The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 26, 1905, Page 2

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. ——d This is installment | of “A Whirl nder,” by the | well-known California author- Gertrude Atherton. “A | rl Asunder” will appear in e ir llments. Following novel will appear “The Castaway,” by Hallie Erminie Rives, and later Booth Tar- kington's well-known little story, “Monsieur Beaucaire.” | Next week another great spe- cial feature begins—“the new Sherlock Holmes storles.” | walk the rest e said to rest in two hours row sauge precipitous ocking from whose rigid tr iy pointed arms looked not quivered since But he feit that he had oreover, that he had panioned breath . If he w not graceful impatience reminded 4 tired and nervous and to go dirty for s but the way you s. ‘We ain’t in Califor Gold out the way? nd a dispatch think much I we Californy felt an img e to throw the over the trestle, then laughed. beg your d he said, “I bad, but the lied g n rep st amuse eed , but the nit together tops and are 7 about the little The waile were decor- astrated weekly news- the gratuitous lithograph. . Sullivan, looking, under the ng influence of the weekly ar- ptured from mush, t Corbett, who 4 les In a dandified ere also several lithe y, rather elegant look redwood apout it, and occupied the hcnor at the head of the alked over and e]l as he could by the smoking lamp. head was In profile, severc in of post The outiine, as classic as the modern head ever is The chin wis lifted proudly, the nostrils looked capable of expan- 810! The brow and eyes suggested iect, the lower part of the face e and self-will and passion, per- s undeveioped cruelty and sensu- “Who is Miss Belmont?” he asked, nsb\‘he stztion agent left the telegraph “Oh, she’s one of the heiresses. That's our high-toned society paper. It's printin’ a series of Californy heir- esses. One of the other papers says as how it's 2 good guide book for conious furriners, and I guess about the size of it. She’s got a million, and nobody but an aunt, and she has her own way, I —tell— She somehow, redwoods tel folks I like a year 1in about 's goin® one of s. She’s had of your don’t stand girls—them 1y hunter before h their he’ st . money, so I guess he's all right. Be you a lord?” “I am not. I am a barrister, and the son of barrister. “What may that be? “I believe you call it lawyer out h—a lawyer's a gay bird, And don't he h a good The old man chuckled. “I never found them different from 5 What do you mean?” rippers. I've been in since and I could spin rns that would make your man. Lord, Lord, north. There Clive was to meet them, the old o J » tough. The young remain a few weeks, then marry in ain’t qu so bad, but they're San Francisco and take his wife back ones doing their best.” ifornia is rather a wild place, e Clive was 34, ten years older than Mary Gordon. He recalled the day It's :,umnn down n'o\‘;., he had proposed to her. She had Wt ukie gonsk A come down ‘the steps of her father's fathe e ndawger . Shee bR house in a blue gown and garden father, was a lawyer when he first hat and they had gone for a walk in come here, but he struck it rich in the woods. She wad not a clever Virginia, in ’74, and after that woraan, and she had only the white n't he a ripper. Oh, Lord! He and pink and brown, the rounded s a terror. But he done his duty by his girl; had her eddicated in Paris and Noo York, and never let no one cross her. He was as fine lookin’ ) I ever seen, almost as tall you be, and awful lines of youth, no positive beauty of face or figure;: but with tHe blind instinct of his race he had turned almost automatically to the type of woman who, time out of mind, has produced the strong-limbed, strong- brained men that have made a nation insolently great. She reminded him of his mother, with her even sweet- He's ghot his man and I believe it. rs before him. . i : ness of mature, her sympathy, her She was fond of him, too, poor thing, ) = and he made no bones about bein’ un- ki atmaenal sugyentine. - He 2ad known her since her early girlhood and grown fonder of her each year. She rested him, and had the divine feminine faculty of making him feel a batter and cleverer man than he was faithful to her—they don’t out here. A man's no good if you can’t tell a yarn or two about him. Well, Jack Belmont died five years ago and left about a million dollars to his girl. i i i - He'd had a long sight more, but she :]h::: ST iR e Wit ol was lucky to git that. They say as She had accepted him with the how she was awful broke up when he ed sweetest smile he had even seen, and he had wondered if other men were as fortunate. For two years he saw much of her, then she went to Amer- ica and he had plunged into his work and his man’s life, not missing her as consistently as he had expect- ed, but caring for her none the less. The Saturday mail brought him, un- intermittingly, a letter eight pages long, neatly written, and describing in detail the dailv life of her family a regular “old chronique aleuse,” said Clive, much inter= ‘What sort of a social position this Miss Belmont? Is she re- “Received? Glory, man—why, her father was a Southern gent—Mary- land, as I remember, and her mother wae from Bosto They led society here in the sixtie they're one of the old families of Californy. That's the reason Miss Belmont does as she damned pleases, und nobody dares say boo—ihat and the million. She’s an- cient aristocracy, she is. Receivedl Oh, Lord! Clive, much amused, asked, ‘“What does she do that is so dreadful?” “Oh, she's been engaged about fif- teen times; she rides about the coun- try in boy's clothes, and sits up all night under the trees at Del Monte talkin’ to a man, or gives all her dances to one man at a party and then cuts him the next day on the street; and when she gets tired of people comes up here without even her aunt. She used to run to fires, but she gave that up some years ago. She travels about the country for weeks without a chaperon, and once went camping alone with five men. Sometimes she'l fill her house up with men for a week, and mnot have no other woman, savin’ her aunt. Lately she's more quiet, they say, and has become a terrible reader. Last winter - she stayed up here for three months alone. Ih as how people talked. But I didn’t sec nothin’. She’s all right, or name ain’t Jo Bagly. Well, here you are, sir. Good{luck to ye! Keep to the road and don’t strike off on any of them side trails, and you can't go wrong. Evenin.” Clive went into the dark forest. What the old man had told him- of Miss Belmont had quickened his: im- agination, and he speculated about her for some moments; then his thoughts wandered to his English betrothed. He had not seen her for twe years. Her mother’s health fail- ing, her father had taken his family to Southern California. A year later Mrs. Gordon had died and her hus- band, having bought a ranch in which he was much interested, had written and of the strange people about tnem. They were calm, affectionate, interest- ing letters, which Clive enjoyed and to which he replied with a hurried . scrawl, rarely covering more than one page. An Englishwoman does not ex- pect much, but Mary oceasionally hinted sadly that a longer letter would make her happier; whereupon to Clive that he wanted his eldest ‘hh conscience hurt him and he wrote daughter for another year; by that Jher two pages. time "her sister would have finished - He 'enjoyed these two years, despite school and could take her place as hard work; he was popular with men head of the household. Lately he and women, and much was popular with him that adds to the keeper pleasures of life. When ' the time came to pack his boxes and to mfluhpuflahrge.n;:e«u and Mary had felt the debilitating influence of the southern climate and had gone to the redwoods of the B Pl pinh i I TMIITED A = fl;;_\ w7 SHARE )/} EyE rack from his last pipe of freedom but it d not occur to him to ask release. For the matter of that, al- though he had come to regard Mar Gordon as the inevitable rath the desired, he had strong tenderness wh : feel for such' women, which-endures, and never in any circumstances turns to hate. After a time Clive extinguished the lantern; it illumined road ' fit- fully, but accentuated the dense blackness of the fo The under growth was too thick to permit him to stray aside, and he wa d to form some idea of his surro eyes accustomed the: dark. Moon rays spls here and there through lofty cieft and mesh. Clive paused once and looked up. The straight tre sometimes slender, sometimes huge, were as in- flexible as granite, unbroken ecol- umn for a hundred feet or more; then thrusting out rigid pering trunk ir feet of space. was that of a dense forest suspended ir, sup ported above the low brush forest on a vast irregular colonnade, out of whose ruins it might have sprung. Clive had never known a stiliness so profound, a repose so absolute. But it .was not the peaceful repose of an English wood. It suggested the heavy brooding stillness of archalc days, when the ungasy world drowsed be- fore another convulsion. There was some other Influence abroad in tha woods, but’'at this timie its meaning eluded him, Suddenly it ocdurred to him that he could not see Mary Gordon in this forest. There was an irritating in- congruity in the very thought. She belonged to the sweet, calm beech woods of, England; nothing in her was in consonance with the storm and stress, the passion and fatality which this strange country suggested. Did the women "of California fit their frame? He experienced a strong de= sire for the companionship of a wo man wio would interprét this fore to him, then called himself an ass and strode on. An hour later hig became aware of a distant and deep murmur. It was crossed suddenly by a wild, hilarious yell. Clive relit the lantern and flashed it along the brush at his right. Presently he came upon a narrow trail. The prospect of adventure after sixteen days of clvilized monot- ony lured him aside and he walked rapidly down the bypath. In a few moments he found himself ‘on' the edge of a large clearing. The moon poured in without let and revealed a scene of singular and uncomfortable suggestion. ! In the middle of the space was & huge( funeral pyre; beyond it, evi- dently on a bler, Clive could see the stony, upturned feet of a mammoth corpse, lightly covered with a white pall. . Between the pyre and the trees nearer him a large caldron swung over a heap of fagots, which were beginning to ecrackle gently. The place looked as if about to be the scene of some awful rite. Englishmen are willing to believe anything about California, and ‘€live, who had " com- manded the admiration of his father’'s colleagues with his clear, quick, logi- cal brain, leaped at once to the con- clusion that this part of California was still°the hunting-ground of the Red Indian and jthat some mighty chief wvas about to be cremated, while his widow, perchance, sacrificed her- self in the caldron. He plunged his hands into his pockets and awaited developments with the nervous delight of a scheolboy. Although the forest was silent again he had an uneasy sense of many hu- man beings at no great distance. He had not long to wal There was a sudden red glare, which made the aisles of the forest seem alive with dancing,shapes, hideously con- torted. Simultaneously there arose a low, soft chanting, monotonous and musical, bizarre rather than weird. Then out of the recesses on the far side of the clearing, startlingly de- fined under the blaze of many torches held aloft in the background, emerged a high priest, with crown shaven, his beard flowing to his: waist, his white robes marking the austerity of his order. His hands were folded on his breast, his head bowed. Be- hind him, two .and two, followed twenty acolytes. swinging censers, the heavy perfume of the incense ris- ing to the pungent odor of the red- woods, blending harmoniously; the lofty forest aisles were become those of some vast primeval erypt. Then illusion was in a measure dis- pelled. The two hundred.torchbear- ers who came after wore the ordinary outing clothes of civilization. This' strange procession marched slowly round ‘the circle, passing peri- lously close to Clive. Then the priest and acolytes walked solemnly up-to the caldron, the others- dispersing themselves - irregularly, leaping occa- sionally and waving their torches. The fagots were: blazing; Clive fancied he heard a merry bubbilng. A mo- ment of : profound silence. the priest dropped something into caldron, chanting an invocation which Clive could make nothing, though, he was a scholar in The acolytes and hundred remn .tossed to the priest e and imaginations, which ke drop;