Pierre Loti - "Pecheur d'Islande"

Mary E. Mann - "Mrs. Day's Daughters"

William Mienhold - "Sidonia The Sorceress V2"

Mrs. Henry Wood - "The Channings"

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Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner

G >> Geraldine Bonner >> Treasure and Trouble Therewith




"I don't see why you say that," she protested; "I've told you any amount
of stuff."

"But not everything. You know that, Pancha."

He was now so keen, like a dog with its nose to the scent, that he forgot
her recent refusal and hooked his hand inside her arm. This time she did
not draw away and they walked on, close-linked, alone in the moonlit
street. Conscious of her reticences, ashamed of her lack of candor, and
yet afraid to make damaging revelations, she said defensively:

"I've told you as much as I want to tell."

He seized on that, in his eagerness pressing her arm against his side,
bending over her like a lover.

"Yes, but not all. And why not all? Why should you keep anything from
me?"

"But why _should_ I tell you?" she asked, her loitering step coming
to a stop.

As the situation stood the question was a poser. He did not want to be
her lover, had never intended it; his easy gallantry had meant nothing.
But now, seeing her averted face, the eyes down-drooped, he could think
of no reply that was not love-making. She stole a swift look at him,
recognized his hesitation, and felt a stab, for it was the love-making
answer she had expected. The mortified anger of the woman who has made a
bid for tenderness and seen herself mistaken surged up in her.

She jerked her arm violently out of his grasp and walked forward at a
swinging pace.

"What's the matter?" he said, chasing at her heels. "Are you angry?"

"I shouldn't wonder," she threw over her shoulder. "Being nagged at for
fun doesn't appeal to me."

"But what do you mean?--I'm all at sea."

She suddenly brought up short, and wheeling, faced him, her face
lowering, her breath quick:

"I'm the one to say that, for I don't get you, Boye Mayer, I don't see
what you're up to. But sometimes I think you've just come snooping round
roe to find out something. You come and you go, always so curious, always
wanting to know, pussy-footing round with your questions and your
compliments. What's on your mind?"

Mayer found himself in an impasse. She knew him too well and she was too
angry to be diverted with the temporizing lightness of their early
acquaintance. There was only one thing to say to her, and--the cause of
her excitement plain to his informed mind--it was not difficult to say.

"Pancha," he pleaded, "you don't understand."

"You bet I don't and I want to. I'd like to have it explained--I'd like
to know what you hang round me for. Do you think I'm hiding something? Do
you think I'm a criminal?"

"I think you're the most charming girl in the world," he protested.

She gave a smothered sound of rage and started off, faster than ever,
down the street. This time he kept up with her, and rounding a corner the
two lamps at the foot of the Vallejo's steps loomed up close at hand.

"Stop," he said. "Wait." He had no idea the hotel was so near, and
surprised at the sight of it his voice became suddenly imperious and he
seized her arm with a dominating grip. She tried to jerk it away, but he
held it and drew her, stiff and averse, toward him.

"You foolish one," he whispered. "Why, don't you see? I hang around
because I can't help it. I come because I can't stay away--I want to know
about you because I'm jealous of every man that ever looked at you."

With the last word he threw his arm about her and snatched her close.
Against him she suddenly relaxed, melted into a thing of yielding
softness, while his lips touched a cheek like a burning rose petal.

The next moment she was gone. He had a glimpse of her on the Vallejo
steps in swallow-swift silhouette and then heard the bang of the door.

In her room Pancha moved about mechanically, doing the accustomed things.
She lighted the light, took off her hat and jacket, brought the milk from
the window sill. Then, with the bottle on the table beside her, she sat
down, her hands in her lap, her eyes on space. She was as motionless as a
statue, save for the breaths that lifted her chest. She sat that way for
a long time, her only movements a shifting of her blank gaze or a
respiration deeper than the others. She saw nothing of what her glance
rested on, heard none of the decreasing midnight sounds in the street or
the house about her. An intensity of feeling had lifted her to a plane
where the familiar and habitual had no more place than had premonitions
and forebodings.




CHAPTER XIII

FOOLS IN THEIR FOLLY


"The Zingara" had run its course and given place to "The Gray Lady,"
which had not pleased the public. The papers said the leading role did
not show Miss Lopez off to the greatest advantage and the audiences
thinned, for Miss Lopez had transformed the Albion from a house of light
opera to a temple enshrining a star. The management, grumbling over their
mistake, laid about for something that would give the star a chance to
exhibit those qualities which had deflected so many dollars from the
"Eastern attractions" to their own box office.

Charlie Crowder and Mark Burrage, walking together in the early night,
turned into the Albion to have a look at the house and see Pancha in the
last act. They stood in the back, surveying the rows of heads in a dark
level, against the glaring picture of the stage, upon which, picked out
by the spotlight, Pancha stood singing her final solo. Crowder's eye
dropped from the solitary central figure to the audience and noted gaps
in the lines, unusual in the Albion and predicting "The Gray Lady's"
speedy demise. As the curtain fell he told Mark he was "going behind" for
a word with his friend, she would need cheering up, and Mark, nodding,
said he'd move along, he had work to do at home.

The floor of heads broke as though upheaved by an earthquake, and the
house rose, rustling and murmurous, and began crowding into the aisles.
The young man, leaning against the rail behind the last row, watched it,
a dense, coagulated mass, animated by a single impulse and moving as a
unit. Crowding up the aisle it looked like a thick dark serpent,
uncoiling its slow length, writhing toward the exit, the faces turned
toward him a pattern of pale dots on its back. Among them at first
unnoticed by his vaguely roving glance were three he knew--the two Alston
girls and Aunt Ellen.

It was always hot and stuffy in the Albion and Aunt Ellen had been
uncomfortable and fussed about it, and Chrystie was disappointed that her
favorite had not been able to make the performance a success. As they
edged forward she explained to Lorry that it wasn't Pancha's fault, it
was the sort of thing she didn't do as well as other things and she
oughtn't to have been made to do it. Then, her eye ranging, she suddenly
stopped and gave Lorry a dig with her elbow.

"There's Marquis de Lafayette. Do you see him?"

Lorry had, which did not prevent her from saying in a languid voice,

"Where?"

"Over there by the railing. You know he _is_ good-looking, Lorry, when
he's all by himself that way, not trying to be worthy of a college
education."

"Um," said her sister. "It's fearfully hot in here."

"I don't see why we ever came," Aunt Ellen moaned.

They were near him now and he saw them. For a moment he stared, then gave
a nod and reddened to his forehead.

"Oh, he's blushing!" Chrystie tittered as she returned the bow. "How
perfectly sweet!"

The first sight of them had given Mark a shock as violent as if he had
met them in an exploration of the South Pole or the heart of a tropical
forest. It took him some minutes to recover, during which he stood
rooted, only his head moving as he watched them borne into the foyer,
there caught in merging side currents and carried toward the main
entrance. It was not till they were almost at the door, Chrystie's high
blonde crest glistening above lower and less splendid ones, that he came
to life. He did it suddenly, with a sharp reaction, and started in
impetuous pursuit. His first movement--a spirited rush--carried him into
a family, a compact phalanx moving solidly upon the exit. He ran into
someone, a child, stammered apologies, placated an irate mother, then
craning his neck for his quarry, saw the high blonde head in the distance
against the darkness of the street.

The check was more than physical. It caused a sudden uprush of his old
timidity and he stood irresolute, in everybody's way, spying at the
distant golden head. It seemed as if they had wanted to avoid him, they
had gone so quickly, just bowed and been carried on--if only Chrystie
would look back and smile. Standing on his toes, jostled and elbowed, he
caught a glimpse of them, all three, outside the door. They appeared
preoccupied, the two girls talking across Aunt Ellen, with no backward
glances for a young man struggling to reach them--anyone could have seen
they had forgotten his existence. With a set face he turned and made for
the side exit. They had no use for him; he would go home to the place
where he belonged.

The bitterness of this thought carried him through the side exit and
there left him. Whatever they felt and however they acted, it was his
duty to see them on the car. Boor! clod! goat! He could still catch them
if he went round to the front, and he started to do it, facing the
emerging throng, battling his way through. That was too slow; he backed
out, turned into the street and ran, charging through streams that had
broken from the main torrent and were trickling away in various
directions. Rounding the corner he saw he was not too late. There,
standing on the curb, were Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, conspicuous in their
ornamental clothes, looking in the opposite direction up the street's
animated vista. He followed their eyes and saw a sight that made him
halt--Lorry, her satin-slippered feet stepping delicately along the
grimy pavements, her pale skirts emerging from the rich sheath of her
cloak. Beside her, responding to a beckoning hand, a carriage rattled
down upon Chrystie and Aunt Ellen. They had a carriage and she had had
to go and find it!

With a heart seared by flaming self-scorn, Mark turned and slunk away. He
slid into the crowd's enveloping darkness as into a friendly shelter. He
wanted to hide from them, crawl off unseen like the worm he was. This was
the least violent term he applied to himself as he walked home, cursing
under his breath, wondering if in the length and breadth of the land
there lived a greater fool than he. There _was_ a mitigating
circumstance--he had never dreamed of their having a carriage. In his
experience carriages, like clergymen, were only associated with weddings
and funerals. He thought of it afterward in his room, but it didn't help
much--in fact it only accentuated the difference between them. Girls who
had carriages when they went to the Albion were not the kind for lawyers'
clerks to dream of.

Inside the carriage, Aunt Ellen insisted on an understanding with the
livery stable man:

"Running about in the mud in the middle of the night--it's ridiculous!
Lorry, are your slippers spoiled?"

"No, Aunt Ellen. There isn't any mud."

"There might just as well have been. Any time in the winter there's
liable to be mud. Will you see Crowley tomorrow and tell him we won't
have any more drivers who go away and hide in side streets?"

"Yes, I'll tell him, but he wasn't hiding, he was only a little way from
the entrance."

"Having no man in the family certainly _is_ inconvenient," came from
Chrystie, and then with sudden recollection: "What happened to Marquis de
Lafayette? Why didn't he come and get it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure." Lorry was looking out of the window.

"Well, I must say if we ask him to our parties the least he can do is to
find our hacks."

"I think so, too," said Aunt Ellen. "The young men of today seem to have
forgotten their manners."

"Forgotten them!" echoed Chrystie. "You can't forget what you never had."

"Oh, do keep quiet," came unexpectedly from Lorry. "The heat in that
place has given me a headache."

Then they were contrite, for Lorry almost never had anything, and their
attentions and inquiries had to be endured most of the way home.

Crowder, contrary to his expectations, found Pancha in high good spirits.
When a piece failed she was wont to display that exaggerated
discouragement peculiar to the artist. Tonight, sitting in front of her
mirror, she was as confident and smiling as she had been in the first
week of "The Zingara."

"I'm glad to see you're taking it so well," he said. "It's pretty hard
following on a big success."

"Oh, it's all in the day's work. You can't hit the bull's eye every time.
The management are going to dig down into their barrel next week, hunting
for another gypsy role. They want me again in my braids and my spangles.
They liked my red and orange--Spanish colors for the Spanish girl."

She flashed her gleaming smile at him and he thought how remarkably well
she was looking, getting handsomer every day. Her words recalled
something he had wanted to ask her and had forgotten.

"Talking of red and orange, how about that anonymous guy that sent you
the flowers? You remember, back in the autumn--a lot of roses with a
motto he got out of a Christmas cracker?"

She had her comb in her hand and dropped it, leaning down to scratch
round for it on the floor.

"Oh, _him_--he's just petered out."

"Did you find out who he was?"

Up to this Pancha had been nearly as truthful with Crowder as she was
with her father. But now a time had come when she felt she must lie. That
secret intimacy, growing daily dearer and more dangerous, could not be
confessed. Crowder had been mentor as well as friend and she feared not
only his curiosity but his disapproval. He would argue, plead, interfere.
She disliked what she had to say, and as she righted herself, comb in
hand, her face was flushed.

"Yes, a chap from the East. He just admired from afar and went his way."

"Oh, he's gone." Crowder was satisfied. "Seen your father lately?"

"No, but I had a letter to say he'd be down soon."

The color in her face deepened. She knew that her father would ask even
more searching questions than Crowder and she was prepared to lie to him.
Biting her lip at the thought, she looked down the long spray of lashes
defined on her cheeks. Crowder stared at her, impressed anew by that
suggestion of radiant enrichment in her appearance.

"I say, old girl," burst from him, "do you know you're looking
something grand."

She raised her lids and let her glance rest on him, soft and deep. It was
a strange look to come from Pancha's bold, defiant eyes.

"Am I?" she said gently. "I guess I'm happy, that's all."

"Well, it's powerful becoming, believe me. And why are you, especially
with 'The Gray Lady' a frost?"

She rose, the red kimono falling straight about her lithe, narrow shape,
then stretched, a slow spread of arms, languid and catlike. Pressing her
hands on her eyes she said from smiling lips:

"Oh, there's no particular reason. It just happens so. I'm getting to
feel sure of myself--that's what, I guess. Now run along, old son, I'm
sleepy. 'The Gray Lady' does it to me as well as the audience.
Good-night."

Crowder was not the only one who had noticed Pancha's improved looks and
high spirits. Behind the scenes the failure of "The Gray Lady" had
produced dejection and rasped tempers. She alone seemed to escape the
prevailing gloom. She came in at night smiling, left a trail of notes
behind her as she walked to her dressing room, and from there clear
scales and mellow bars rose spasmodically as she dressed. Usually holding
herself aloof, she was friendly, made jokes in the wings, chatted with
the chorus, and when she left the old doorkeeper was warmed by her gay
good-night.

Her confreres were puzzled; it was quite a new phase. They had not
liked Miss Lopez at first; she gave herself airs and had a bad temper.
Once she had slapped a chorus woman who had spoiled her exit; at a
rehearsal she had been so rude to the tenor the stage manager had had
to call her down and there had been a fight. Now they wondered and
whispered--under circumstances conducive to ill-humor she was as sweet
as honey dropping from the comb. They set it down to temperament;
everybody from the start had seen she had it, and anyway there wasn't
anything else to set it down to.

What they saw was only a gleam, a thin shining through of the glory
within. It irradiated, permeated, illumined her, escaping in those smiles
and words and snatches of song because she could not hold it in. As she
had told Crowder, she was happy, and she had never been before. She came
out of sleep to the warming sense of it. It stayed with her all day, fed
on a note, a telephone message, a gift of flowers, fed on nothing but her
own thoughts.

It was the happiness found in little of one who has been starved,
nourished by trifles, tiny seeds flowering into growths that touched the
sky. She did not see Mayer as often as formerly and when she did their
talk was on other things than love. In fact he was rather shy of the
subject, did not repeat his kiss, was more comrade than wooer. But he
sought her, he had told her why and that was enough. What he had said she
believed, not alone because it seemed the only reasonable explanation of
his actions, but because she wanted to believe it. He had come, a
nonchalant wayfarer, and grown to care, said at last the words she was
longing to hear, and, hearing, she felt them true and was satisfied.

And then she had drifted, content to rest in the complete comfort of her
belief. The moment was enough, and she stood on the summit of each one,
swaying in blissful balance. Vaguely she knew she was moving on a final
moment, on a momentous, ultimate decision, and she neither cared nor
questioned. Like a sleepwalker she advanced, inevitably drawn, seeing a
blurred dazzle at the path's end in which she would finally be absorbed.

Everything that had made her Pancha Lopez, familiar to herself, was gone.
She was somebody else, somebody filled with a brimming gladness, with no
room for any other feeling. Her old, hard self-sufficiency seemed a poor,
bleak thing, her high head was lowered and gloried in its abasement. All
the fierce, combative spirit of the past had vanished; even her work,
heretofore her life, was executed automatically and pushed aside, an
obstruction between herself and the sight and thought of Mayer. The laws
that had ruled her conduct, the pride that had upheld her, melted like
cobwebs before the sun. She lived to please a man she thought loved her
and that she loved to the point where honor had become an empty word and
self-respect transformed to self-surrender. Whatever he would ask of her
she was ready to give. The Indian's blood prompted her to the squaw's
impassioned submission, the outlaw's to a repudiation of the law and the
law's restraints.

Early in January her father came down and when he asked her about Mayer
she lied as she had to Crowder. She told him she still saw the man but
that his devotion had lapsed, giving evidence of a languishing interest.
When she saw her father's relief she had qualms, but her lover's voice on
the phone, asking her to dine with him that night, dispersed them. All
the lies in the world then didn't matter to Pancha.

So she drifted, not caring whither, only caring that she should see
Mayer, listen to him, dwell on his face, try to catch his wish before it
was spoken. Her outer envelope was the same, performed the same tasks,
lived in the same routine, but a new creature, a being of fire, dwelt
within it.




CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT RIDER


February had been a month of tremendous rains. Days of downpour were
succeeded by days of leaden skies and damp, brooding warmth, and then the
clouds opened again and the downpour was renewed. Along the Mother Lode
the rivers ran bank-high and the camps sat in lagoons, the sound of
running water rising from the old flumes and ditches. Down every gully
that cut the foothills came streams, loud-voiced and full of haste as
they rushed under the wooden bridges.

It was a night toward the end of the month, no rain falling now, but the
sky sagging low with a weight of cloud. An eye trained to such obscurity
could have made out the landscape in looming degrees of darkness, masses
rising against levels, the fields a shade lighter than the trees. These
were discernible as huddlings and blots and caverned blacknesses into
which the road dove and was lost. To the left the chaparral rose from the
trail's edge in dense solidity, exhaling rich earth scents and the
aromatic breath of pine and bay. The roadbed was torn to pieces, ruts
knee-high; the stones, washed loose of soil, ringing to the blow of a
moving hoof.

A rider, advancing slowly, had noticed this and with a jerk of his rein,
directed his horse to the oozy grass along the side. Here, noiseless,
man and beast passed, a moving blackness against stationary black,
leaves and branches brushing against them. Neither heeded this; both
were used to rough ways and night traveling and to each every foot of
the road was familiar.

Under a roof of matted branches they drew up; the horse, the reins loose,
stretched its neck, blowing softly from widened nostrils. The man took a
match box from his pocket, struck a light and looked at his watch--it was
close on ten. The flame, breaking out in a red spurt, gilded the limbs of
the overarching trees, the glistening leaves, the horse's glossy neck and
the man's face. It glowed beneath the brim of his hat like a portrait
executed on a background of velvet varnished by the match's gleam--it was
the face of Garland the outlaw.

His hand again on the rein sent its message and the horse padded
softly on through the arch of trees to the open road. Had it been
brighter Garland could have seen to the right rolling country, fields
sprinkled with oak domes, falling away to the valley, to the left the
chaparral's smothering thickness. Between them the road passed, a pale
skein across the backs of the foothills, connecting camps and little
towns. Farther on the Stanislaus River, rushing down from the Sierra,
would crook its current, to run, swift and turbulent, beyond the
screen of alders and willows.

The road ascended, and on a hillcrest he again halted and looked back,
listening. Unimpeded by trees, the thick air holding all sound close to
the earth, he could hear far-distant noises. The bark of a dog came
clear--that was from Alec Porter's ranch on the slopes toward the
valley. Facing ahead he caught, faint and thin, the roar of the Crystal
Star's stamp mill. Over to the right--the road would loop down toward it
at the next turning--was Columbus, gutted and dying slowly among its
abandoned diggings.

He avoided this turn, taking a branch trail that slanted through the
thicket, wet leaves slapping against him, the horse's hoofs sucking into
the spongy turf. It was still and dark, the air drenched with the odors
of mossed roots and pungent leaves. When he emerged, the lights of
Columbus shone below, a small sprinkling of yellow dots gathered about
the central brightness of the Magnolia Saloon. The night was so still he
could hear the voices of roysterers straggling home.

Presently the rushing weight of the Stanislaus River swept along the
nearby bank. He could hear the rustle of its current, the wash of its
waves sucking and nosing on the stones; feel the breath of its swollen
tide chilled by mountain snows. It was up to the alder bushes, nearly
flood high, cutting him off from a detour he had hoped to make--he would
have to ride through San Marco. He put a spur to his horse and took it
boldly, hoping the mud would dull the sound of his passage. The cabins
and shacks that fringed the town were dark but in the main street there
were lights, from the ground floor of the Mountain Hotel where he caught
a glimpse of shirt-sleeved men playing cards, from the Pioneer Saloon,
whence the jingling notes of a piano issued. There was less mud than he
had expected and the thud of his flying hoofs was flung from wall to wall
and called out a burst of barking dogs, and a startled face behind a
drawn curtain in a red-lit cabin window.

Then away into the darkness--round Chinese Crossing, under the eaves
of the spreading plant of the Northern Light, up a hill and down on
the other side through a tunnel of trees to the Stanislaus Ferry. As
he passed into their hollow he could hear the thunder of the Lizzie
J's stamps across the river, beating gigantic on the silence, shaking
the night.

The stream showed a flat space between bulwarked hills, one yellow
spot--the light in the ferryman's window--shining like an eye unwinking
and vigilant. Garland's hail was answered from within the shack, and the
ferryman came out, a dog at his heels, a lantern in his hand. There was a
short conference, and the lantern, throwing golden gleams on the ground,
swung toward the flat boat, the horse following, his steps, precise and
careful, ringing hollow on the wooden boards.

They slid out into the current, the boat vibrating to the buffets of
little waves, the dog running from side to side, barking excitedly. The
ferryman, the lantern lifted, took a look at his passenger.

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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