The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

“But, Lord bless you, Mr. Rand!” said Sol, “it was all in the way of business. She came to us—was fresh and new. Her chance, looking at it professionally, was as good as any amateur’s; but what with her relations here, and her bein’ known, she didn’t take. We lost money on her! It’s natural she should feel a little ugly. We all do when we get sorter kicked back onto ourselves, and find we can’t stand alone. Why, you wouldn’t believe it,” he continued, with a moist twinkle of his black eyes; “but the night I lost my little Rosey, of diphtheria in Gold Hill, the child was down on the bills for a comic song; and I had to drag Mrs. Sol on, cut up as she was, and filled up with that much of Old Bourbon to keep her nerves stiff, so she could do an old gag with me to gain time, and make up the ‘variety.’ Why, sir, when I came to the front, I was ugly! And when one of the boys in the front row sang out, ‘Don’t expose that poor child to the night air, Sol,’—meaning Mrs. Sol,—I acted ugly. No, sir, it’s human nature; and it was quite natural that Mornie, when she caught sight o’ Mrs. Sol’s face last night, should rise up and cuss us both. Lord, if she’d only acted like that! But the old lady got her quiet at last; and, as I said before, it’s all right, and we’ll pull her through. But don’t YOU thank us: it’s a little matter betwixt us and Mornie. We’ve got everything fixed, so that Mrs. Sol can stay right along. We’ll pull Mornie through, and get her away from this, and her baby too, as soon as we can. You won’t get mad if I tell you something?” said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh. “Mrs. Sol was rather down on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your brother to you; but when she found he’d run off and left YOU, you,—don’t mind my sayin’,—a ‘mere boy,’ to take what oughter be HIS place, why, she just wheeled round agin’ him. I suppose he got flustered, and couldn’t face the music. Never left a word of explanation? Well, it wasn’t exactly square, though I tell the old woman it’s human nature. He might have dropped a hint where he was goin’. Well, there, I won’t say a word more agin’ him. I know how you feel. Hush it is.”

It was the firm conviction of the simple-minded Sol that no one knew the various natural indications of human passion better than himself. Perhaps it was one of the fallacies of his profession that the expression of all human passion was limited to certain conventional signs and sounds. Consequently, when Rand colored violently, became confused, stammered, and at last turned hastily away, the good-hearted fellow instantly recognized the unfailing evidence of modesty and innocence embarrassed by recognition. As for Rand, I fear his shame was only momentary. Confirmed in the belief of his ulterior wisdom and virtue, his first embarrassment over, he was not displeased with this halfway tribute, and really believed that the time would come when Mr. Sol should eventually praise his sagacity and reservation, and acknowledge that he was something more than a mere boy. He, nevertheless, shrank from meeting Mornie that morning, and was glad that the presence of Mrs. Sol relieved him from that duty.

The day passed uneventfully. Rand busied himself in his usual avocations, and constructed a temporary shelter for himself and Sol beside the shaft, besides rudely shaping a few necessary articles of furniture for Mrs. Sol.

“It will be a little spell yet afore Mornie’s able to be moved,” suggested Sol, “and you might as well be comfortable.”

Rand sighed at this prospect, yet presently forgot himself in the good humor of his companion, whose admiration for himself he began to patronizingly admit. There was no sense of degradation in accepting the friendship of this man who had traveled so far, seen so much, and yet, as a practical man of the world, Rand felt was so inferior to himself. The absence of Miss Euphemia, who had early left the mountain, was a source of odd, half-definite relief. Indeed, when he closed his eyes to rest that night, it was with a sense that the reality of his situation was not as bad as he had feared. Once only, the figure of his brother—haggard, weary, and footsore, on his hopeless quest, wandering in lonely trails and lonelier settlements—came across his fancy; but with it came the greater fear of his return, and the pathetic figure was banished. “And, besides, he’s in Sacramento by this time, and like as not forgotten us all,” he muttered; and, twining this poppy and mandragora around his pillow, he fell asleep.

His spirits had quite returned the next morning, and once or twice he found himself singing while at work in the shaft. The fear that Ruth might return to the mountain before he could get rid of Mornie, and the slight anxiety that had grown upon him to know something of his brother’s movements, and to be able to govern them as he wished, caused him to hit upon the plan of constructing an ingenious advertisement to be published in the San Francisco journals, wherein the missing Ruth should be advised that news of his quest should be communicated to him by “a friend,” through the same medium, after an interval of two weeks. Full of this amiable intention, he returned to the surface to dinner. Here, to his momentary confusion, he met Miss Euphemia, who, in absence of Sol, was assisting Mrs. Sol in the details of the household.

If the honest frankness with which that young lady greeted him was not enough to relieve his embarrassment, he would have forgotten it in the utterly new and changed aspect she presented. Her extravagant walking-costume of the previous day was replaced by some bright calico, a little white apron, and a broad-brimmed straw-hat, which seemed to Rand, in some odd fashion, to restore her original girlish simplicity. The change was certainly not unbecoming to her. If her waist was not as tightly pinched, a la mode, there still was an honest, youthful plumpness about it; her step was freer for the absence of her high-heel boots; and even the hand she extended to Rand, if not quite so small as in her tight gloves, and a little brown from exposure, was magnetic in its strong, kindly grasp. There was perhaps a slight suggestion of the practical Mr. Sol in her wholesome presence; and Rand could not help wondering if Mrs. Sol had ever been a Gold Hill “Pet” before her marriage with Mr. Sol. The young girl noticed his curious glance.

“You never saw me in my rehearsal dress before,” she said, with a laugh. “But I’m not ‘company’ to-day, and didn’t put on my best harness to knock round in. I suppose I look dreadful.”

“I don’t think you look bad,” said Rand simply.

“Thank you,” said Euphemia, with a laugh and a courtesy. “But this isn’t getting the dinner.”

As part of that operation evidently was the taking-off of her hat, the putting-up of some thick blond locks that had escaped, and the rolling-up of her sleeves over a pair of strong, rounded arms, Rand lingered near her. All trace of the “Pet’s” previous professional coquetry was gone,—perhaps it was only replaced by a more natural one; but as she looked up, and caught sight of Rand’s interested face, she laughed again, and colored a little. Slight as was the blush, it was sufficient to kindle a sympathetic fire in Rand’s own cheeks, which was so utterly unexpected to him that he turned on his heel in confusion. “I reckon she thinks I’m soft and silly, like Ruth,” he soliloquized, and, determining not to look at her again, betook himself to a distant and contemplative pipe. In vain did Miss Euphemia address herself to the ostentatious getting of the dinner in full view of him; in vain did she bring the coffee-pot away from the fire, and nearer Rand, with the apparent intention of examining its contents in a better light; in vain, while wiping a plate, did she, absorbed in the distant prospect, walk to the verge of the mountain, and become statuesque and forgetful. The sulky young gentleman took no outward notice of her.

Mrs. Sol’s attendance upon Mornie prevented her leaving the cabin, and Rand and Miss Euphemia dined in the open air alone. The ridiculousness of keeping up a formal attitude to his solitary companion caused Rand to relax; but, to his astonishment, the “Pet” seemed to have become correspondingly distant and formal. After a few moments of discomfort, Rand, who had eaten little, arose, and “believed he would go back to work.”

“Ah, yes!” said the “Pet,” with an indifferent air, “I suppose you must. Well, good-by, Mr. Pinkney.”

Rand turned. “YOU are not going?” he asked, in some uneasiness.

“I’VE got some work to do too,” returned Miss Euphemia a little curtly.

“But,” said the practical Rand, “I thought you allowed that you were fixed to stay until to-morrow?”

But here Miss Euphemia, with rising color and slight acerbity of voice, was not aware that she was “fixed to stay” anywhere, least of all when she was in the way. More than that, she MUST say—although perhaps it made no difference, and she ought not to say it—that she was not in the habit of intruding upon gentlemen who plainly gave her to understand that her company was not desirable. She did not know why she said this—of course it could make no difference to anybody who didn’t, of course, care—but she only wanted to say that she only came here because her dear friend, her adopted mother,—and a better woman never breathed,—had come, and had asked her to stay. Of course, Mrs. Sol was an intruder herself—Mr. Sol was an intruder—they were all intruders: she only wondered that Mr. Pinkney had borne with them so long. She knew it was an awful thing to be here, taking care of a poor—poor, helpless woman; but perhaps Mr. Rand’s BROTHER might forgive them, if he couldn’t. But no matter, she would go—Mr. Sol would go—ALL would go; and then, perhaps, Mr, Rand—

She stopped breathless; she stopped with the corner of her apron against her tearful hazel eyes; she stopped with—what was more remarkable than all—Rand’s arm actually around her waist, and his astonished, alarmed face within a few inches of her own.

“Why, Miss Euphemia, Phemie, my dear girl! I never meant anything like THAT,” said Rand earnestly. “I really didn’t now! Come now!”

“You never once spoke to me when I sat down,” said Miss Euphemia, feebly endeavoring to withdraw from Rand’s grasp.

“I really didn’t! Oh, come now, look here! I didn’t! Don’t! There’s a dear—THERE!”

This last conclusive exposition was a kiss. Miss Euphemia was not quick enough to release herself from his arms. He anticipated that act a full half-second, and had dropped his own, pale and breathless.

The girl recovered herself first. “There, I declare, I’m forgetting Mrs. Sol’s coffee!” she exclaimed hastily, and, snatching up the coffee-pot, disappeared. When she returned, Rand was gone. Miss Euphemia busied herself demurely in clearing up the dishes, with the tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her. But no Rand appeared. Presently she began to laugh quietly to herself. This occurred several times during her occupation, which was somewhat prolonged. The result of this meditative hilarity was summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked slowly back to the cabin: “I do believe I’m the first woman that that boy ever kissed.”

Miss Euphemia staid that day and the next, and Rand forgot his embarrassment. By what means I know not, Miss Euphemia managed to restore Rand’s confidence in himself and in her, and in a little ramble on the mountain-side got him to relate, albeit somewhat reluctantly, the particulars of his rescue of Mornie from her dangerous position on the broken trail.

“And, if you hadn’t got there as soon as you did, she’d have fallen?” asked the “Pet.”

“I reckon,” returned Rand gloomily: “she was sorter dazed and crazed like.”

“And you saved her life?”

“I suppose so, if you put it that way,” said Rand sulkily.

“But how did you get her up the mountain again?”

“Oh! I got her up,” returned Rand moodily.

“But how? Really, Mr. Rand, you don’t know how interesting this is. It’s as good as a play,” said the “Pet,” with a little excited laugh.

“Oh, I carried her up!”

“In your arms?”

“Y-e-e-s.”

Miss Euphemia paused, and bit off the stalk of a flower, made a wry face, and threw it away from her in disgust.

Then she dug a few tiny holes in the earth with her parasol, and buried bits of the flower-stalk in them, as if they had been tender memories. “I suppose you knew Mornie very well?” she asked.

“I used to run across her in the woods,” responded Rand shortly, “a year ago. I didn’t know her so well then as—” He stopped.

“As what? As NOW?” asked the “Pet” abruptly. Rand, who was coloring over his narrow escape from a topic which a delicate kindness of Sol had excluded from their intercourse on the mountain, stammered, “as YOU do, I meant.”

The “Pet” tossed her head a little. “Oh! I don’t know her at all—except through Sol.”

Rand stared hard at this. The “Pet,” who was looking at him intently, said, “Show me the place where you saw Mornie clinging that night.”

“It’s dangerous,” suggested Rand.

“You mean I’d be afraid! Try me! I don’t believe she was SO dreadfully frightened!”

“Why?” asked Rand, in astonishment.

“Oh—because—”

Rand sat down in vague wonderment.

“Show it to me,” continued the “Pet,” “or—I’ll find it ALONE!”

Thus challenged, he rose, and, after a few moments’ climbing, stood with her upon the trail. “You see that thorn-bush where the rock has fallen away. It was just there. It is not safe to go farther. No, really! Miss Euphemia! Please don’t! It’s almost certain death!”

But the giddy girl had darted past him, and, face to the wall of the cliff, was creeping along the dangerous path. Rand followed mechanically. Once or twice the trail crumbled beneath her feet; but she clung to a projecting root of chaparral, and laughed. She had almost reached her elected goal, when, slipping, the treacherous chaparral she clung to yielded in her grasp, and Rand, with a cry, sprung forward.

But the next instant she quickly transferred her hold to a cleft in the cliff, and was safe. Not so her companion. The soil beneath him, loosened by the impulse of his spring, slipped away: he was falling with it, when she caught him sharply with her disengaged hand, and together they scrambled to a more secure footing.

“I could have reached it alone,” said the “Pet,” “if you’d left me alone.”