The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

“Thank Heaven, we’re saved!” said Rand gravely.

“AND WITHOUT A ROPE,” said Miss Euphemia significantly.

Rand did not understand her. But, as they slowly returned to the summit, he stammered out the always difficult thanks of a man who has been physically helped by one of the weaker sex. Miss Euphemia was quick to see her error.

“I might have made you lose your footing by catching at you,” she said meekly. “But I was so frightened for you, and could not help it.”

The superior animal, thoroughly bamboozled, thereupon complimented her on her dexterity.

“Oh, that’s nothing!” she said, with a sigh. “I used to do the flying-trapeze business with papa when I was a child, and I’ve not forgotten it.” With this and other confidences of her early life, in which Rand betrayed considerable interest, they beguiled the tedious ascent. “I ought to have made you carry me up,” said the lady, with a little laugh, when they reached the summit; “but you haven’t known me as long as you have Mornie, have you?” With this mysterious speech she bade Rand “good-night,” and hurried off to the cabin.

And so a week passed by,—the week so dreaded by Rand, yet passed so pleasantly, that at times it seemed as if that dread were only a trick of his fancy, or as if the circumstances that surrounded him were different from what he believed them to be. On the seventh day the doctor had staid longer than usual; and Rand, who had been sitting with Euphemia on the ledge by the shaft, watching the sunset, had barely time to withdraw his hand from hers, as Mrs. Sol, a trifle pale and wearied-looking, approached him.

“I don’t like to trouble you,” she said,—indeed, they had seldom troubled him with the details of Mornie’s convalescence, or even her needs and requirements,—“but the doctor is alarmed about Mornie, and she has asked to see you. I think you’d better go in and speak to her. You know,” continued Mrs. Sol delicately, “you haven’t been in there since the night she was taken sick, and maybe a new face might do her good.”

The guilty blood flew to Rand’s face as he stammered, “I thought I’d be in the way. I didn’t believe she cared much to see me. Is she worse?”

“The doctor is looking very anxious,” said Mrs. Sol simply.

The blood returned from Rand’s face, and settled around his heart. He turned very pale. He had consoled himself always for his complicity in Ruth’s absence, that he was taking good care of Mornie, or—what is considered by most selfish natures an equivalent—permitting or encouraging some one else to “take good care of her;” but here was a contingency utterly unforeseen. It did not occur to him that this “taking good care” of her could result in anything but a perfect solution of her troubles, or that there could be any future to her condition but one of recovery. But what if she should die? A sudden and helpless sense of his responsibility to Ruth, to HER, brought him trembling to his feet.

He hurried to the cabin, where Mrs. Sol left him with a word of caution: “You’ll find her changed and quiet,—very quiet. If I was you, I wouldn’t say anything to bring back her old self.”

The change which Rand saw was so great, the face that was turned to him so quiet, that, with a new fear upon him, he would have preferred the savage eyes and reckless mien of the old Mornie whom he hated. With his habitual impulsiveness he tried to say something that should express that fact not unkindly, but faltered, and awkwardly sank into the chair by her bedside.

“I don’t wonder you stare at me now,” she said in a far-off voice. “It seems to you strange to see me lying here so quiet. You are thinking how wild I was when I came here that night. I must have been crazy, I think. I dreamed that I said dreadful things to you; but you must forgive me, and not mind it. I was crazy then.” She stopped, and folded the blanket between her thin fingers. “I didn’t ask you to come here to tell you that, or to remind you of it; but—but when I was crazy, I said so many worse, dreadful things of HIM; and you—YOU will be left behind to tell him of it.”

Rand was vaguely murmuring something to the effect that “he knew she didn’t mean anything,” that “she musn’t think of it again,” that “he’d forgotten all about it,” when she stopped him with a tired gesture.

“Perhaps I was wrong to think, that, after I am gone, you would care to tell him anything. Perhaps I’m wrong to think of it at all, or to care what he will think of me, except for the sake of the child—his child, Rand—that I must leave behind me. He will know that IT never abused him. No, God bless its sweet heart! IT never was wild and wicked and hateful, like its cruel, crazy mother. And he will love it; and you, perhaps, will love it too—just a little, Rand! Look at it!” She tried to raise the helpless bundle beside her in her arms, but failed. “You must lean over,” she said faintly to Rand. “It looks like him, doesn’t it?”

Rand, with wondering, embarrassed eyes, tried to see some resemblance, in the little blue-red oval, to the sad, wistful face of his brother, which even then was haunting him from some mysterious distance. He kissed the child’s forehead, but even then so vaguely and perfunctorily, that the mother sighed, and drew it closer to her breast.

“The doctor says,” she continued in a calmer voice, “that I’m not doing as well as I ought to. I don’t think,” she faltered, with something of her old bitter laugh, “that I’m ever doing as well as I ought to, and perhaps it’s not strange now that I don’t. And he says that, in case anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead. I have looked ahead. It’s a dark look ahead, Rand—a horror of blackness, without kind faces, without the baby, without—without HIM!”

She turned her face away, and laid it on the bundle by her side. It was so quiet in the cabin, that, through the open door beyond, the faint, rhythmical moan of the pines below was distinctly heard.

“I know it’s foolish; but that is what ‘looking ahead’ always meant to me,” she said, with a sigh. “But, since the doctor has been gone, I’ve talked to Mrs. Sol, and find it’s for the best. And I look ahead, and see more clearly. I look ahead, and see my disgrace removed far away from HIM and you. I look ahead, and see you and HE living together happily, as you did before I came between you. I look ahead, and see my past life forgotten, my faults forgiven; and I think I see you both loving my baby, and perhaps loving me a little for its sake. Thank you, Rand, thank you!”

For Rand’s hand had caught hers beside the pillow, and he was standing over her, whiter than she. Something in the pressure of his hand emboldened her to go on, and even lent a certain strength to her voice.

“When it comes to THAT, Rand, you’ll not let these people take the baby away. You’ll keep it HERE with you until HE comes. And something tells me that he will come when I am gone. You’ll keep it here in the pure air and sunlight of the mountain, and out of those wicked depths below; and when I am gone, and they are gone, and only you and Ruth and baby are here, maybe you’ll think that it came to you in a cloud on the mountain,—a cloud that lingered only long enough to drop its burden, and faded, leaving the sunlight and dew behind. What is it, Rand? What are you looking at?”

“I was thinking,” said Rand in a strange altered voice, “that I must trouble you to let me take down those duds and furbelows that hang on the wall, so that I can get at some traps of mine behind them.” He took some articles from the wall, replaced the dresses of Mrs. Sol, and answered Mornie’s look of inquiry.

“I was only getting at my purse and my revolver,” he said, showing them. “I’ve got to get some stores at the Ferry by daylight.”

Mornie sighed. “I’m giving you great trouble, Rand, I know; but it won’t be for long.”

He muttered something, took her hand again, and bade her “good-night.” When he reached the door, he looked back. The light was shining full upon her face as she lay there, with her babe on her breast, bravely “looking ahead.”

IV. THE CLOUDS PASS.

It was early morning at the Ferry. The “up coach” had passed, with lights unextinguished, and the “outsides” still asleep. The ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking “all night” bar-keeper on the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar. An Indian half-breed, porter of the Mansion House, was washing out the stains of recent nocturnal dissipation from the bar-room and veranda; a few birds were twittering on the cotton-woods beside the river; a bolder few had alighted upon the veranda, and were trying to reconcile the existence of so much lemon-peel and cigar-stumps with their ideas of a beneficent Creator. A faint earthly freshness and perfume rose along the river banks. Deep shadow still lay upon the opposite shore; but in the distance, four miles away, Morning along the level crest of Table Mountain walked with rosy tread.

The sleepy bar-keeper was that morning doomed to disappointment; for scarcely had the coach passed, when steps were heard upon the veranda, and a weary, dusty traveller threw his blanket and knapsack to the porter, and then dropped into a vacant arm-chair, with his eyes fixed on the distant crest of Table Mountain. He remained motionless for some time, until the bar-keeper, who had already concocted the conventional welcome of the Mansion House, appeared with it in a glass, put it upon the table, glanced at the stranger, and then, thoroughly awake, cried out,—

“Ruth Pinkney—or I’m a Chinaman!”

The stranger lifted his eyes wearily. Hollow circles were around their orbits; haggard lines were in his checks. But it was Ruth.

He took the glass, and drained it at a single draught. “Yes,” he said absently, “Ruth Pinkney,” and fixed his eyes again on the distant rosy crest.

“On your way up home?” suggested the bar-keeper, following the direction of Ruth’s eyes.

“Perhaps.”

“Been upon a pasear, hain’t yer? Been havin’ a little tear round Sacramento,—seein’ the sights?”

Ruth smiled bitterly. “Yes.”

The bar-keeper lingered, ostentatiously wiping a glass. But Ruth again became abstracted in the mountain, and the barkeeper turned away.

How pure and clear that summit looked to him! how restful and steadfast with serenity and calm! how unlike his own feverish, dusty, travel-worn self! A week had elapsed since he had last looked upon it,—a week of disappointment, of anxious fears, of doubts, of wild imaginings, of utter helplessness. In his hopeless quest of the missing Mornie, he had, in fancy, seen this serene eminence haunting his remorseful, passion-stricken soul. And now, without a clew to guide him to her unknown hiding-place, he was back again, to face the brother whom he had deceived, with only the confession of his own weakness. Hard as it was to lose forever the fierce, reproachful glances of the woman he loved, it was still harder, to a man of Ruth’s temperament, to look again upon the face of the brother he feared. A hand laid upon his shoulder startled him. It was the bar-keeper.

“If it’s a fair question, Ruth Pinkney, I’d like to ask ye how long ye kalkilate to hang around the Ferry to-day.”

“Why?” demanded Ruth haughtily.

“Because, whatever you’ve been and done, I want ye to have a square show. Ole Nixon has been cavoortin’ round yer the last two days, swearin’ to kill you on sight for runnin’ off with his darter. Sabe? Now, let me ax ye two questions. FIRST, Are you heeled?”

Ruth responded to this dialectical inquiry affirmatively by putting his hand on his revolver.

“Good! Now, SECOND, Have you got the gal along here with you?”

“No,” responded Ruth in a hollow voice.

“That’s better yet,” said the man, without heeding the tone of the reply. “A woman—and especially THE woman in a row of this kind—handicaps a man awful.” He paused, and took up the empty glass. “Look yer, Ruth Pinkney, I’m a square man, and I’ll be square with you. So I’ll just tell you you’ve got the demdest odds agin’ ye. Pr’aps ye know it, and don’t keer. Well, the boys around yer are all sidin’ with the old man Nixon. It’s the first time the old rip ever had a hand in his favor: so the boys will see fair play for Nixon, and agin’ YOU. But I reckon you don’t mind him!”

“So little, I shall never pull trigger on him,” said Ruth gravely.

The bar-keeper stared, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, thar’s that Kanaka Joe, who used to be sorter sweet on Mornie,—he’s an ugly devil,—he’s helpin’ the old man.”

The sad look faded from Ruth’s eyes suddenly. A certain wild Berserker rage—a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers’ Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement—glowed in its place. The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for the day’s festivities. But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose, turned hesitatingly towards him.

“Have you seen my brother Rand lately?”

“Nary.”