The pioneer

It was a few weeks after the ball that the Colonel heard of the expected arrival in town of Rion Gracey and Barney Sullivan en route to Virginia City.

From the great camp across the mountain wall in the Nevada desert, an electric current had begun to thrill and extend its vibrations wherever men congregated. The autumn rumors that Virginia was not dead persisted. The mutterings of the silver volcano had grown louder and caught the ear of the hurrying throng. The reports of a strike in Crown Point rose and fell like an uneasy tide. The price of the stock that in the spring of seventy had sold for seventy-five cents had risen to two, and then to three, dollars. Men watched it disquieted, loath to be credulous where they had so often been the dupes of manager and manipulator, yet tempted by the oft-repeated prophecy that the great bonanzas of Virginia were yet to be discovered. Throughout California and Nevada the miners that three years before had left the dying camp as rats leave a sinking ship, began to bind up their packs and turn their faces that way. It was like the first concentrating movement of a stealthily gathering army. The call of money had gone thrilling along the lines of secret communication which connect man with man.

The Graceys had large holdings in Virginia. The group of unprofitable claims consolidated under the name of the Cresta Plata was theirs, and Rion and his superintendent were going up “to take a look around.” This was what the Colonel heard down town. It was a piece of intelligence that was reported as of weight. Mining men watched the movements of the Gracey boys as those about great rulers follow their actions in an effort to read their unexpressed intentions. When the Graceys moved into camps or out of camps, operators, managers and financiers noted the fact. That Rion and Sullivan should take a detour to San Francisco instead of going straight up from Sacramento argued that their need was not pressing.

The Colonel thought he knew why Rion had taken such a roundabout route. He and Allen had had many conversations on the subject of the match they wished to promote and had not the least idea of how to set about promoting. The Colonel had also tried to have talks with June about it. It seemed to him that a good way to further the matter and elicit some illuminating remark from her was to tell her at intervals that Rion Gracey was a man of sterling worth in whose love any woman would find happiness. To all of which June invariably agreed with an air of polite acquiescence which the Colonel found very baffling. His pet was to him the sweetest of living women, but he had to admit it was not always easy for him to understand or manage her.

On the afternoon of the day he had heard of Rion’s expected arrival he had gone to see the new house a friend had just completed on Van Ness Avenue. The visit over he stood at the top of the flight of stone steps, looking up and down the great street, and wondering, as he tapped on his shoe with his cane, whether he would go across to Folsom Street for dinner or down to his club.

Suddenly his idle glance fell on a pair of figures on the block above, walking with the loitering step which betokens engrossing conversation. Their backs were toward him, but one at least he thought he recognized. He ran down the steps and in a few minutes had gained on them and was drawing quickly nearer. He had not been mistaken. The black silk skirt, held up to reveal a pair of small feet in high-heeled shoes, the sealskin jacket, the close-fitting black turban hat, below which hung an uneven shock of short, brown curls, were too familiar to him to permit of any uncertainty. The man he was not sure of, but as he drew closer he saw his face in profile, and with a start of surprised annoyance recognized Jerome Barclay.

At the corner they turned up the cross street. A short distance farther, on the angle of a small plaza, intruded into the gray city vista a green stretch of grass and shrubbery. The Colonel wondered if it was the objective point of their walk, and this thought added to the disquietude he already felt at the sight of Barclay, for when people went into parks they sat on benches and talked, sometimes for hours.

He was close at their heels before they heard his hail and turned. A momentary expression of annoyance, gone almost as soon as it came, passed over Barclay’s face. June looked confused and, for the first instant, the Colonel saw, did not know what to say.

“Well,” he said, trying to speak with genial unconsciousness, “what are you doing up here so far from your native haunts?”

“I met Miss Allen on the avenue just below there,” said Jerry quickly, “walking up this way to make a call on some friends of hers.”

He spoke with glib ease, but his eye, which lighted for an instant on June’s, was imperious with a command. June was taken aback by his smooth readiness. She did not like what he said, but she obeyed the commanding eye and answered with stammering reluctance:

“Yes, the Nesbits. I was going there this afternoon. They’re just a block beyond here.”

It was not exactly a lie, June thought, for had Barclay not appeared she would doubtless have gone to the Nesbits, wondering all the time what had happened to him. But Barclay had appeared, as he always did now at the time and place he so carelessly yet so scrupulously designated, and June would not have seen the Nesbits that afternoon.

“Suppose you take a little pasear with me instead of going to the Nesbits,” said the Colonel. “I’m not conceited, but I think I’m just as interesting as they are.”

“And what are you doing up here?” she said, her presence of mind, and with it her natural gaiety of manner, returning. “You’re as far from your native haunts as I am.”

“I was calling, too,” he answered, “on the Barkers. But I didn’t meet any one sufficiently interesting to keep me from fulfilling my duties, and I have seen the new house from the skylight to the coal-bin.”

“Never mind,” she said consolingly, “you’ve met me. That’s your reward for good conduct.”

They had arrived at the upper corner of the plaza where only the breadth of a street divided them from the green, tree-dotted sward, cut with walks and set forth in benches. Barclay, raising his hat and murmuring some conventional words of farewell, turned and left them, and the Colonel and his companion strolled across the road and over the grass toward a bench, behind which a clump of laurels grew shelteringly, a screen against the wind and fog.

“This is the most comfortable of all the benches,” said June artlessly as they sat down. “The laurels keep the wind off like a wall. Even on cold days, when the fog comes in, it’s a warm little corner.”

“You’ve been here before,” said the Colonel, looking at her out of the sides of his eyes.

A telltale color came into her cheeks, but the city and its ways were training her, and she managed to exclude confusion and consciousness from her face.

“Oh, yes,” she answered, “several times. I sometimes rest here after I’ve been taking a long walk.”

“That must be dull,” said her companion. “I can’t see anything cheerful in sitting on a park bench by yourself.”

He looked at her again. But his bungling masculine line of procedure was not of the kind to entrap even so untried a beginner. It made her smile a little, and then she looked down to hide the smile.

“Wasn’t it jolly that we met?” she said, stroking the satiny surface of her new jacket and presenting to his glance a non-committal profile. The Colonel knew her well enough by this time to realize that she intended neither to confess nor to be trapped into revelations of past occupancy of the bench. He returned to less intricate lines of converse.

“Who do you think’s to be here to-morrow?”

“A friend?”

“A friend from Foleys,—Rion Gracey, and Barney Sullivan with him.”

“Rion Gracey!” She looked pleased and slightly embarrassed. “Really—really!” She paused, her face full of smiles, that in some way or other showed disquietude beneath them.

“They’re down from Foleys and going on to Virginia in a day or two. Queer they came around this way, wasn’t it?”

Again the Colonel could not keep from attempts to plumb hidden depths. Again his inspecting eye noticed a fluctuation of color. June was unquestionably surprised by the news, but he could not be sure whether she was pleased.

“You’ll have to have them up to dinner,” he continued. “You saw so much of them last summer before you left that you’ll have to offer them some kind of hospitality.”

“Of course,” she said hastily, flashing an almost indignant look at him. “They’ll take dinner with us, or breakfast, or lunch, or anything they like. I’d love to see them and hear about everything up there. I want to hear how Barney Sullivan’s getting on with Mitty. I thought they’d be engaged by this time.”

“Perhaps they are”—it must be confessed that the Colonel’s interest in the love affairs of his friend Mitty sounded perfunctory—“I wish Rion was, too.”

“Yes,” in a small, precise voice, “wouldn’t it be nice?”

“It would make me very happy,” said the Colonel gravely, “very happy, June. You know that.”

“Would it?” with a bright air of innocent surprise. “Why?”

The Colonel turned and looked at her squarely, almost sternly.

“You know why, June Allen,” he said.

She had taken off her gloves and now suddenly slipped her hand into his and nestled nearer to him.

“Don’t talk solemnly,” she said, in a coaxing voice. “Don’t make me feel as if I was in church.”

He cast a side-glance at her, caught her twinkling eye, and they both laughed.

“You aggravating girl!” he said. “It’s all for your own good that I’m talking solemnly. I want you to be happy.”

“Well, I am happy, very happy. Don’t you think I look like a person who’s happy?”

He did not look at her, and she raised herself, and taking him by the two ears gently turned his face toward her.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, “but as you wouldn’t look at me I had to make you. Don’t I look happy?”

“Happy enough now,” he answered. “I was thinking of the future.”

“Oh, the future!”—she made a sweeping gesture of scorn—“the future’s so far away no one knows anything about it. It’s all secrets. Let’s not bother with it. The present’s enough.”

Her hand, as she held it up in front of her, suddenly caught her eye and fixed her attention.

“Look at my hands,” she said. “They’re getting quite white and ladylike. They’re losing their look of honest toil, aren’t they? How I’ve hated it!”

He held out his big palm and she placed her left hand, which was nearest him, in it. Her hands were small, the skin beautifully fine and delicate, but they showed the hard labor of the past in a blunting and broadening of the finger-tips. The Colonel looked at the little one lying in his.

“I don’t see that there’s anything the matter with them,” he said. “This one only wants one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A ring.”

This time June was caught.

“A ring?” she said. “Well, I have several, but they’re not very pretty, and I thought I’d wait till father gave me a really handsome one.”

“I don’t mean a handsome one. I mean a plain, little gold one; just a band and worn on this finger.”

He designated the third finger. June understood.

“Oh, Uncle Jim!” she said, trying to pull her hand away, blushing and rebellious.

The Colonel held it tight, feeling the opportunity too valuable to be trifled with.

“And Rion Gracey to put it on,” he added.

Her answer came almost angrily as she turned away her face.

“Not for a moment.”

“No, for a lifetime.”

There was no reply and the Colonel loosed her hand. She pushed it back into her glove saying nothing. As she began to fasten the buttons he said:

“Do you often meet Barclay when you are out walking, as you did this afternoon?”

Women, who are timid by nature, and who, combined with that weakness, have an overmastering desire to be loved and approved of, are of the stuff of which the most proficient liars can be made. Had June, in childhood, been intimidated or roughly treated she would have grown up a fluent and facile perverter of the truth. The tender influences of a home where love and confidence dwelt had never made it necessary for her to wish to conceal her actions or protect herself, and she had grown to womanhood frank, candid and truthful. Now, however, she found herself drawn into a situation where, if she were to continue in the course that gave her the happiness she had spoken of, she must certainly cease to be open, even begin to indulge in small duplicities. It was with a sensation of shamed guilt that she answered carelessly:

“No, not often. Now and then I have.”

“Rosamund says he doesn’t come to the house as much as he used.”

This was in the form of a question, too.

“Doesn’t he? I haven’t noticed much.”

Her heart accelerated its beats and she felt suddenly unhappy, as she realized that she was misleading a person especially dear to her.

“I’m glad of that, Junie dear. I don’t like him to be hanging round you. He’s not the man to be your friend.”

June began to experience a sense of misery.

“What are you down on him for?” she said. “I like him. I like him a great deal.”

It seemed to her that by thus openly voicing her predilection for Barclay she, in some way or other, atoned for her previous prevarications.

“Like him a great deal?” repeated the Colonel, staring somberly at her. “What does that mean?”

She was instantly alarmed and sought to obliterate the effect of her words.

“Oh, I like him very much. I think he’s interesting and handsome, and—and—and—very nice. Just that way.”

Nothing could have sounded more innocently tame. The simple man beside her, who had loved but one woman and known the honest friendship of others as uncomplex as himself, was relieved.

“Barclay’s not the man for a good girl to be friends with,” he continued with more assurance of tone. “He’s all that you say, handsome, and well educated, and a smooth talker and all that. But his record is not the kind a man likes. He’s done things that are not what a decent man does. I can’t tell you. I can’t talk to you about it. But rely on me. I’m right.”

“I know all about it,” she answered, turning round and looking calmly at him.

“All about it!—about what?”—he stammered, completely taken aback.

“About that hateful story of Mrs. Newbury.”

The Colonel’s face reddened slightly. He had the traditional masculine idea of the young girl as a being of transparent ignorance, off which the wickedness of the world glanced as bird-shot off the surface of a crystal ball. Now he was pained and shocked, not only that June should have heard the story but that she should thus coolly allude to it.

“Then if you’ve heard it,” he said almost coldly, “you should know without my telling you that Jerry Barclay’s no man for you to know, or walk with, or have any acquaintance with.”

“You don’t suppose I believe it, do you?” she said with the same almost hard composure.

This indeed was a new view of the situation. For six years the Colonel had heard the affair between young Barclay and Mrs. Newbury talked of and speculated upon. It had now passed to the stage of shelved acceptance. People no longer speculated. Their condemnation savored even of the indifference of familiarity. The only thing that nobody did was to doubt. And here was a girl, looking him in the face and calmly assuring him of her disbelief. Had he known more of women he would have realized how dangerous a portent it was.

“But—but—why don’t you believe it?” he asked, still in the stage of stammering surprise.

“Because I know Mr. Barclay,” she answered triumphantly, fixing him with a kindling eye.

“Well, that may be a reason,” said the Colonel, then stopped and drew himself to an upright position on the bench. He did not know what to say. Her belief in the man he knew to be guilty had in it a trustfulness of youth that was to him exceedingly pathetic.

“You can believe just what you like, dear,” he said after a moment’s pause, “it’s the privilege of your sex. But this time you’d better quit believing and be guided by me.”

“Why, Uncle Jim,” she said leaning eagerly toward him, “I’m not a fool or a child any more. Can’t I come to conclusions about people that may be right? I know Mr. Barclay well, not for as long as you have, but I shouldn’t be surprised if I knew him a great deal better. We saw him so often and so intimately up at Foleys, and he couldn’t be the kind of a man he is and be mixed up in such horrible scandals. It’s impossible. He’s a gentleman, he’s a man of honor.”

“Yes,” nodded the Colonel, looking at the shrubs in front of him, “that’s just what he’d say he was if you asked him.”

“And it would be right. He’s not capable of doing dishonorable things. He’s above it. Rosamund thinks so, too.”

“Oh, does she?” said the Colonel.

If he had not been so suddenly stricken with worry and foreboding he could not have forborne a smile at this citing of Rosamund as a court of last resort.

“Yes, Rosamund said she couldn’t believe it either. If you knew him as we do you’d understand better. It’s all lies. People are always talking scandal in this place—I’ve heard more since I came here than I heard in the whole of my life before. It’s a dreadful thing, I think, to take away a man’s character just for the fun of talking.”

She had spoken rapidly and now paused with an air of suspended interest, which was intensified by her expression of eager questioning. The Colonel looked at her. In a dim way she was struck, as she had been before, by the intense melancholy of his eyes—sad old eyes—that told of a life unfulfilled, devastated, at its highest point of promise.

“June, dear,” he said in a low voice, “you’re not in love with this man?”

The color ran over her face to the hair on her forehead. The directness of the question had shocked her young girl’s delicacy and pride. She tried to laugh, and then with her eyes down-drooped, said in a voice of hurried embarrassment:

“No, of course not.”

He smiled in a sudden expansion of relief. All was well again. In his simplicity of heart it did not occur to him to doubt her.