Days of '49/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
1
It was after dark when Hales arrived and a misty rain was falling. He put up his horse and started directly for Judge Deering's office. Men stumbled about through the mud in the drizzle, cursing and shouting good-naturedly; many of them carried lanterns. Lights blazed from the doorways of saloons. It sounded as if every saloon had an orchestra, every gambling house a band. As he crossed the Plaza he heard a strident voice crying through the gloom. It was the voice of the street preacher, Preble. Rain or fog, he appeared every night; but in spite of his wrathful warnings, saloons increased, wickedness flourished.
Judge Deering was alone, reading aloud from a book of poems. His first gesture toward Hales was one of great delight, then his manner changed and foreshadowed unpleasant news.
"Two days ago," he said heavily, "Anna Hales disappeared from Preble's house, where she made her home. We, sir, fear suicide. My boy John"—Judge Deering spoke of young John Taylor, and treated him as a son—"is desperately anxious. We have looked everywhere and made inquiries. Not a thing, sir, can be learned."
Hales told Judge Deering of the Taylors, ending:
"—she would, of course, do something flagrant at just this time. Both he and Mrs. Taylor want to see her. They don't of course suspect in what shape I found her—I said she was very sick. But both of them now think—when you've crossed the plains, Judge, it seems to make you more charitable—that Anna would have been a better woman if they had been more forgiving, earlier
"And now, Judge," Hales asked with a trace of amusement, "I'd like to know just who does own that ranch?"
"You do, sir. You do. But when Colonel Nevinson, sir, finding that Miss Tesla wished to own the ranch, simply put the deed he held in her name and with customary irritability refused any suggestion of payment, I did not have the cruelty to say to him, 'Very generous, but an empty flourish, sir!' To say that would have been inhuman, however honest, for Colonel Nevinson is almost a bankrupt. A little money would mean much. His fair-weather friends have scampered from him. He no longer has credit or resources that are negotiable. Each morning men expect him to acknowledge bankruptcy.
"Sir, it was under such circumstances that he gave what he thought was El Crucifijo to Miss Tesla and refused to tarnish his gift with money. I can not but admire him, though, sir, he has become less admirable in many ways. Drinks more; and, if possible, is more quarrelsome; insults his former associates who wisely refuse him credit and will not listen to those who do wish him well. He takes pains to insult prominent people, sir, by declaring that his only friends are such persons as Monsieur Max, the keeper of a bawdy house, and that Eton woman, who should be an inmate of the house!
"I understand, sir, that the reconciliation was effected when she sent him a heavy pouch of gold dust, saying it was all she had, and at this time of his need would he take it as a token of the friendship that had once been theirs? He returned the gold in person. You can readily understand how such a flourish of generosity would move a man like Colonel Nevinson, particularly at a time when those whom he thought good friends would not lend him a dollar. Why a woman of her avaricious nature and calling would with so timely a gesture call to her the devotion of a bankrupt, I cannot imagine—unless it is barely possible that she loves him!"
"Or hates him?" said Hales.
"Eh?"
"Wants to be where she can watch him suffer when the crash comes. Then remind him of a few things she hasn't forgotten."
"What a ghastly opinion you have of human nature, sir," said the judge, unreproachfully. "The crash is not far off, though the colonel still holds his head high as any man's. You recall that he speculated heavily in lumber. He owns nearly all the lumber in San Francisco, and today it is worthless. For the time being, there is no building going on, and we are in the midst of a great depression"
He also said:
"That Eton woman, sir—she had the audacity to call upon Anna. The Rev. Preble would not turn her away. He told me himself that he considered it an opportunity of reproaching Miss Eton for the evilness of her life, and that she listened with great interest. And I, sir, suspect with great amusement."
"Preble must be a fool," said Hales.
"If so, sir, it is the foolishness of a flaming and righteous man"
Judge Deering then told him that the town talked of but little else than the mask ball which Monsieur Max was giving in his Golden House on the following evening; an invitational affair, for on this one night of the year money could not buy admittance to the Hall of Pleasure.
"I have some tickets here, none of which I shall use"—he groped absently about his desk without finding them—"but if you care to attend"
"Not I," said Hales.
When John Taylor came, Hales put him on a horse and sent him through the mist and mud to El Crucifijo, and himself slept that night in Judge Deering's office.
2
In the morning the weather had changed. The air was clear, the sun warm. The city buzzed, but not altogether happily. Hales was told that every river steamer from the interior was crowded with people returning from the diggings. The roads to the mines had become impassable for freighters. Provisions could not be hauled in. Merchants were abandoning camp stores. Miners were starved into returning to the cities. People said the flush times were over. Gold was playing out. California would soon be abandoned to the greasers. Shiftless grumblers and unlucky men who prophesy evil for others called an hour's ebbing of the tide disaster.
Shortly before noon Hales called on the Prebles to make inquiry for himself.
Ezekiel Preble, his wife and baby, occupied one room in the house of a preacher who had a church. Preble, faithful to the promise he had made the Lord, devoted himself to street preaching and lived on free-will offerings, most of which he gave away.
"Christians ort 'o be pore," was the frequent affirmation of Mrs. Preble. The Rev. Preble, darkly bearded, tall, in shirt sleeves, rose from the table where he was reading from the Book and greeted Hales cordially as "brother."
Hales did not like him, did not like being called "brother." Preble had a perpetual ministerial intonation. There was a strong odor of sweat about him. He spoke of Anna as "our dear sister." Tears gushed from his eyes and his voice trembled as he lifted his eyes to the ceiling and asked God to care for her. He looked awkward. He irritated Hales.
"Let us pray," said Preble and dropped to his knees, lifted his clasped hands, and prayed for minutes. Mrs. Preble stood by with face downcast, holding the baby, which busily groped about her breast with tiny fingers, pulling at her nose, at her hair, flopping its arms.
Hales had to stand motionless and listen. He was uncomfortable, exasperated. When the prayer was finished the Rev. Preble stood up. His knees were covered with dust. He said that Anna had been saved, that he had prayed with her frequently; she had wept repentantly and promised to enter the service of the Lord.
"He drove Anna to desperation," said Hales to himself.
3
While returning from the Prebles', Hales walked for a time in a sandy graded road. At the sound of trotting horses he glanced behind, then stepped aside.
Two women of the town were out for a ride in the spring like sunshine. They were dressed in velvets and ribbands, and it was not until they had come almost up to him that he again glanced upwards and recognized the dark, perfectly modeled features of Elvira Eton.
She reined up sharply, lurching forward in the saddle a little because of the sudden stop, and, as if delighted to see him, exclaimed:
"Oh! Señor Hales! I have been wondering where you were. It is so lovely to see you, now!"
He glanced toward the other woman, who, having ridden a few feet past Elvira, turned her horse about. She was young, evidently French, with painted cheeks, painted lips. Her mouth was very small.
"Señor, this is my dear friend, Mlle. Renault."
Mademoiselle Renault, or madame as she was more commonly known, smiled, and the two women exchanged quick glances.
"I have told Louise so much of you," said the good Doña and smiled with a gleam of mocking pleasure in her dark eyes. "We were talking of you not ten minutes ago, were we not, Louise?"
"Indeed, monsieur, less than that! Not more than five!" said Madame Renault in a sort of babyish voice. "Elvira speaks much of you. Indeed, monsieur!"
"We have been wishing, señor, that you could come to our mask ball tonight." Doña Elvira leaned forward and stroked the neck of her horse, but kept her eyes on Hales; then, smiling, coaxingly—"You will come? It is a mask ball. Will you?"
"No," said Hales
"Oh, good, Louise! He is coming!" the Doña cried happily toward her companion. "You have an invitation with you, Louise. Give it to me for Mr. Hales. It will be such a pleasure to have him."
Both women smiled upon Hales.
"No one is admitted without an invitation, Monsieur," said Madame Renault, crinkling her rosebud mouth at him as she took a card from her pocket and handed it across to Elvira, who then leaned forward, offering it to Hales.
"No," said Hales quietly, shaking his head and showing her the grimmest of stubborn smiles.
She ignored his attitude completely.
"Ah, señor, there will be many you know. My sweetest of friends, your dear sister will be there. Oh, do come!"
The good Doña smiled triumphantly, thrusting forward the card, and Hales, with mechanical movement, reached out, took it, staring at her.
"Good day, Señor Hales!"
"Good day, Monsieur!"
Both flashed parting smiles upon him and rode off at a gallop.
4
Hales went to Judge Deering and told him. Judge Deering leaned back heavily in his chair, casting aside the newspaper he had been reading, and ran the palm of his hand over his bald head. Gravely, as if pronouncing the findings of a magistrate, he said:
"The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. From a safe distance, sir, I have upon occasion admired the beauty with which she cloaks a wolfish evilness. For no other reason, sir, than sheer wantonness and perhaps to spite our friend Preble, she has lured that poor woman back to riotousness."
"If Anna's brothers were not here I doubt if I would now try to find her. Heaven knows I don't want to see her again. But I'm going—you'd better come with me to this mask affair, Judge."
"No. No. My blood, sir," he said gravely, "is too old to yield to many of the weaknesses my flesh may have retained."
Then, with rising interest and sonorous tone, "But all the wild and grotesque phases of the Californian life interest me profoundly—as a spectacle, sir, only as a spectacle.
"Here, sir, in this city we are passing through a phase of heroic barbarism, Homeric, or more nearly, sir, in some aspects, Elizabethan—Elizabethan, when men who ventured greatly and singed the beards of kings spent plundered wealth in revelries where bejeweled women, and burly courtiers in velvets drank themselves dead and fell vomiting on the rushes that served to cover their floors. Here in our city men with muddy boots, boots on feet, sir, that have trampled across a continent, stamp over silken rugs; and hands calloused from swinging picks stroke the dainty fingers of sinuously fierce and bejeweled women, while all merriment is noise, riot and drunkenness. Our city, sir, is rude, strong, turbulent, full of those contrasts that denote barbarism. For ten thousand years a turbulent, adventurous vanguard has has led our people westward from the Asiatic cradle that rocked the new-born race of the Caucasian, and here the march of the Empire ends. Here, sir, in California ends that great migration of the Caucasian people. There are no longer unknown lands and wildernesses before them. Here, sir, the swarming caravans of Man will pile up in dense communities, spread out, with a flowing movement press backward on to the country through which they have come. Here, sir, along the western coast of America is where God has drawn his finger and said, 'No farther! Stand and fulfill your destiny!' Here, sir, Destiny begins the final chapter in the history of the white race; and we, sir, we barbarians in this year of our Lord, 1849, are merely the vanguard that has reached the last outpost.
"The rudeness and noise of our new land, its strength and its weaknesses, its evil aspects and its virtues, its orgies in the houses of the harlot, its hymns and prayers in the rough-hewn houses of God on the hillsides—all this, sir, is but the preliminary scribblings on the great scroll of a new center of civilization. Sir, the flood of the future beats upon these shores!"
5
Shortly after nine o'clock Hales appeared among a small group of odd fellows; a big Pierrot with deep voice and a beard showing under the mask, a small pudgy, heavily furred bear, a Chinaman, a Turk, that advanced from the muddy street over an improvised sidewalk to the doorway of Monsieur Max's Golden House where holiday revelry was to make merry the Christmastide.
Dancing, music and dining were free. The guests were expected to pay for wine. Monsieur Max was no fool or philanthropist. Champagne at this time was ten dollars the bottle.
No one was admitted unless in costume, masked, and provided with an invitation. For days the tailors of the town had been busy fashioning costumes. Some women of the town had also been invited so that no man would be unattended by a charmer.
Hales, because the costume was almost natural to him, had purchased the dress of a Spanish gentleman.
As they were admitted through the street door the maskers entered a small room where attendants announced:
"Now, gentlemen, please remove your weapons and let us put them away for you. No weapons will be permitted in the ballroom!"
Such was the ruling of Monsieur Max; and this seemed so excellent a precedent that for for years afterwards invitation cards to mask balls bore the words—""No weapons admitted."
Hales, with holster empty, followed the the big, bearded Pierrot, whom he recognized as Wallace B. Kern, into the ballroom, into the midst of gay voices and skirling laughter.
Pine boughs had been placed about the room, and on the boughs cotton. Strings of popcorn and glass beads were festooned. Candelabras blazed with the upward streaming points of candles. Curtains of red silk hung at the windows. The walls were covered with a gaudy paper and on the walls were pictures and mirrors in heavy frames. On a low platform, thinly screened by boughs, were fiddlers. On the opposite side of the room was a huge fireplace. Wood was forty dollars a cord. The carpets had been removed and the floor waxed with melted candles. Negroes passed about serving drinks—when ordered. Snow had been brought down from the mountains by teamsters for chilling the drinks.
Hales entered amid a storm of confetti. Monsieur Max had bought up almost every scrap of colored paper in the city, and hired it cut into tiny squares.
Every one was masked excepting the fiddlers, the servants, and Monsieur Max himself who bustled about pudgily, waving his sparkling hands, feeling daintily of the crinkled ends of his heavy black mustache, and talking merrily. Every little while he would blaze with a wordy torrent of excitement, over nothing, spluttering; the next instant he would be bowing to some huge gargoyle of a masker or flashing badinage at a girl.
It was a little dazzling, so many women in a womanless region, all gaily costumed in fluttering silks and close-clinging velvets; none were more than half-masked, for they were beautiful young girls and would not wholly hide their faces. Their red lips rippled with shrill merriment; their slippered feet were light, tongues bantering. It was early in the evening, all all were were gay, none more than slightly drunken.
A small creature creature in in a maze of gauze thrust an artificial flower into Hales' face and laughed, saying, , "Buy me a drink?" A handful of confetti showered upon him. He looked backward at the one who had thrown it, and when he faced about the bearded Pierrot had captured the gauze-girl.
Hales pushed toward Monsieur Max, caught his arm asked:
"When do these people unmask?"
"Midnight, monsieur!"
The fiddlers struck up. A woman glided toward Hales, with arms out. He did not open his arms to receive her.
"You are cold, Mr. Spanish Bandit—but I love you!"
"You," said Hales, "are thirsty."
She laughed and struck his cheek lightly with her fingers. Hales stopped a waiter, saying: "Champagne."
Behind him Hales recognized the voice of Col. Nevinson, but did not look around.
Nevinson was dressed as a courtier, wore a narrow strip of velvet across his face, his mustache was stiffly waxed. He carried an empty scabbard. The attendants had removed his sword.
The woman by Hales drank quickly and left him. He was a dull companion.
A moment later the bearded Pierrot, laughing heartily, half stumbled against him and was quickly apologetic.
"Entirely all right, Mr. Kern."
"Ah! You know me. And you?"
"Hales."
They shook hands.
"Great fun, eh? Lord, I'm being a fool tonight, and like it!" Kern laughed deeply. "Ever see so many beautiful ladies?"
"Never so many dangerous ones."
"Same thing. Oh, there, see? The colonel and the Doña! That woman could send a desert saint to hell!"
Col. Nevinson and a woman in the dress of a Spanish dancer were on the floor. Hales would hardly have recognized her as Elvira. She was sinuously lithe and alert, and tossed her head with coquettish flare.
Another couple spun by. Hales looked after the woman, catching merely the glimpse of a laughing red streak on a heavily painted and powdered face, half hidden by its mask. She wore a strange costume of brilliant rags and tatters, and danced with the pudgy bear, who must have been sweating like a Turk at his bath under such a woolly dress.
Corks were popping like a mild Fourth of July celebration. Each pop meant ten dollars. Monsieur Max was ecstatically excited. A supper had been spread in the next room. The doors would be opened at midnight.
"Let's have a bottle," said Hales to Kern.
"What, alone? Two men! We'd be thrown headfirst into the mud. I'll get some girls."
"Damn the girls. It's the drink I want."
But Kern had rushed off, and at that moment the beautiful Spanish dancer came to Hales.
"Señor," she said sweetly, "the fandango, with me?"
Hales answered in Spanish:
"I do not know it."
"You lie to me, señor," she said amiably. "Yes, Señor Hales, you do know it as I know your voice. Dance with me, just one little time. Then I will tell you which is—ah—your sister. Ah, how you have been cruel to me!"
"Twelve o'clock will come soon enough to find out. And why, why did you do it when you knew her friends were trying to pull her up and out?"
"Ah, ah, ah," said Elvira with mockery, yet sweetly, "she was so unhappy there! And that preacher-man. I wanted to show him that I, the wicked one—oh, how he talked to me of sins!—had more power than his prayers. And you, Señor Hales, I, too, have the wish that I could hate you!" She said it seductively as if reluctantly confessing. "But it can not be!"
"You've done enough to show you do," said Hales.
"I? No, señor! You do not know me if you think that. You will learn what my hate is like—some day." There was a click of teeth between her smiling lips. She glanced aside. Hales followed the glance and saw that she looked at Nevinson. "But, señor, this dance. I beg it—I, a woman, beg it! Come, let us show these gringos how Spaniards dance!"
"I do not know it."
"Señor," she said, half menacing, half playful, "the reason I forget some things between us is because you, cruel man, have never lied to me! You lie now, ah?"
"No."
"Truth?"
"Truth."
"I believe you, always, yes." She was warmly seductive, wooing him with glance and tone. "Then I dance alone, and show you how I can dance. I will teach you some day, if you wish. You wish, señor?"
"Dance," said Hales.
"Then will I come for your answer, eh?"
She fluttered her fan, smiled over it, and her glance was piercing as the note of a siren song. Then she spun away, spoke to Monsieur Max, who instantly exploded into delight and rushed toward the musicians.
Kern was swinging by with a shepherdess held to his breast, The mouth of the shepherdess was small as a rosebud and red. Hales caught at Kern's arm:
"Stop a minute. Listen."
"Run off and play," said Kern to the pouting shepherdess. "This is business. I'm going to borrow some money." Then to Hales: "What is it? I'm nearly drunk, so I may be imagining things, but you sound scared!"
Kern was not the only one who was nearly drunk; a few there were who were nearly sober. Laughter was higher, movement more abandoned. Confetti stormed about the heads of the dancers. As much champagne was being spilled as drunk. And the lurching wantonness of wayward women made men more drunken than with wine.
"Here"—Hales pulled Kern nearer the wall—"you know what I think of Nevinson, but"
"Aw, listen, now listen," Kern cut in with paternal soothing. "Forget it, Hales. We're all good fellows here tonight. The old colonel's in a financial pickle too—done for. Night like this, don't bring up old scores. Be a good fellow, grab a girl, tell world go to hell!"
"You do the listening, " said Hales abruptly. "And you or somebody warn him against that Eton woman. I don't know what she's up to, but"
Kern laughed uproariously, patting him on the shoulder:
"You're in love with her, too, heh? That's not a fair way to take her from the colonel—try to scare him off. He don't scare worth a damn. I saw her just now playin' the siren with you. Maybe you can get her away from the colonel"
"You are drunk!" said Hales.
Kern, laughing full-throated, staggered off, snatched at a girl, caught her, swung her upon his shoulder and staggered across the room.
The floor was cleared of dancers. The fiddlers struck up, softly. There was the silken flash of a woman's body and Elvira appeared in the center of the room. Her castanets clicked, her dainty heels struck sharply, then with a swirl of skirts she spun lithely into the dance.
From the first it was plain that she danced for the approval of the tall darkly masked man in Spanish costume who stood by the bearded Pierrot. All eyes turned repeatedly toward Hales, who folded his arms and tried to appear indifferent.
Col. Nevinson eyed him, and presently the colonel came to the side of Pierrot, who had returned near Hales. Nevinson asked—peremptorily:
"Who is that fellow?"
And for the fun of it, Kern answered:
"Don Sebastien de Gorgora{—old friend of hers—from Cuba."
"Damn greaser!" said the colonel in a voice that must be overheard.
Then as Elvira glided closely by Hales, smiling, with head thrown back, hands to waist, her sinuous body bent enticingly to lure him out on the floor after her, his anger at the word "greaser" died away with a shiver, chilled by the feeling that this woman knew what she was doing, knew she was filling the air with jealousy, that a quarrel would follow. Hales was determined that for all of her passionate artfulness there would be no quarrel. He disliked Nevinson intensely, but had no downright hate of him.
The maskers watched. She, whose habitual pose was sinuously slothful, could dance brilliantly. As they watched, waiters passed along bearing glasses on trays. Men were buying drinks for everybody, treating the house. Monsieur Max might well have gone off to a lone mirror and winked at himself.
The gay masqueraders laughed; many were a little unsteady; they shouted compliments at Elvira, and comment rippled merrily.
"When she's done, I'll do a Bowery!" shouted a woman's harsh voice, stridently.
Monsieur Max was standing near. He said something to her. She was the woman in gay rags and tatters.
Angered by what he had said, she cried at him:
"I'm more of a lady than any woman here, I am!"
He waved his bejeweled hands placatingly, puffed "Shh's " at her anxiously, and a man by her side also spoke soothingly. the woman shrank back, sulking.
"Anna!" said Hales, doubtful, yet nearly certain, and stared across at her—a thing of brilliant rags and tatters, as if with ironical symbolism she had chosen such a dress. Her face was half clouded with black velvet, her lips were an unhealed wound, her face powdered as if with the dust that Death brings.
Something very like nausea touched him. He felt weak. Memories with vivid swiftness crossed his mind: Her early girlhood—one spring day they had broken off apple blossoms in the orchard together, both then mere children, and he had loved her then almost as much as did his brother afterward. He had gone to a far country, California, and returned on a visit. The marriage in an old vine-covered church, while his sister played the organ, and its deep rolling notes seemed to linger among the oaken rafters. His brother and this woman! These things came upon him so that he stood as if in a daze, staring at her, but looking backward across the years.
He gradually became aware that there was a sort of hush growing upon the room, though the castanets rattled furiously and Elvira spun in the last swirling of her dance. Hales, coming out of what was nearly a daze, noticed that no one was waching her. He glanced toward where the others were look ing.
6
Elvira, sinking breathlessly to the floor, ended her dance, her eyes on Hales. There was no applause. Some one snickered. Then many tittered. Angrily, Elvira looked to see what held their attention.
"Say, that get-up is good," said Kern. "He surely looks like the old man!"
"Takes him off to the life!" cried another, and at once there was jubilant, yet from some slightly doubtful, laughter. A man or two clapped. Women squeaked in excitement.
The tall, bearded, masked figure, in long square-cut coat, with book in hand, was enough to make almost any one think that Ezekiel Preble himself had entered.
"That's makin' mock o' holy things," said a furry, pudgy bear of a man, half drunkenly and uneasily.
"Howdy, Parson!" some one called to him
"Just in time for supper, Parson!"
"Leave it to a preacher to get around at meal time!"
"He ought 'o have the prize, by God. That get-up is good!"
Merry laughter. The maskers pushed into an admiring semi-circle. They were curious, delighted with such a perfect take off of the street preacher, who nightly damned them all—and to whom many gave their contributions, for didn't he have a wife and baby, and have to live?
"Well, Preble, we didn't expect ever to see you in a house of Babylon!" a man shouted.
Hales, after a moment's hard look at this person who seemed to have a daring sense of humor and some ability at acting, glanced through the jostling crowd for the poor tatterdemalion. He saw her, standing alone, half shrinking, staring, rigid. One hand was against her face, the other was half-raised as if to push something away. This was no jest for her to be reminded of the preacher and his preachings. On her sick bed, and afterward, when feelings of real repentance washed her eyes, she had come to know Ezekiel Preble well.
"Well, Parson, let's hear you preach!" a fellow bawled.
The tall masker stared about with a ministerial solemnity, then slowly raised a long arm.
"Hi-oh," a woman giggled, "he is going to preach! Oh, goody!"
Loudly, with strident reverberation, the voice rose:
"Mene, mene, tekel upharsin!"
His long arm swung toward the wall, he faced toward it; people too turned and stared, with giggles dying on their lips, and some asking:
"What's he talkin' about?"
And a man cried:
"No, you ain't got old Jeremiah's voice, Parson."
Men laughed; women, some of them, shrieked with laughter. Champagne glasses were lifted here and there, toasting him.
"Mock o' holy things!" mumbled a drunken man; but others thought it a good joke.
The strident voice boomed with gathering passion:
"As the fire devoureth the stubble and the flame consumeth the chaff, so cometh the vengeance of the Lord"
The drunken maskers stiffened. If this was a joke it was not quite so good. That voice was too tremendously earnest.
"Who in hell are you, sir! Take off that mask!" cried Col. Nevinson.
As if the mask put on to obtain admittance had been forgotten, the preacher jerked it off, dropped it to the floor, and they looked into deep, black, gaunt eyes. This was no masker. A woman screamed—it was the tatterdemalion. Men swore doubtfully. A few laughed harshly. The gauze-girl cried with brazen jeering:
"Aw, what he needs is a good drink! Give 'im to me, I'll"
"—destruction cometh as a whirlwind, distress and anguish cometh upon you, ye scorners that delight in your scorning"
"Make heem stop eet! Sacré He spoil ze partee Ow, mon dieu Make heem stop"
The voice of the preacher boomed through the wail of Monsieur Max, through the startled exclamation of revelers who simply did not know what to say. He stood gaunt and severe, challenging Satan in Satan's own house. The revelers were not greatly awed, but they were greatly astonished. It was almost like a joke, not on the preacher as they had at first thought, but on themselves. Some were uneasy, a little; some were indignant, and tried with sneering and mimicking to mock him. Mostly they simply stared and listened in a sort of perplexed amusement. But the mocking chatter, the undertone of astonished comment, the frantic spluttering of Monsieur Max were as the rattling of leaves to the voice of storm.
"I bring ye word of damnation. I have seen thy lewdness; ye women arrayed in purple scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls—the mark of Babylon is upon your forehead. Come down and sit in the dust—thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Desolation shall come upon thee suddenly—thine enchantments and thy sorceries shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame"
"See here, Preble, you're insulting these ladies!" cried Col. Nevinson, "and this has got to stop or"
"The old fool, ain't he ever going to stop!" cried a woman.
"Put heem out; mon dieu, put heem"
"Shut up!" said a bearded Pierrot without anger, putting a big hand to the back of Monsieur Max's neck and holding firmly. "Shut up. I like to hear a good sermon, and this, sir, is a fitting place and time!"
"—lift up your eyes to heaven and look upon the earth beneath, for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die. Oh, ye fools and scorners, the wrath cometh! Turn from evil and fear not the reproaches of men, neither be ye afraid of revilin's, for the moth shall eat them up like a garment and the worm shall eat them like wool. Repent ye, repent! The Lord thy God will bring destruction upon ye that walk in sin, and thy blood shall be poured out as dust, and thy flesh be as dung. Neither thy silver nor thy gold shall deliver ye in the day of wrath, but the whole land shall be devoured by fire and thy bodies delivered to everlastin' hell!"
The dominant figure and powerful voice had, for the moment, imposed silence; and when his voice paused, every person within the room heard the low anguished moan of a woman. Heads turned, unsteady bodies moved about, looking toward her. The masquerader in silken tatters was crying, crying with forearm to face. The mask had slipped and hung dangling at the side of her head. She pushed blindly at those before her, and as they gave way she stumbled by them and sank at the feet of the preacher, with her forehead on her arm, her arm on the floor. Hers had been a religious girlhood and, now in reawakened shame, the words of the preacher had fallen upon her ears as words of warning and wrath spoken at her alone.
There was only the vaguest stir of movement, and then was silence; the revelers were now awed, and some held their breath.
The Rev. Ezekiel Preble did not appear in the least surprised; it was as if he had come for just this, but with gaunt deliberation he stared about at the masked faces as if yet searching for one, some one among them; then the eyes of the beautiful Spanish dancer dropped as his gaze swung across her face. His sermon was done. He had answered the scornful challenge that came to him that day by note, saying the one for whom he prayed was in the house of carnival; let him come and get her. He had come; he had brought the warning of wrath and prophecy. Now he tucked his Bible under his arm, bent, spoke to the woman, helped her as she got to her feet.
She was covered with shame, the double shame of having been found by the preacher among drunken revelers after her many prayers and promises, and the shame of the contempt that she felt the drunken revelers now felt for her.
With his arm supporting her, the preacher led her off, out of the room out of the House of Revelry.
The revelers stirred uneasily, looking from one to another.
"One of the best sermons I ever heard," said the bearded Pierrot with frank commendation.
"Mock o' holy things," the furry bear mumbled, shaking his head warningly at Kern.
Hales, with sudden determination, pushed roughly through the crowd. He was following woman and preacher. His very bearing showed that he was following.
", sir," cried Col. Nevinson, "if the Cuban señor isn't hurrying to the mourners' bench too!"
Some laughed.
Hales stopped, turned slowly, took a step forward, faced Nevinson; then took away his own mask. His eyes glittered under a frown, and it was written there that he meant to strike.
"Hell-and-fire, you!"
"Yes!"
"And damn your soul, what is it you want, sir!" cried Nevinson, throwing up his head, squaring his shoulders, ready for a fight.
The impulse to strike trembled through Hales' arm. He wanted to strike, not a fist blow, but the stinging contemptuous slap that would mean seconds, a measuring of distance, the drop of a handkerchief, the word, "Fire!" But he did not strike; the Spanish dancer in a rush of breathless movement pressed near, stood hoveringly intent. He glanced at her. His arm relaxed. He turned and walked off hurriedly through the door. He felt like one making an escape; that, almost, Elvira had trapped him into a quarrel with this fire-eating colonel.
Nevinson laughed scornfully, said something in a loud tone; but Hales did not clearly hear what it was, something about a "greaser."
7
In the house of the preacher there was none who slept. Even the baby had awakened and wailingly protested against the bustling of the two hastily dressed women who moved about in the candlelight. They were Mrs. Preble and Mrs. Stone, wife of the preacher who had a congregation and with whom the Prebles lived.
These women stripped the mask dress from Anna and put her into bed.
Mrs. Stone, who never before had seen such a vanity, lifted the dress of rags and colors from the floor, held it up at arm's length. The hem was heavy with mud. The slippers had been lost in mud. Anna had waded in stockinged feet through mud until Hales had overtaken her. Mrs. Stone, eying the dress, said "Tut-tut-tut!" shook her head, flung the thing aside distastefully as if throwing it into the face of the devil. She picked up the child, tossing it up and down with swaying motion to keep it quiet, then went into the next room and began walking the floor.
Her husband had gone for a doctor. Hales and Ezekiel Preble stood in the room.
"You men can go in there now, I reckon," said Mrs. Stone.
The preacher had been telling Hales of how he came to enter the House of Carnival. When he had got that challenge from the good Doña, he had gone to a saloonkeeper and demanded an invitation card, in the name of the Lord! His voice again had the slow ministerial twang of pulpit tone reduced to conversation. He was a gaunt backwoodsman. Except when using Biblical phrases, he was wretchedly ungrammatical. Much of the Bible he knew by heart. There was an ungainliness about him. He did not belong between four walls, under a roof. A man of grammar and culture would never have gone on the street and preached from a whisky barrel before the blazing doorways of saloons.
He bore the name of a minor prophet. Fierce, wrathful, uneducated men, those minor prophets. In preaching he was on fire, sustained by the dignity of righteousness. The Bible thundered across his lips like curses.
Hales felt secretly a little ashamed at the dislike he had taken to him at their previous meeting in this house. What if his conversational tone did have a kind of empty monotonous loudness, and was nasal, his speech harshly ungrammatical? When it boomed at sinners it was not empty.
Almost every day he gave his strength and backwoodsmanly skill to some "brother" who was building a home, and would accept no payment. When he used the word "brother" he meant it. And the sweat of such a man was like ointment.
"—seventy times seven He has commanded forgiveness towards the errin'. An', Brother Hales, it's better to tear a soul like hern out o' old Satan's claws than save a hundred that ain't been so steeped in sin"
Anna lay with sunken eyes in a wide mad stare. Mrs. Preble was washing her face, wiping away the paint from her bloodless lips, smearing the red grease, scrubbing. It clung like a blot of sin and would not come away.
The wretched woman talked incoherently, out of her head. She wailed, babbled, swore. Suddenly, insistently, she demanded drink—whisky.
"That's old Nick talkin'," said Mrs. Preble consolingly to Hales. "It's powerful hard to make him let go onct he's got a holt on ye."
To her the devil was as real a person as Hales himself. To the Prebleses, Satan was no symbol, hell no allegory.
Ezekiel Preble knelt by her bed and prayed aloud, loudly, trying to cast out the devil.
The doctor came. Anna was wildly delirious. At times it took the weight of three strong men to hold her in the bed. "And," said the astonished doctor, wiping the dripping sweat from his forehead, "her heart is weak!"
At a time when she lay quietly, Hales turned away and looked through a window. He was not looking at anything. But as he watched he saw a strange glow; for a moment, hardly thinking about it, his impression was that this was an odd sunrise. Then, abruptly, a flame like the upward thrust of an archangel's sword arose.
"The city is on fire," said Hales.
Ezekiel Preble strode to the window, gazed a moment, then:
"Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof!"
8
It had come upon the city, that dawn of wrath the street preacher had prophesied, and which every one had greatly dreaded; for all buildings were flimsy, there was no insurance, no water supply, no fire companies, but this morning, by great good fortune, hardly the slightest breath of air was astir.
As Hales hurried along through the street with men, running, many half dressed, it seemed the city had gone mad. There was a great din of gongs, bells, trumpets, a tumultuous shouting.
The fire swelled into a towering column; its roar was heard far out on the bay, and the glare of it in the murky dawn lighted up all the hills of the city. Amid the roar of the fire was the crash of timbers, as if the fire chewed, cracked and sucked the bones of buildings.
The fire had started in a gambling house known as Denison's Exchange. The flames spread to the rear and sides among the timber walls that filled the block, till a greater part of it presented a mass of flames. The heat was so intense that houses across the street, and farther, were scorched. Merchants in all directions were carrying out goods, piling them in the street, heaping them in the Plaza.
A burly, bearded man, ludicrous in a domino costume, pushed his way through a group that blinked helplessly toward the flames. Kern was a little drunken still, but he had an idea. He bawled at them:
"Get your shovels! Throw mud on the walls! Save these buildings!"
There was plenty of mud. A near-by hardware store was raided for shovels. A merchant whose walls were being scorched by the still distant flames yelled excitedly:
"Water! Water! I'll pay a dollar a bucket! A dollar a bucket! Bring water!"
Water was brought to him, some of it dipped from muddy pools, and he paid one dollar per bucket.
Other men got out blankets, soaked hem in muddy pools of the street, and in water that was carried to them, nailed the blankets to the walls.
But the flames continued to spread. They seemed sentiently furious. When one house was bursting upward with fire, the fire leaped out of the next. The roar was deafening. Large pieces of burning wood were tossed skyward by the upward rush of flames. Men held their breath for fear the wind would rise.
"There goes my store!" a man near Hales yelled. "Hey—I'm a goner! Hey, you there, McCullough, you damn contractor. You built that store. How soon can you get me up another?"
"Thirty days."
"Too damn long. I got to get back into business" He pointed to the store, now like a furnace. "How soon?"
"Say sixteen days?" asked the contractor.
"That's a whack. Come over here. I'll write a check to bind it!"
The man wrote his check, then shouted:
"Now I got to find Colonel Nevinson an' bargain for lumber afore these other fellows get to him."
Hales stared after the hurrying storekeeper. Hales had heard men on all sides crying that this fire ended the city, that nobody would rebuild.
The famous Parker House burned. The notorious and brilliant El Dorado, a tent, went up in seething flames. The fire was spreading. It was now plainly seen that buckets, blankets and mud could not check the flames.
Kern, still in his domino, now covered with mud, caught at Hales, who was helping a man nail up wet blankets.
"Here, come over here with me," said Kern and half pulled Hales to a group among which there were many city officials. "Here, this is Captain Hales. He's one to help use explosives."
Hales was told, "We are going to blow up a row of houses over there—shut off the fire."
"Max's Golden House, it's in that row!" said Kern.
"Then it must go!" the man who seemed to be directing the fire-fighting said.
"Make sure to get all the people out," Kern exclaimed anxiously. "Some of 'em wouldn't hear if Gabriel tooted!"
"Captain Hales," said the one who was acting as fire chief, "gunpowder is being brought. Will you take some men and blow up the Golden House!"
"With pleasure!" said Hales, making unconsciously a gesture very like a salute.
9
Men with shouts and incoherent bawling were trying to make themselves heard above the roar of fire, the crack and crash of timbers; they swarmed like angry ants in and out of stores near by, piling goods helter-skelter. Men with ropes, axes, picks, were turned loose on the frailer buildings, to tear them down, flatten them out. They worked as near the fire as possible, and beards were even singed. The draught that the flames created was like the roaring of a mighty wind through the forest, and the snap and crash of timbers like the rushing fall of trees overthrown.
Hales led the half-dozen men detailed for the work, at a run.
Monsieur Max, bareheaded, alone, was on the stoop of the Golden House, jumping about frantically, waving his arms, looking across at the fire, cursing, trying at times to call men to come with water. As he saw the men coming on the run he thought they came to help him save his valuable property, and he began yelling instructions.
"Into the house!" said Hales to the men with him. "Get everybody out!" To Max, "Get what you can carry in one armful. We blow up this house!"
Max stood with bejeweled hands uplifted and mouth open. It seemed that sound would never come from that opened mouth, but it did, and as a howl. Then he broke into frantic cries:
"My beaut'ful house! It is ruin! Nevare! Monsieur , nevare! Get ze water—ow, I will not permeet—name of God, son of a peeg—no! vache! I will keel—ow, I will not permeet"
Max was knocked aside and men burst into the house, passing through the small room where the attendants had taken tickets and weapons. Umbrellas remained huddled together like frightened things in a corner. No one was in sight. A few overcoats still hung on pegs.
With a rush like that of armed men bent on loot they entered the ballroom, festooned with pine boughs in celebration of that holiday time commemorative of Christ's birth. The candles, almost to their sockets, burned feeble in the dawn. The room was empty. The wood in the big fireplace had burned down to only a bank of ash, soft and smooth as snow. Trampling boots of Hales' men crushed broken glass. Colored confetti lay thick as sawdust on a saloon floor; it was streaked and criss-crossed where the dancers had glided.
The inmates, who had been awake or aroused, had gone off to look at the fire. The Golden House had seemed very remote from the flames when the first clang of gongs and blare of trumpets arose.
The doors to the dining-room were open. The broken meats of the drunken feast lay scattered about. High revelry had been here. Chairs were overturned, dishes on the floor, and bottles were scattered about. The festooned ribbands had been broken loose and dangled; and women's slippers were scattered. In the merry play women had stripped off their slippers and thrown them for shuttlecocks. A small man, face down, snored under the table.
"Throw him out!"
He wore the furry garb of a bear. Stirred into consciousness by the jerking grab of rough hands he nodded sleepily, muttering—
"Mock 'oly thinsh—mock 'oly thinsh"
The men went trampling up stairs, shouting loudly:
"All out! Turn out! Fire!"
Hales could hear them stamping, breaking through doors.
A frowzy girl, wrapped now in torn gauze, staggered across the room, blinking unsteadily, demanding:
"Wha's up, hunh?"
She was not excited, but peered stupidly curious.
"Fire. The city's burning."
"'At preasher—he done it!" she said critically, looking about, uninterested, wearily. Then she dropped into a chair and reached with wavering hand, her head bobbing, for a wine glass. In trying to find her mouth with the brim of the glass she tipped it, spilled a few drops of flattened wine dregs down her neck.
"Damn," she said indifferently, and threw the glass, then fell forward on her arm, asleep.
She was young, blond, and if sober would have been pretty; her airy costume was in diaphanous rags. Hales grabbed her, shook her. She was as if lifeless. He lifted her, carried her out the back way, put her down. She fell. The chill air, or something, stirred her into life. She began screaming, cursing. She thought Hales had thrown her out of the house—thrown her out! Furiously, she tried to reenter.
Two men came down, carrying a woman; behind them a man in masquerade costume staggered anxiously.
"Get off-—we're goin' to blow up the house! Town's on fire!" one of Hales' men shouted.
The gauze girl then for the first time seemed to notice the fire, and turned, staring blankly, then stumbled off, half undressed, to where she could watch it.
Two or three others, men and women, dead drunk, who could not be stirred to life, were dragged out.
"What the hell can we do with 'em?" a man asked Hales.
"Carry them over there to one of those shanties. Break in. Put them on the floor. All out?"
"Think so. Here comes the powder."
Two men with a keg of powder between them were stumbling hurriedly up toward the rear. Here and there through the city the roar of explosions broke through the roar of fire like an answering challenge as buildings were blown up.
Hales reentered the house. A man was struggling with a small shepherdess. She had a very small red mouth. Her clothes were torn, her hair was down. She was crying, "I'll kill her! Ol' Span'sh !"
Madame Renault's names for the good Doña, who had left the party early, were unspeakably vile. As she was being hustled from the house she wailed her woe. She and the good Doña, who had been the best of friends, had that night quarreled. What over she did not say, being too busy swearing in English and French. Her small red mouth worked as if the lips writhed from the searing of her oaths. Fire, her own disreputable appearance, nothing affected her excepting her drunkenly remembered grudge. She struggled, clutching at a table, pulling the cloth, upsetting dishes, trying to stay and tell Hales of her quarrel.
"Throw her out!" said Hales, and men, jerking roughly, dragged her along.
"Where do you want the powder, Captain?"
"In here. Up against the wall there. I wish we had ten kegs, but this will jar things up so we can pull down what's left in a hurry."
"Here's a hatchet, Captain."
They rolled the keg against the wall. Hales took the hatchet, chopping into it.
"Out yourselves, now."
The men stumbled off hurriedly, out the back way.
Hales took a handful of powder, sprinkling a train across the floor, then he picked up a candle that had burned almost to its socket. At that moment Monsieur Max, muddy and furious, charged through the front door, yelling:
"I foun' ze colonel—I ask heem—he say no! No need to blow up my beaut'ful house—out—go 'way! Bring water—an' we save heem, my house! Ze colonel"
"Out of here!" said Hales.
"No! No! Sacre, mon dieu, monsieur—plees—ze colonel—he say it is for spite you blow heem up! Spite because you found zat filthy sister"
Monsieur Max was to live a long time before he was again as near death as those vicious words had brought him, for Hales, angered to the very depth of his nature, did not light the slow burning twill which he had twisted to communicate the fire to the powder train while he withdrew. He simply stuck the candle flame against the train of sprinkled powder itself, and with snapping crackle and smoky hiss the fire sizzled forward toward the powder keg. Monsieur Max with wild yells turned and leaped for the door and he was helped in his going by the explosion that flung him through the shattered timbers. Hales himself was knocked backward, half-blinded, greatly bruised, among the wreckage.
Those who stood outside, at a safe distance, saw the side of the Golden House puff out, the roof shake, part of it rising upward, and shingles flew like scattered birds. The roar was dull, abrupt, like a solitary clap of heavy thunder, and black smoke obscured everything.
10
In a few hours the city's first great fire was under control. By noon, having been hemmed in by men who tore down and blew up buildings, it had practically burned itself out. The loss was a million dollars. By the middle of the afternoon work men were in among the smoldering wreckage, clearing it out, getting ready to rebuild. A month later not a vestige of the fire's blight could be found.
Twenty-four hours after the fire started, Col. Nevinson was again one of the richest men in the city. The exuberant city rushed at its rebuilding, and his dead elephant of lumber became like a lump of gold. Great rafts of lumber out in the bay and piled on the tide-lands were his. Even as the fire leaped at its highest, men searched for him to bargain for lumber. His luck was typical of the times.
11
Two days later, toward the close of the afternoon, Hales returned to El Crucifijo.
That morning, with a fog haze over the city there had been a funeral; four or five people gathered about a hole in a sand dune and left a wooden cross.
Hales in a bitter mood had left the city, with its thousands of feet moving about in a splattering trample of mud. The fire had been a stimulant. The value of lots in the burned area actually jumped with the charred wreckage upon them.
The farther he got from the city the more he began to feel the influence of the warm landscape's tranquillity. The hills were green. The rains had been like wine to the earth. The trees were flushed with the glow of spring.
He drew near the ranch, looking ahead to the squat, solid old buildings, brown and weatherworn. Here and there were traces of some ancient whitewash, and splotches where the adobe glaze of the bricks had been eaten off by the rain of many years.
Burton was on a bench under an oak playing mumblepeg with the two children. Little Pedro lounged lazily as a lizard against the adobe wall where the last glow of the sun fell.
Ilona came to the doorway. She raised her hand in a flutter of greeting and smiled in a way that he had never seen her smile before. Pedro slouched forward, grinning, touching his hat. Burton shouted welcomingly. Even Kredra, coming forward as if materializing from shadows, spoke quickly to him, with a smile. Kredra rarely smiled.
There was a warmth of pastoral domesticity in the greetings. It was like the homecoming from a far journey—so small a thing was the welcoming gesture of a woman's lifted hand, and her smile.
The isolated remoteness of the touch was made evident when Burton said:
"You had a fire. We saw the smoke. Burn much?"
"Not enough!" said Hales.
Pedro, who was famously lazy, now without waiting to be told, took Hales' horse.
"We expected you back for Christmas," said Ilona. "We set your place at the table, and a place too for Mr. Taylor's sister. Where is she?"
Hales then went to the house where the Taylors were living. Mrs. Taylor was still bedridden; but the kindness, the companionship, the quiet and rest of the old rancho, the green of the rain-freshed hills, all entered strengtheningly into her worn body, of which nothing appeared to remain but the shell of skin, the frame of bones, and the spirit that all women seemed to retain if they did not perish amid the miseries of the '49 pilgrimage.
Mrs. Taylor was asleep. Her husband rose quietly and came out of doors. He then or afterward hardly went farther than her voice would carry if she spoke. There was a sad anxiousness in his expression, and he said wearily:
"I know all you didn't tell me—the day John was out here, he told me. Everything. And now, where is she? You mean dead? Dead, poor child!"
So it was that the wayward and wretched Anna Hales, who without malice or wish had drawn so many people into the entanglements of anger, suffering, cruelty and mercy, passed from the scene.