s hands. He stepped hastily into the corridor—there was no one there; he rang the bell—there was no response! But he noticed that there was a jug of hot water in his basin, and he began dressing mechanically.
There was little doubt that he was in a haunted house, but this did not particularly disturb him. Indeed, he found himself wondering if it could be logically called a haunted house—unless he himself was haunting it, for there seemed to be no other there. Perhaps the apparitions would come later, when he was dressed. Clearly it was not his uncle’s house—and yet, as he had never been inside his uncle’s house, he reflected that he ought not to be positive.
He finished dressing and sat down in an armchair with a kind of thoughtful expectancy. But presently his curiosity became impatient of the silence and mystery, and he ventured once more to explore the house. Opening his bedroom door, he found himself again upon the deserted corridor, but this time he could distinctly hear a buzz of voices from the drawing-room below. Assured that he was near a solution of the mystery, he rapidly descended the broad staircase and made his way to the open door of the drawing-room. But although the sound of voices increased as he advanced, when he entered the room, to his utter astonishment, it was as empty as before.
Yet, in spite of his bewilderment and confusion, he was able to follow one of the voices, which, in its peculiar distinctness and half-perfunctory tone, he concluded must belong to the host of the invisible assembly.
“Ah,” said the voice, greeting some unseen visitor, “so glad you have come. Afraid your engagements just now would keep you away.” Then the voice dropped to a lower and more confidential tone. “You must take down Lady Dartman, but you will have Miss Morecamp—a clever girl—on the other side of you. Ah, Sir George! So good of you to come. All well at the Priory? So glad to hear it.” (Lower and more confidentially.) “You know Mrs. Monkston. You’ll sit by her. A little cut up by her husband losing his seat. Try to amuse her.”
Emboldened by desperation, Paul turned in the direction of the voice. “I am Paul Bunker,” he said hesitatingly. “I’m afraid you’ll think me intrusive, but I was looking for my uncle, and”—
“Intrusive, my dear boy! The son of my near neighbor in the country intrusive? Really, now, I like that! Grace!” (the voice turned in another direction) “here is the American nephew of our neighbor Bunker at Widdlestone, who thinks he is ‘a stranger.’”
“We all knew of your expected arrival at Widdlestone—it was so good of you to waive ceremony and join us,” said a well-bred feminine voice, which Paul at once assumed to belong to the hostess. “But I must find some one for your dinner partner. Mary” (here her voice was likewise turned away), “this is Mr. Bunker, the nephew of an old friend and neighbor in Upshire;” (the voice again turned to him), “you will take Miss Morecamp in. My dear” (once again averted), “I must find some one else to console poor dear Lord Billingtree with.” Here the hostess’s voice was drowned by fresh arrivals.
Bewildered and confused as he was, standing in this empty desert of a drawing-room, yet encompassed on every side by human voices, so marvelous was the power of suggestion, he seemed to almost feel the impact of the invisible crowd. He was trying desperately to realize his situation when a singularly fascinating voice at his elbow unexpectedly assisted him. It was evidently his dinner partner.
“I suppose you must be tired after your journey. When did you arrive?”
“Only a few hours ago,” said Paul.
“And I dare say you haven’t slept since you arrived. One doesn’t on the passage, you know; the twenty hours pass so quickly, and the experience is so exciting—to US at least. But I suppose as an American you are used to it.”
Paul gasped. He had passively accepted the bodiless conversation, because it was at least intelligible! But NOW! Was he going mad?
She evidently noticed his silence. “Never mind,” she continued, “you can tell me all about it at dinner. Do you know I always think that this sort of thing—what we’re doing now,—this ridiculous formality of reception,—which I suppose is after all only a concession to our English force of habit,—is absurd! We ought to pass, as it were, directly from our houses to the dinner-table. It saves time.”
“Yes—no—that is—I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” stammered Paul.
There was a slight pout in her voice as she replied: “No matter now—we must follow them—for our host is moving off with Lady Billingtree, and it’s our turn now.”
So great was the illusion that he found himself mechanically offering his arm as he moved through the empty room towards the door. Then he descended the staircase without another word, preceded, however, by the sound of his host’s voice. Following this as a blind man might, he entered the dining-room, which to his discomfiture was as empty as the salon above. Still following the host’s voice, he dropped into a chair before the empty table, wondering what variation of the Barmecide feast was in store for him. Yet the hum of voices from the vacant chairs around the board so strongly impressed him that he could almost believe that he was actually at dinner.
“Are you seated?” asked the charming voice at his side.
“Yes,” a little wonderingly, as his was the only seat visibly occupied.
“I am so glad that this silly ceremony is over. By the way, where are you?”
Paul would have liked to answer, “Lord only knows!” but he reflected that it might not sound polite. “Where am I?” he feebly repeated.
“Yes; where are you dining?”
It seemed a cool question under the circumstances, but he answered promptly,—
“With you.”
“Of course,” said the charming voice; “but where are you eating your dinner?”
Considering that he was not eating anything, Paul thought this cooler still. But he answered briefly, “In Upshire.”
“Oh! At your uncle’s?”
“No,” said Paul bluntly; “in the next house.”
“Why, that’s Sir William’s—our host’s—and he and his family are here in London. You are joking.”
“Listen!” said Paul desperately. Then in a voice unconsciously lowered he hurriedly told her where he was—how he came there—the empty house—the viewless company! To his surprise the only response was a musical little laugh. But the next moment her voice rose higher with an unmistakable concern in it, apparently addressing their invisible host.
“Oh, Sir William, only think how dreadful. Here’s poor Mr. Bunker, alone in an empty house, which he has mistaken for his uncle’s—and without any dinner!”
“Really; dear, dear! How provoking! But how does he happen to be WITH US? James, how is this?”
“If you please, Sir William,” said a servant’s respectful voice, “Widdlestone is in the circuit and is switched on with the others. We heard that a gentleman’s luggage had arrived at Widdlestone, and we telegraphed for the rooms to be made ready, thinking we’d have her ladyship’s orders later.”
A single gleam of intelligence flashed upon Paul. His luggage—yes, had been sent from the station to the wrong house, and he had unwittingly followed. But these voices! whence did they come? And where was the actual dinner at which his host was presiding? It clearly was not at this empty table.
“See that he has everything he wants at once,” said Sir William; “there must be some one there.” Then his voice turned in the direction of Paul again, and he said laughingly, “Possess your soul and appetite in patience for a moment, Mr. Bunker; you will be only a course behind us. But we are lucky in having your company—even at your own discomfort.”
Still more bewildered, Paul turned to his invisible partner. “May I ask where YOU are dining?”
“Certainly; at home in Curzon Street,” returned the pretty voice. “It was raining so, I did not go out.”
“And—Lord Billington?” faltered Paul.
“Oh, he’s in Scotland—at his own place.”
“Then, in fact, nobody is dining here at all,” said Paul desperately.
There was a slight pause, and then the voice responded, with a touch of startled suggestion in it: “Good heavens, Mr. Bunker! Is it possible you don’t know we’re dining by telephone?”
“By what?”
“Telephone. Yes. We’re a telephonic dinner-party. We are dining in our own houses; but, being all friends, we’re switched on to each other, and converse exactly as we would at table. It saves a great trouble and expense, for any one of us can give the party, and the poorest can equal the most extravagant. People who are obliged to diet can partake of their own slops at home, and yet mingle with the gourmets without awkwardness or the necessity of apology. We are spared the spectacle, at least, of those who eat and drink too much. We can switch off a bore at once. We can retire when we are fatigued, without leaving a blank space before the others. And all this without saying anything of the higher spiritual and intellectual effect—freed from material grossness of appetite and show—which the dinner party thus attains. But you are surely joking! You, an American, and not know it! Why, it comes from Boston. Haven’t you read that book, ‘Jumping a Century’? It’s by an American.”
A strange illumination came upon Paul. Where had he heard something like this before? But at the same moment his thoughts were diverted by the material entrance of a footman, bearing a silver salver with his dinner. It was part of his singular experience that the visible entrance of this real, commonplace mortal—the only one he had seen—in the midst of this voiceless solitude was distinctly unreal, and had all the effect of an apparition. He distrusted it and the dishes before him. But his lively partner’s voice was now addressing an unseen occupant of the next chair. Had she got tired of his ignorance, or was it feminine tact to enable him to eat something? He accepted the latter hypothesis, and tried to eat. But he felt himself following the fascinating voice in all the charm of its youthful and spiritual inflections. Taking advantage of its momentary silence, he said gently,—
“I confess my ignorance, and am willing to admit all you claim for this wonderful invention. But do you think it compensates for the loss of the individual person? Take my own case—if you will not think me personal. I have never had the pleasure of seeing you; do you believe that I am content with only that suggestion of your personality which the satisfaction of hearing your voice affords me?”
There was a pause, and then a very mischievous ring in the voice that replied: “It certainly is a personal question, and it is another blessing of this invention that you’ll never know whether I am blushing or not; but I forgive you, for I never before spoke to any one I had never seen—and I suppose it’s confusion. But do you really think you would know me—the REAL one—any better? It is the real person who thinks and speaks, not the outward semblance that we see, which very often unfairly either attracts or repels us? We can always SHOW ourselves at our best, but we must, at last, reveal our true colors through our thoughts and speech. Isn’t it better to begin with the real thing first?”
“I hope, at least, to have the privilege of judging by myself,” said Paul gallantly. “You will not be so cruel as not to let me see you elsewhere, otherwise I shall feel as if I were in some dream, and will certainly be opposed to your preference for realities.”
“I am not certain if the dream would not be more interesting to you,” said the voice laughingly. “But I think your hostess is already saying ‘good-by.’ You know everybody goes at once at this kind of party; the ladies don’t retire first, and the gentlemen join them afterwards. In another moment we’ll ALL be switched off; but Sir William wants me to tell you that his coachman will drive you to your uncle’s, unless you prefer to try and make yourself comfortable for the night here. Good-by!”
The voices around him seemed to grow fainter, and then utterly cease. The lights suddenly leaped up, went out, and left him in complete darkness. He attempted to rise, but in doing so overset the dishes before him, which slid to the floor. A cold air seemed to blow across his feet. The “good-by” was still ringing in his ears as he straightened himself to find he was in his railway carriage, whose door had just been opened for a young lady who was entering the compartment from a wayside station. “Good-by,” she repeated to the friend who was seeing her off. The Writer of Stories hurriedly straightened himself, gathered up the magazines and papers that had fallen from his lap, and glanced at the station walls. The old illustrations glanced back at him! He looked at his watch; he had been asleep just ten minutes!
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO
It is but just to the respectable memory of San Francisco that in these vagrant recollections I should deprecate at once any suggestion that the levity of my title described its dominant tone at any period of my early experiences. On the contrary, it was a singular fact that while the rest of California was swayed by an easy, careless unconventionalism, or swept over by waves of emotion and sentiment, San Francisco preserved an intensely material and practical attitude, and even a certain austere morality. I do not, of course, allude to the brief days of ‘49, when it was a straggling beach of huts and stranded hulks, but to the earlier stages of its development into the metropolis of California. Its first tottering steps in that direction were marked by a distinct gravity and decorum. Even during the period when the revolver settled small private difficulties, and Vigilance Committees adjudicated larger public ones, an unmistakable seriousness and respectability was the ruling sign of its governing class. It was not improbable that under the reign of the Committee the lawless and vicious class were more appalled by the moral spectacle of several thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men in embattled procession than by mere force of arms, and one “suspect”—a prize-fighter—is known to have committed suicide in his cell after confrontation with his grave and passionless shopkeeping judges. Even that peculiar quality of Californian humor which was apt to mitigate the extravagances of the revolver and the uncertainties of poker had no place in the decorous and responsible utterance of San Francisco. The press was sober, materialistic, practical—when it was not severely admonitory of existing evil; the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were considered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by heavy articles on the revenues of the State and inducements to the investment of capital. Local news was under an implied censorship which suppressed anything that might tend to discourage timid or cautious capital. Episodes of romantic lawlessness or pathetic incidents of mining life were carefully edited—with the comment that these things belonged to the past, and that life and property were now “as safe in San Francisco as in New York or London.”
Wonder-loving visitors in quest of scenes characteristic of the civilization were coldly snubbed with this assurance. Fires, floods, and even seismic convulsions were subjected to a like grimly materialistic optimism. I have a vivid recollection of a ponderous editorial on one of the severer earthquakes, in which it was asserted that only the UNEXPECTEDNESS of the onset prevented San Francisco from meeting it in a way that would be deterrent of all future attacks. The unconsciousness of the humor was only equaled by the gravity with which it was received by the whole business community. Strangely enough, this grave materialism flourished side by side with—and was even sustained by—a narrow religious strictness more characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers of a past century than the Western pioneers of the present. San Francisco was early a city of churches and church organizations to which the leading men and merchants belonged. The lax Sundays of the dying Spanish race seemed only to provoke a revival of the rigors of the Puritan Sabbath. With the Spaniard and his Sunday afternoon bullfight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco pulpit thundered against Sunday picnics. One of the popular preachers, declaiming upon the practice of Sunday dinner-giving, averred that when he saw a guest in his best Sunday clothes standing shamelessly upon the doorstep of his host, he felt like seizing him by the shoulder and dragging him from that threshold of perdition.
Against the actual heathen the feeling was even stronger, and reached its climax one Sunday when a Chinaman was stoned to death by a crowd of children returning from Sunday-school. I am offering these examples with no ethical purpose, but merely to indicate a singular contradictory condition which I do not think writers of early Californian history have fairly recorded. It is not my province to suggest any theory for these appalling exceptions to the usual good-humored lawlessness and extravagance of the rest of the State. They may have been essential agencies to the growth and evolution of the city. They were undoubtedly sincere. The impressions I propose to give of certain scenes and incidents of my early experience must, therefore, be taken as purely personal and Bohemian, and their selection as equally individual and vagrant. I am writing of what interested me at the time, though not perhaps of what was more generally characteristic of San Francisco.
I had been there a week—an idle week, spent in listless outlook for employment; a full week in my eager absorption of the strange life around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes and incidents of those days, which start out of my memory to-day as freshly as the day they impressed me.
One of these recollections is of “steamer night,” as it was called,—the night of “steamer day,”—preceding the departure of the mail steamship with the mails for “home.” Indeed, at that time San Francisco may be said to have lived from steamer day to steamer day; bills were made due on that day, interest computed to that period, and accounts settled. The next day was the turning of a new leaf: another essay to fortune, another inspiration of energy. So recognized was the fact that even ordinary changes of condition, social and domestic, were put aside until AFTER steamer day. “I’ll see what I can do after next steamer day” was the common cautious or hopeful formula. It was the “Saturday night” of many a wage-earner—and to him a night of festivity. The thoroughfares were animated and crowded; the saloons and theatres full. I can recall myself at such times wandering along the City Front, as the business part of San Francisco was then known. Here the lights were burning all night, the first streaks of dawn finding the merchants still at their counting-house desks. I remember the dim lines of warehouses lining the insecure wharves of rotten piles, half filled in—that had ceased to be wharves, but had not yet become streets,—their treacherous yawning depths, with the uncertain gleam of tarlike mud below, at times still vocal with the lap and gurgle of the tide. I remember the weird stories of disappearing men found afterward imbedded in the ooze in which they had fallen and gasped their life away. I remember the two or three ships, still left standing where they were beached a year or two before, built in between warehouses, their bows projecting into the roadway. There was the dignity of the sea and its boundless freedom in their beautiful curves, which the abutting houses could not destroy, and even something of the sea’s loneliness in the far-spaced ports and cabin windows lit up by the lamps of the prosaic landsmen who plied their trades behind them. One of these ships, transformed into a hotel, retained its name, the Niantic, and part of its characteristic interior unchanged. I remember these ships’ old tenants—the rats—who had increased and multiplied to such an extent that at night they fearlessly crossed the wayfarer’s path at every turn, and even invaded the gilded saloons of Montgomery Street. In the Niantic their pit-a-pat was met on every staircase, and it was said that sometimes in an excess of sociability they accompanied the traveler to his room. In the early “cloth-and-papered” houses—so called because the ceilings were not plastered, but simply covered by stretched and whitewashed cloth—their scamperings were plainly indicated in zigzag movements of the sagging cloth, or they became actually visible by finally dropping through the holes they had worn in it! I remember the house whose foundations were made of boxes of plug tobacco—part of a jettisoned cargo—used instead of more expensive lumber; and the adjacent warehouse where the trunks of the early and forgotten “forty-niners” were stored, and—never claimed by their dead or missing owners—were finally sold at auction. I remember the strong breath of the sea over all, and the constant onset of the trade winds which helped to disinfect the deposit of dirt and grime, decay and wreckage, which were stirred up in the later evolutions of the city.
Or I recall, with the same sense of youthful satisfaction and unabated wonder, my wanderings through the Spanish Quarter, where three centuries of quaint customs, speech, and dress were still preserved; where the proverbs of Sancho Panza were still spoken in the language of Cervantes, and the high-flown illusions of the La Manchian knight still a part of the Spanish Californian hidalgo’s dream. I recall the more modern “Greaser,” or Mexican—his index finger steeped in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women, and their caressing intonations—the one musical utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had a boy’s digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious breath, did not affect me.
Perhaps from my Puritan training I experienced a more fearful joy in the gambling saloons. They were the largest and most comfortable, even as they were the most expensively decorated rooms in San Francisco. Here again the gravity and decorum which I have already alluded to were present at that earlier period—though perhaps from concentration of another kind. People staked and lost their last dollar with a calm solemnity and a resignation that was almost Christian. The oaths, exclamations, and feverish interruptions which often characterized more dignified assemblies were absent here. There was no room for the lesser vices; there was little or no drunkenness; the gaudily dressed and painted women who presided over the wheels of fortune or performed on the harp and piano attracted no attention from those ascetic players. The man who had won ten thousand dollars and the man who had lost everything rose from the table with equal silence and imperturbability. I never witnessed any tragic sequel to those losses; I never heard of any suicide on account of them. Neither can I recall any quarrel or murder directly attributable to this kind of gambling. It must be remembered that these public games were chiefly rouge et noir, monte, faro, or roulette, in which the antagonist was Fate, Chance, Method, or the impersonal “bank,” which was supposed to represent them all; there was no individual opposition or rivalry; nobody challenged the decision of the “croupier,” or dealer.
I remember a conversation at the door of one saloon which was as characteristic for its brevity as it was a type of the prevailing stoicism. “Hello!” said a departing miner, as he recognized a brother miner coming in, “when did you come down?” “This morning,” was the reply. “Made a strike on the bar?” suggested the first speaker. “You bet!” said the other, and passed in. I chanced an hour later to be at the same place as they met again—their relative positions changed. “Hello! Whar now?” said the incomer. “Back to the bar.” “Cleaned out?” “You bet!” Not a word more explained a common situation.
My first youthful experience at those tables was an accidental one. I was watching roulette one evening, intensely absorbed in the mere movement of the players. Either they were so preoccupied with the game, or I was really older looking than my actual years, but a bystander laid his hand familiarly on my shoulder, and said, as to an ordinary habitue, “Ef you’re not chippin’ in yourself, pardner, s’pose you give ME a show.” Now I honestly believe that up to that moment I had no intention, nor even a desire, to try my own fortune. But in the embarrassment of the sudden address I put my hand in my pocket, drew out a coin, and laid it, with an attempt at carelessness, but a vivid consciousness that I was blushing, upon a vacant number. To my horror I saw that I had put down a large coin—the bulk of my possessions! I did not flinch, however; I think any boy who reads this will understand my feeling; it was not only my coin but my manhood at stake. I gazed with a miserable show of indifference at the players, at the chandelier—anywhere but at the dreadful ball spinning round the wheel. There was a pause; the game was declared, the rake rattled up and down, but still I did not look at the table. Indeed, in my inexperience of the game and my embarrassment, I doubt if I should have known if I had won or not. I had made up my mind that I should lose, but I must do so like a man, and, above all, without giving the least suspicion that I was a greenhorn. I even affected to be listening to the music. The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I did not move. At last the man I had displaced touched me on the arm and whispered, “Better make a straddle and divide your stake this time.” I did not understand him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered! Where my coin had lain a moment before was a glittering heap of gold.
