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AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness. She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single drop of vitriol—happily the only drop of an entire phial—thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was “an exaggerated dimple.” Colonel Starbottle was instantly “reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank eyes upon—a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a scar—a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I said to her, ‘Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank you?’ And she said to me, ‘Star, there isn’t another white man that I’d confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I did, blank me.’ These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I’ll put up any blank sum you can name and prove it, blank me.”
Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone had been known to express skepticism.
The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made it perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion of her second divorce), “The cold world does not understand Clara yet”; and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read those lines entitled “Infelissimus,” commencing “Why waves no cypress o’er this brow?” originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the signature of “The Lady Clare,” without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.
Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between Knight’s Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some reflections on the vanity of his pursuit—he supplied several mining camps with whisky and tobacco—in conjunction with the dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship—as brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities—they were married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or “Fideletown,” as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr. Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while freighting between Stockton and Knight’s Ferry was different from that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick’s verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism, signed “A. S.,” also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw—a language with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed, the next week’s INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick’s poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed “A. S. S.”
The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the AVALANCHE. “An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last, between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from the colonel’s double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man’s firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known, although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are posted.”
Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. “The old man’s head is level,” said one long-booted philosopher. “Ef the colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel, Tretherick is all right. Either way, he’s got a sure thing.” During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her husband’s home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.
It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended, left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation. Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland. It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his place at her side.
“The coast is clear,” said the colonel, “and Tretherick is over at Dutch Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you need fear no trouble from him. I,” he continued, with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, “I will see that you are protected in the removal of your property.”
“I’m sure it’s very kind of you, and so disinterested!” simpered the lady as they walked along. “It’s so pleasant to meet someone who has soul—someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and heartless as this.” And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.
“Yes, certainly, of course,” said the colonel, glancing nervously up and down the street—“yes, certainly.” Perceiving, however, that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the possession of too much soul. That many women—as a gentleman she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names—but many beautiful women had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society—when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then—but here the colonel’s speech, which had been remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus. Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.
It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new, uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was no other sign of occupancy. “The coast,” as the colonel had said, was indeed “clear.” Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. “Come for me in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed,” she said, as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment, thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she became aware of a child’s voice close beside her, and she stopped. And then the child’s voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”
Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself—a doll with a cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders and swept the floor.
The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick’s delight. Perhaps she had but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it isn’t,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.
The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:
“Dow ‘way then! why don’t you dow away?”
But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the child’s shoulders, and said angrily:
“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”
“Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain’t you? You are Mamma!” she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman’s skirts with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.
“What’s your name, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the small and not very white hands from her garments.
“Tarry.”
“Tarry?”
“Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.”
“Caroline?”
“Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.”
“Whose child ARE you?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to keep down a rising fear.
“Why, yours,” said the little creature with a laugh. “I’m your little durl. You’re my mamma, my new mamma. Don’t you know my ol’ mamma’s dorn away, never to turn back any more? I don’t live wid my ol’ mamma now. I live wid you and Papa.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
“I fink it’s free days,” said Carry reflectively.
“You think! Don’t you know?” sneered Mrs. Tretherick. “Then, where did you come from?”
Carry’s lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:
“Papa, Papa fetched me—from Miss Simmons—from Sacramento, last week.”
“Last week! You said three days just now,” returned Mrs. Tretherick with severe deliberation.
“I mean a monf,” said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness and confusion.
“Do you know what you are talking about?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs. Tretherick’s dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.
“There now—stop that sniffling,” said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. “Wipe your face now, and run away, and don’t bother. Stop,” she continued, as Carry moved away. “Where’s your papa?”
“He’s dorn away too. He’s sick. He’s been dorn”—she hesitated—“two, free, days.”
“Who takes care of you, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her curiously.
“John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.”
“Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don’t bother me any more,” said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. “Stop—where are you going?” she added as the child began to ascend the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
“Doin’ upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.”
“I ain’t your mamma,” shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first wife—this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care—just to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn, but RED—of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on—business, as he said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her husband and “another” flaunting in silks and diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow—a beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn’t he come? He, at least, understood her. He—she laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.
What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.
Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child’s glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs. Tretherick’s manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, “that if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her very much.”
I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation. The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure—all these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman. She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room were a little darker, the child lonelier—say, sitting beside a dead mother’s bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of the colonel’s cane.
She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. “Don’t tell me the whole thing wasn’t arranged beforehand; for I know it was!” she almost screamed. “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”
“It’s a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to comprehend a reason for the woman’s excitement, with his estimate of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.
“It’s of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel’s, and withdrawing her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. “It’s of no use: my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I will put him face to face with his infamy.”
I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the convincing proof of Tretherick’s unfaithfulness and malignity afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick’s own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
“That’s her,” said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical construction.
“Ah!” said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. “Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?” The colonel’s impulse also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven. Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown. Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous resemblance to the “Madonna and Child.” Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child, said in a whisper: “Go now. Don’t come here again, but meet me tonight at the hotel.” She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.