Various - "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827"

E. A. Wallis Budge - "The Babylonian Story of the Deluge"

Thomas De Quincey - "Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. I."

Michael Russell - "Palestine or the Holy Land"

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Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner

G >> Geraldine Bonner >> Treasure and Trouble Therewith




Lorry went home convinced of Mayer's ignorance. Finding him at the hotel
had done half, his arguments and manner the rest. And during the drive
back his explanation of Chrystie's disappearance had retained a consoling
plausibility. She held to it fiercely, conned it over, tried to force
herself to see the girl impishly bent on a foolish practical joke.

But when she was in her own room, the blank silence of the house about
her, it fell from her and left her defenseless against growing fears. It
was impossible to believe it--utterly foreign to Chrystie's temperament.
She racked her memory for occasions in the past when her sister had
indulged in such cruel teasing and not one came to her mind. No--she
wouldn't have done it, she couldn't--something more than a joke had made
Chrystie lie to her. A sumptuous figure in her glistening dress, she
moved about, rose and sat, jerked back the curtains, picked up and
dropped the silver ornaments on the bureau. Her lips were dry, her heart
contracted with a sickening dread; never in all the calls made upon her
had there been anything like this; finding her without resources,
reducing her to an anguished helplessness.

If in the morning there was no word from Chrystie she would have to do
something and she could not think what this should be. Mayer had not
needed to warn her against giving her sister up to the tongue of gossip.
The most guileless of girls living in San Francisco would learn that
lesson early. But what could she do? To whom could she go for help and
advice? She thought of her mother's friends, the guardians of the estate,
and repudiated them with a smothered sound of scorn. They wouldn't care;
would let it get into the papers; would probably suggest the police. And
would she not herself--if Chrystie did not come back or write--have to go
to the police?

That brought her to a standstill, and with both hands she pressed on her
forehead pushing back her hair, sending tormented looks about her. If
there was only someone who would understand, someone she could trust,
someone--she dropped her hands, her eyes widening, fixed and startled, as
a name rose to her lips and fell whispered on the stillness. It came
without search or expectation, seemed impelled from her by her inward
stress, found utterance before she knew she had thought of him. A deep
breath heaved her chest, her head drooped backward, her eyelids closing
in a relief as intense, as ineffably comforting, as the cessation of an
unbearable pain.

She stood rigid, the light falling bright on her upturned face, still as
a marble mask. For a moment she felt bodiless, her containing shell
dissolved, nothing left of her but her longing for him. Like an audible
cry or the grasp of her hand drawing him to her, it went out from her,
imperious, an appeal and a summons. Again she whispered his name; but
she heard it only as the repetition of a solace and a solution, was not
aware of forces tapped in lower wells of being.

After that she felt curiously calmed, her wild restlessness gone, her
nightmare terrors assuaged. If she did not hear from Chrystie by midday
she would call him up at his office and ask him to come to her. She
seemed to have found in the thought of him not only a staff to uphold,
but wisdom to guide.

She drew the curtains and saw the first thin glimmering of dawn,
pearl-faint in the sky, pearl-pale on the garden. The crystal trimmings
of her bodice gave a responsive gleam, and looking down she was aware of
her gala array. She slipped out of it, put on a morning dress, and
denuded her hair of its shining ornament. It seemed long ago, in another
life, that she had sat in Mrs. Kirkham's box, rejoicing in her costly
trappings, glad to be admired.

Then she pulled a chair to the window and sat there waiting for the light
to come. It crept ghostly over the garden, trees and plants taking form,
the walks and lawns, a vagueness of dark patches and lighter windings,
emerging in gradual definiteness. The sky above the next house grew a
lucid gray, then a luminous mother-of-pearl. She could see the glistening
of dew, its beaded hoar upon cobwebs and grassy borders. There was no
footstep here to disturb the silence; the dawn stole into being in a deep
and breathless quietude.




CHAPTER XXX

MARK SEES THE DAWN


That same Tuesday afternoon Mark sat in the doorway of the cowshed
looking at the road.

It was the first period of rest and ease he had had since his arrival. He
had found the household disorganized, his father hovering, frantic, round
the sick bed, and Sadie distractedly distributing her energies between
her mother's room and the kitchen. It was he who had driven over to
Stockton and brought back a nurse, insisted on the doctor staying in the
house and made him a shakedown in the parlor. When things began to look
better he had turned his hand to the farm work and labored through the
week's accumulation, while the old man sat beside his wife's pillow, his
chin sunk on his breast.

Today the tension had relaxed, for the doctor said Mother was going to
pull through. An hour ago he had packed his kit and driven off to his own
house up the valley, not to be back till tomorrow. It was very peaceful
in the yard, the warm, sleepy air full of the droning of insect life
which ran like a thin accompaniment under a low crooning of song from the
kitchen where Sadie was straightening up. On the front porch, the farmer,
his feet on the railing, his hat on his nose, was sunk in the depths of a
recuperating sleep.

Astride the milking stool Mark looked dreamily at the familiar prospect,
the black carpet of shade under the live oak, the bright bits of sky
between its boughs, beyond the brilliant vividness of the landscape.
This was crossed by the tall trunks of the eucalyptus trees, all ragged
bark and pendulous foliage, the road striped with their shadows. He
looked down its length, then back along the line of the picket fence, his
glance slowly traveling and finally halting at a place just opposite.

Here his imagination suddenly restored a picture from the past--the
tramp asking for water. His senses, dormant and unobserving, permitted
the memory to attain a lifelike accuracy and the figure was presented to
his inward eye with photographic clearness. Very still in the interest
of this unprovoked recollection, he saw again the haggard face with its
lowering expression, and remembered Chrystie's question about
recognizing the man.

He felt now that he could, even in other clothes and a different
setting. The eyes were unmistakable. He recalled them distinctly--a very
clear gray as if they might have had a thin crystal glaze like a watch
face. The lids were long and heavy, the look sliding out from under them
coldly sullen.

As he pictured them--looking surlily into his--a conviction rose upon
him that he had seen them since then, somewhere recently. They were not
as morose as they had been that first time, had some vague association
with smiles and pleasantness. He was puzzled, for he could only seem to
get them without surroundings, without even a face, detached from all
setting like a cat's eyes gleaming from the dark. Unable to link them to
anything definite he concluded he had dreamed of them. But the
explanation was not entirely satisfactory; he was left with a tormenting
sense of their importance, that they were connected with something that
he ought to remember.

He shook himself and rose from the stool--no good wasting time chasing
such elusive fancies. The tramp had brought to his mind the money found
in the tules and he decided to walk up the road and try to locate the
spot described to him that morning by Sadie.

On the hillock, where eight months earlier Mayer had sat and cursed the
marshes, he came to a stand, his glance ranging over the long, green
floor. By Sadie's directions he set the place about midway between where
he stood and the white square of the Ariel Club house. If it _was_ the
tramp he had gone across from there, which would argue a knowledge of the
complicated system of paths and planks. It was improbable--from his
childhood he could remember the hoboes footing it doggedly round the head
of the tules.

His thoughts were broken into by a voice hailing him, a fresh,
reed-sweet pipe.

"Hello, Mark--what you doin' there?"

It was Tito Murano returning from the Swede man's ranch up the trail,
with a basket of eggs for his mother. Tito had become something of a hero
in the neighborhood. In the preceding autumn he had developed typhoid,
nearly died, and been sent to a relative in the higher land of the
foothill fruit farms. From there he had only recently returned with the
_reclame_ of one who has adventured far and seen strange lands.
Barelegged, his few rags flapping round his thin brown body, he charged
forward at a run, holding the egg basket out at arm's length. His face
was wreathed in happy smiles, for the encounter filled him with delight.
Mark was his idol and this was the first time he had seen him.

They sat side by side on the knoll and Tito told of his wanderings. At
times he spit to show his growth in grace, and after studying the long
sprawl of Mark's legs disposed his own in as close an imitation as their
length would permit. It was when his story was over and the conversation
showed a tendency to languish that Mark said:

"I was just looking out over there and trying to locate the place where
the bandits had their cache."

Tito raised a grubby hand and pointed.

"Right away beyont where you see the water shinin'. It's a sort of
island--I was out there after I come back but the hole was all washed
away and filled up."

"_You_ were out there? Do you know the way?"

Tito spit calmly, almost contemptuously.

"_Me? _I bin often--there ain't a trail I don't know. I could lead you
straight acrost. I took a tramp wonct; anyways I would have took him if
he'd let me."

"A tramp!" Mark straightened up. "When?"

The episode of the tramp had almost faded from Tito's mind. What still
lingered was not the memory of his fear but the way he had been swindled.
Now in company with one who always understood and never scolded, he was
filled with a desire to tell it and gain a tardy sympathy. He screwed up
his eyes in an effort to answer accurately.

"I guess it was last fall. Yes, it was, just before school commenced. I
wouldn't 'a done it--Pop'd have licked me if he'd 'a known--but he
promised me a quarter."

"Who promised you a quarter?"

"Him--the tramp. And I was doin' it, but he got awful mean, swore
somethin' fierce and said I didn't know. And how was he to tell and us
only halfway acrost?"

"You mean you only took him halfway?"

"It was all he'd let me," said Tito, on the defensive. "I tolt him it was
all right, but he just stood up there cursin' me. And then he got to
throwin' things, almost had me here"--he put his hand against his
ear--"like he was plumb crazy. But I guess he wasn't, for he wouldn't
give me the quarter."

"Did you leave him there?"

"Sure I did. I run, I was scairt. Pop and Mom'd always be tellin' me to
have nothin' to do with tramps. And it was awful lonesome out there and
him swearin' and firin' rocks."

Tito did not receive that immediate consolation he had looked for. His
friend was silent; a side glance showed him studying the tules with
meditative eyes. For a moment the little boy had a dreary feeling that
his confidence was going to be rewarded by a reprimand, then Mark said:

"Do you remember what the man looked like?"

"Awful poor with long whiskers all sort 'er stragglin' round. He'd a
straw hat and a basket and eyes on him like he was sleepy."

Again Mark made no response, and Tito, feeling that he had not grasped
the full depths of the tragedy, piped up plaintively:

"I'd 'a stood the swearin' and I could 'a dodged the rocks if he'd given
me the quarter. But I couldn't get it off him--not even a dime."

That had a good effect, much better than Tito's highest hopes had
anticipated.

"Well, he treated you mean, old man. And, take it from me--don't you go
showing the way to any more tramps. They're the kind to let alone. As for
the quarter I guess that's due with interest. Here it is." And a half
dollar was laid on Tito's knee.

At the first glance he could hardly believe it, then seeing it immovable,
a gleaming disk of promise, his face flushed deep in the uprush of his
joy. He took it, weighed it on his palm, wanted to study it, but instead
slipped it mannishly into the pocket of his blouse. His education had
not included a training in manners, so he said nothing, just straightened
up and sent a slanting look into Mark's face. It was an eloquent look,
beaming, jubilant, a shining thanks.

They walked back together, or rather Mark walked and Tito circled round
him, curvetting in bridling ecstasy. Mrs. Murano's temper being historic,
Mark took the egg basket, and Tito, all fears of accident removed,
abandoned himself to the pure joys of the imagination. He became at once
a horse and his rider, pranced, backed, took mincing sidesteps and long,
spirited rushes; at one moment was all steed, mettlesome and wild; at the
next all man, calling, gruff-voiced, in quelling authority.

Mark, the eggs safe, was thoughtful. So it must have been the tramp as he
had suspected. But the eyes--he could not shake off that haunting fancy
of a second encounter. All the way home his mind hovered round them,
strained for a clearer vision, seemed at moments on the edge of
illumination, then lost it all.

That night in his room under the eaves he did not sleep till late. The
house sank early into the deep repose following emotional stress, the
nurse's lamp brightening one window in its black bulk. Outside the night
brooded, deep and calm, with whispers in the great oak's foliage, open
field and wooded slope pale and dark under the light of stars. Mark, his
hands clasped behind his head, looked at the blue space of the window and
dreamed of Lorry. He saw her in various guises, a procession of Lorrys
passing across the blue background. Then he saw her as she had been the
last time and that Lorry had not passed with the rest of the procession.
She had lingered, reluctant to follow the fleeting, unapproachable
others, had seemed to draw nearer to him, almost with her hands out,
almost with a shining question in her eyes. Holding that picture of her
in his heart he finally fell asleep.

Some hours later he woke with the sound of her voice in his ears. She was
calling him--"Mark, Mark," a clear, thin cry, imploring and urgent. He
sat up answering, heard his own voice suddenly fill the silence loud and
startling, "Lorry," and then again lower, "Lorry." For a moment he had no
idea where he was, then the starlight through the open window showed him
the familiar outlines, and, looking stupidly about, he repeated, dazed,
certain he had heard her, "Lorry, where are you?"

The silence of the house, the large outer silence enfolding it,
answered him.

He was fully awake now and rose. The reality of the cry in its tenuous,
piercing importunity, grew as his mind cleared. He could not believe but
that he had heard it, that she might not be somewhere near calling to him
in distress. He opened the door and looked into the hall--not a sound. At
the foot of the stairs the light from his mother's room fell across the
darkness in a golden slant. He turned and went to the window. His
awakening had been so startling, his sense of revelation so acute, that
for the moment he had no consciousness of prohibiting conditions. When he
looked out of the window he would have felt no surprise if he had seen
Lorry below gazing up at him.

After that he stood for a space realizing the fact. He had had no dream,
the voice had come to him from her, a summons from the depths of some
dire necessity. He knew it as well as if he had heard her say so, as if
she _had_ been outside the window calling him to come. He knew she was
beset, needed him, that her soul had cried to his and in its passionate
urgency had broken through material limitations.

He struck a match and consulted his watch--a quarter to four. Then, as he
dressed and threw some clothes into a bag, he thought over the quickest
route to the city. A stage line to Stockton crossed the valley eight
miles to the south. By making a rapid hike he could catch the down stage
and be in San Francisco before midday. He scrawled a few lines to Sadie,
stood the note up across the face of the clock, and, his shoes in his
hand, stole down the stairs and out of the house.

The country slept under the hush that comes before the dawn. There was
not a rustle in the roadside trees, a whisper in the grass. Farmhouse
and mansion showed in forms of opaque black, muffled in black foliage
and backed by a blue-black horizon. Above the heavens spread, vast and
far removed, paved with stars and mottlings of star dust. The sparkling
dome, pricked with white points and blotted with milky stains, diffused
a high, aerial luster, palely clear above the land's dense darkness.
Mark looked up at it, unaware of its splendors, mind and glance raised
in an instinctive appeal to some remote source of strength in those
illumined heights.

As his glance fell back to the road he suddenly knew where he had seen
the eyes. There was no jar of recognition, no startled uncertainty. He
saw them looking at him from the face of Boye Mayer, standing in Lorry's
drawing-room with his hands resting on the back of a chair.

He stopped dead, staring ahead. Lorry's summons, the tramp, the man in
evening dress against the background of the rich room--all these drew to
a single point. What their connection was he could not guess, was only
aware of them as related, and, accepting that, forged forward at a
swinging stride. The beat of his feet fell rhythmic on the dust; his
breath came deep-drawn and even; his eyes pierced the dark ahead, fixed
on landmarks to be passed, goals to be gained, stations to leave behind
him in his race to the woman who had called.

Unnoted by him a pale edge of light stole along the east, throwing out
the high, crumpled line of the Sierra. The landscape developed from
nebulous shadows and enfoldings to hill slopes, tree domes, the clustered
groupings of barns. A stir passed, frail and delicate, over the earth's
face, a light tentative trembling in the leaves, a quiver through the
grain. Birds made sleepy twitterings; the chink of running water came
from hidden stream beds; plowed fields showed the striping of furrows on
which the dew glistened in a silvery crust. The day was at hand.




CHAPTER XXXI

REVELATION


While Lorry was still queening it in the front of Mrs. Kirkham's box,
while Chrystie was tossing in her strange bed, while Boye Mayer was
packing his trunk, while Mark was thinking of Lorry in his room under the
eaves, Garland, one of the actors in this drama now drawing to its
climax, stood against the chain of a ferry boat bumping its way into the
Market Street slip.

He was over it first, racing up the gangway and along the echoing passage
to the street. People growled as he elbowed them, plowed a passage
through their slow-moving ranks, and ran for the wheeling lights of the
trolleys. He made a dash for one, leaped on its step, and holding to an
upright, stood, breathing quickly, as the car clanged its way up the
great thoroughfare. He had to change by the Call Building, and his heart
was hammering on his ribs as he dropped off the second car at the corner
of Pancha's street.

Up its dim perspective he could see the two ground glass globes at the
Vallejo's steps. He wanted to run but did not dare--the habits of the
hunted still held--and he walked as fast as he could, sending his glance
ahead for her windows. When he saw light gleaming from them his head
drooped in a spasm of relief. All the way down the fear that she might
be in a hospital--a public place dangerous for him to visit--had
tortured him.

Cushing, behind the desk, yawning over the evening paper, roused at the
sight of him and showed a desire to talk. At the sentence that "Miss
Lopez was gettin' along all right," the visitor moved off to the stairs.
He again wanted to run but he felt Cushing's eyes on his back and made a
sober ascent till the turn of the landing hid him; then he rushed. At her
door he knocked and heard her voice, low and querulous:

"Who is it now?"

"The old man," he whispered, his mouth to the crack. It was opened by her
and he had her in his arms.

Joy at the sight and feel of her, the knowledge that she was not as he
had pictured in desperate case, made him speechless. He could only press
her against him, hold her off and look into her face, his own working,
broken words of love and pity coming from him. His unusual display of
emotion affected her, deeply stirred on her own account, and she clung to
him, weak tears running down her cheeks, caressing him with hands that
said what her shaking lips could not utter.

He supported her to the sofa and laid her there, covering her, soothing
her, his concern finding expression in low, crooning sounds such as women
make over their sick babies. When she was quieted he drew the armchair up
beside her, and, his hand stroking hers, asked about her illness. He had
read in the paper that it was a nervous collapse caused by overwork, and
he chided her gently.

"What did you keep on for when you were so tuckered out? Why didn't you
let up on it sooner? You could 'a stood the expense, and if you didn't
want to use your own money what's the matter with mine?"

"I didn't want to stop," she murmured. "Every day I kept thinking I'd be
all right."

"Oh, hon, that don't show good sense. How can I keep up my lick if I
can't trust you better? You've pretty near finished me. I come on it in a
paper up there in the hills-God, I didn't know what struck me. It's
tore me to pieces."

His look bore testimony to his words. He was old, seamed with lines,
fallen away from his robust sturdiness. She suddenly seemed unable to
bear all this weight of pitifulness--his, hers, the world's outside
them. At first she had resolved to keep the real cause of her illness
secret. But now his devastated look, his pathetic tenderness, shattered
her. She was a child again, longing to creep into the arms that would
have held her against all harm, droop on the rough breast where she had
always found sympathy. As the truth had come out under Growder's
kindness, the truth came again. But this time there were no
reservations; the rich girl took her place in the story. Others might
see in that a mitigating circumstance but not the man who valued her
above all girls, rich or poor.

Garland listened closely, hardly once interrupting her. When she finished
his rage broke and she was frightened. Years had passed since she had
seen him aroused and now his lowering face, darkened with passion, his
choked words, brought back memories of him raging tremendously in old
dead battles with miner and cattleman.

"Pa, Pa," she cried, stretching her hands toward him, "what's the
use--what can you do? It's finished and over; getting mad and cursing
won't make it any better."

But he cursed, flinging the chair from him, rumbling out his wrath,
beyond the bounds of reason.

"Don't talk so," she implored and slid off the sofa to her feet. "They'll
hear you in the next room. I can't afford to let this get around."

For the first time in her knowledge of him he was deaf to the claims of
her welfare.

"Who is this fancy gentleman?" he cried. "Where is he?"

"Oh, why did I tell you?" she wailed. "What got into me to tell you! I
can't fight with you--I won't let you go to him. There's no use--it's all
over, it's done, it's ended. _Can't_ you see?"

He made no answer and she went to him, catching at his arm and shoulder,
staring, desperately pleading, into his face.

"You talk like a fool," he said, pushing her away. "This is my job.
Where is he?"

As she had said, she was unable to fight with him. Her enfeebled body was
empty of all resistant force. Now, as she clung to him, she felt its
sickly weakness, its drained energies. She wanted peace, the sofa again,
the swaying walls to steady, the angry man to be her father, quiet in the
armchair. She forgot her promise to Crowder, her pledged word,
everything, but that there was a way to end the racking scene. Holding to
the hand that thrust her aside she said softly:

"There's a punishment coming to him that's better than anything _you_
can give."

His glance shifted to hers, arrested.

"What you mean?"

"He's done something worse than the way he's treated me--something the
law can get him for."

"What?"

"Sit down quiet here and I'll tell you."

She pointed to the overturned chair and made a step toward the sofa. He
remained motionless, watching her with somberly doubting eyes.

"It's true," she said; "every word. It comes from Charlie Crowder. When
you hear it you'll see, and you'll see too that you'll only mix things up
by butting in. They're getting their net ready for him, and they'll have
him in it before the week's out."

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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