Complete Works of Bram Stoker (65 page)

‘Do somethin’! Why look here! ye may take the full of her purty little body of blood out of my veins for her, if that will do her any good!’ This time it was Peter Blyth who held out his hand, and said: ‘Shake!’ Then he went on:

‘You know, Dick - or perhaps you don’t know, living up here all alone - that young girls have strange fancies, and their affections don’t always go where their elders would like to see them. Esse has been a good deal with you, they tell me, all last summer; and after all, you’re a man! By George, you are all that! And she’s a woman! And it seems to me - you understand, old man! Why need I go on!’ A blush, a distinct and veritable blush, as pronounced as might be found in any ladies’ seminary in San Francisco suffused Dick’s face, and he turned away with a little simper that would not have disgraced a schoolgirl. Why, ye don’t mean to say,’ he went on sheepishly, ‘that that purty thing wants me for her bo?’  His bashfulness kept him silent, and Peter Blyth looked on in fresh wonderment to see such awkward modesty so manifesdy displayed in the person of such a blood-stained ruffian as he looked. Dick’s embarrassment, however, was only momentary, and ended, as did most of his emotions, in a peal of laughter. Peter looked on with qualified amusement; it would have been all pure fun to him only for the memory of Esse’s pale face in the background. Dick suddenly stopped and said: What do ye want me to do?’

That’s right, old chap! I want you to find your way down to San Francisco, and let Esse get a glimpse of you. It will bring back to her all this beautiful mountain, and she’ll feel the wind from the snow peak blowing once more on her, if I know her!’

‘Good, I’ll come! It can’t be for a few weeks yet, for I have undertaken a contract that I must get through with; but I’ll come. That’s cert! Where does she live in ‘Frisco?’

‘In California Street, No 437, the big house with the stone seals on the steps. Dick, you’re a brick! Old man, you’ll be very tender with her, will you not? Remember it was a great struggle to her to let me gather even so much of her wishes as I did. She’s only a young girl; and you must make things easy for her! Won’t you? Don’t shame her by making any overture come from her?’

‘Say, what’s that? Over what?’

‘Overture! It means, old man, that you mustn’t leave it to her to do the love-making, if there’s any to be done.’

‘Hold hard there, pard! Easy up the hill! I ain’t much of a feller I know, an’ my breedin’ has been pretty rough; but I ain’t such a fool as to leave no girl to do the courtin’ when I’m on the racket! Ye make yer mind easy! - Say, must ye go?’ for Peter had risen.

‘Yes, Dick, I’m bound to be in New York without a day’s delay. I’ve important business awaiting me there; and say, Dick, if things don’t turn out as I think, and as you may think too, when you see her, you’ll make it easy for her, won’t you?’ Dick looked a perfect giant as he stood in the doorway following out his guest, for all the manhood of him seemed to swell within him, and to glorify him till the blood and dirt on him seemed as if Viking adjuncts to his mighty personality. His words came deep and resonant as from one who meant them:

‘Look you here, pard! That dear little lady is the truest and bravest comrade that ever a man had! She stayed by me in the forest, when it was good time for her to go, with the biggest grizzly on the California slope comin’ up express. She fou’t him, for me, an’ killed him. An’ then she wouldn’t leave me, even to get help; but she carried me alone, although she was wounded herself, more’n a mile up the mountain side! She took me outen the grave and hell and the devil, an’ I ain’t goin’ to go back on her, so help me God! I don’t want to be no trouble to her, nor no sorrow, an’ I think it’s a mistake of her choosin’ such a man as me - but I tell ye this: She’ll do with me what she likes, an’ how she likes, an’ when she likes, an’ whar she likes! The wind doesn’t blow that’s a-goin’ to blow between her and me, if she wants me by her side!’

CHAPTER 8

When Esse found that there was a possibility of her again seeing Dick she began to become reconciled to the existing condition of things. It was true that as yet she had only a glimmer of hope, for Peter Blyth had not been explicit as to his intentions. In the first place he might not be able to find Dick, for his journey to New York, and possibly to Europe, might eventuate in complications which would forbid his returning to California at all; in any event for a long time. Then again, Dick might not see his way to come to live in cities, and Esse had already begun to appreciate the refinements of life sufficiently well to make it impossible for her to even contemplate an isolated life in the woods or on the mountains. Picnicing, and especially in a honeymoon form, might be delightful, fascinating, of unspeakable joy; but such life, without relief, would never suit her as an unvarying constancy. From the glimpses which she had had into Dick’s shanty she knew well enough that the measure of his refinement would not reach her own minimum standard, and she had doubts from her experience of his improvement in small matters if he would readily lend himself - if he could lend himself, even if he so desired - to a loftier social condition. These were certainly arguments which tended to damp the zeal begotten of absence, and the stimulating effect of pleasant memory working upon a morbid but fervid imagination. When in the anaemic condition Esse’s imagination was apt to run away with her, though when her system was well furnished with red blood her fancies and desires were healthy and under control. Now that the strain of her self-imposed secrecy had been relieved, her health began to mend, and the improvement was manifest in the ready manner in which she yielded herself to her surroundings, and began to make the most of them; thus mental and physical health began to act and react on each other, and Mrs Elstree’s heart rejoiced as she saw the improvement in her daughter. Soon Esse began to show something of the same robustness which she had achieved on Shasta. Her chalky pallor yielded to a delicate rose colour which, tingeing her brown skin, made a charming union of health and refinement. Her figure began to fill out, and within a few weeks from the time of Peter Blyth’s departure she looked quite a different being from the pallid, meagre, green-sick girl whom he had left. Peter had telegraphed from New York that he had to go to London, but that he looked to return in about two months. He had said nothing of Dick, thinking it wiser to be silent until he knew for certain whether he would turn up in San Francisco. Mrs Elstree did her best to keep Esse up to the mark of health and energy at which she had arrived; and she so laid herself out to this end that her house became the very centre of the most pleasant circle in San Francisco. Every stranger who arrived was of course introduced to her, and not a few found an excuse for prolonging their stay in order to share again her charming hospitality and the companionship of Esse. There was a constant succession of luncheons, dinners, balls, picnics, and all those harmless gatherings which have no definite name, but which have a charm of their own in their freedom and the relaxing of the bonds of conventionality.

Amongst the strangers who came, and in natural course made Mrs Elstree’s acquaintance, was a young English painter, who had already made a great name for himself. He was one of those who had not attached himself to any art school long enough to be cramped by its inevitable littleness. He had skipped lightly through the various schools of the world, learning and adapting all their methods to his own genius, and keeping his mind and imagination fresh by a perpetual study of Nature in all her moods. Pardy by nature, and pardy by merit of his varied training, he was of a most charming personality, with gentler manners and keener refinement than might have been expected from his strength and stature. As, in addition to his other qualifications, he was remarkably handsome, it was small wonder that he was looked upon with favour by the ladies in San Francisco, and with a certain reserved tolerance by the men. Even the instantaneous heartiness of his reception by the Bohemian Club did not allay the misgivings of certain young men of pleasure, unattached.

Between Mr Hampden and Esse a friendship soon sprang up, and this was fostered by the opportunities given by her sitting to him for her portrait, and his finally coming to stay as a guest in the house. To him the freshness and artless simplicity of Esse was akin to those grand simplicities of Nature which had been the study of his life; and it was little wonder that when for some time his art and human sympathies had been thus united and centred in so charming a young lady as Esse, his feelings of friendship should have taken a warmer turn. Before the month was over he was head over ears in love with her.

And Esse? By this time, sad to tell, Esse had quite overlooked, if indeed she had not forgotten, the fact of Dick’s existence. Sometimes, when some accidental allusion or expression suggested the idea, she remembered him, but as a far-off and independent fact; she never connected him now with her own life. He was, and would be till the end of her life, a true and faithful friend, whose memory was set in a frame of romantic picturesqueness, as a miniature is set round with diamonds; but he did not belong to the living present at all. And, strangely enough, when he had come to occupy this place in Esse’s mind, all the pleasant things began to cluster round him again. His individuality was a centre round which crystallized all the pleasant lesser memories of the summer on Shasta. Once or twice in the night time, when something kept her awake, Esse thought, with burning blushes, of her confiding to Peter Blyth the one secret of her life. She wondered how she could have done such a thing, and was angry with herself for what she now considered her mistaken idea as to her own feelings, as well as for her unmaidenly confidence. With a gush of thankfulness she remembered Peter’s sudden call to the East, and determined that on his return, and before any harm could be done, she would set that matter right in a few words. Mrs Elstree saw what Esse herself did not see, that she was herself becoming, nay, had already become, in love with the young painter; and as she in every way approved of him as a possible son-in-law, she allowed matters to freely run their course. Esse’s romantic feeling for Dick belonged to the school-girl phase of her existence; but the new affection was the expression of her woman’s life, and it differed as much from the former in its strength as in its consciousness. The episode of Shasta was, in a sort of way, the ‘preliminary canter’ of her affections, and had all the consciousness of its limited purpose; whereas the later and truer love had all the unconscious, serious earnestness of the race itself, where means are forgotten and only the end is held in view. There was no thought of Dick in her mind, no regret, no remorse, even no pity of his wasted and ruined life, as a few months ago she would have considered it. There was, in fact, no thought or recollection of Dick at all, when, in answer to Reginald Hampden’s passionate appeal, she put her two hands in his, and their lips met in love’s first long kiss.

That evening, as they sat hand-in-hand in the little drawing-room, where there was no one else, in that early darkness which is the nearest thing to twilight which California can produce, Esse, with a manifest purpose, and with many flutterings of the heart, told Reginald that she had a confession to make. He, with the amused, superior tolerance of a successful lover, encouraged her by gentle words and manifold tender caresses to proceed. As a man of the world he knew that, as a rule, the sins which well-bred young ladies have to confess to their fiancés are merely self-distrustful exaggerations of minor indiscretions, or breaches of temper. With a sinking heart Esse began, for now that she had to speak of Dick again to a third person, his figure loomed up uncommonly large into the foreground of her thoughts.

‘It is about Shasta!’ she said, in an almost inaudible voice.

‘About Shasta, dear, that is lovely! I like to hear you speak of that sweet spot! I think I am in love with it myself from what I have heard you and your mother say of it. I am thinking already, Esse’ - here he drew her closer to him - ‘how you and I shall go there some summer and have a fresh honeymoon!’ Esse was silent; there were conflicting thoughts in her mind, and she listened as he went on:

‘You shall show me all over the place; the seat on the rocks on the edge of the plateau, where we shall see together the sunset over the sea; the sun-dial of the trees by which we shall reckon the hours of our happiness - for, my dear, we shall not be able to keep any other reckoning, they shall go so quickly; the spot where you killed the bear; and then we shall come up the way you carried Dick. You see, dear, I know them all!’

‘It is about Dick I want to speak!’

‘Speak on, Esse dear; I like to hear about him! What a splendid fellow he must be! I want to shake him by the hand; he saved the life of my little girl, and she saved his! Why, we must be like brother and sister to Dick!’

‘But, Reginald, I must tell you about him before you say -’ Here Reginald interrupted her.

‘Isn’t Dick the splendid, brave fellow that I think him; the manly, upright gentleman of nature, with the freshness and splendour of the wood and mountain upon him!’

‘Oh yes! he is all that; there is nobody in the world braver or nobler than Dick! You can’t say anything too good of him. But that’s just it! You may not like it that I - one time - before I met you - thought all the world of him!’ Reginald laughed, and caught her again to him; he was glad of these excuses for demonstrative affection.

‘Oh you dear little high-minded goose!’ he said. “Why, of course you thought all the world of him! So would any girl! If I were a girl I would go my boots on a splendid fellow like that.’ Esse began to breathe more freely, though the worst was yet to come; she had to finish her confession. She bravely went on:

That would be bad enough if only you knew it, but I told it to Peter Blyth!’

‘And who may Peter Blyth be?’ asked Reginald, with a tinge of jealousy in his voice.

‘He is an old friend of my mother’s. He was my dead father’s greatest friend, and he is a sort of guardian to us both.’