Openings in the Old Trail

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Mr. Farendell started to his feet. But a lurch of the schooner as she
rose on the long swell of the Pacific sent him staggering dizzily back
to his seat, and checked his first wild impulse to return. He saw it all
now,--the fire had avenged him by wiping out his persecutor, Scranton,
but in the eyes of his contemporaries it had only erased HIM! He might
return to refute the story in his own person, but the dead man's partner
still lived with his secret, and his own rehabilitation could only
revive his former peril.


*****

Four years elapsed before the late Mr. Farendell again set foot in the
levee of Sacramento. The steamboat that brought him from San Francisco
was a marvel to him in size, elegance, and comfort; so different from
the little, crowded, tri-weekly packet he remembered; and it might, in a
manner, have prepared him for the greater change in the city. But he was
astounded to find nothing to remind him of the past,--no landmark, nor
even ruin, of the place he had known. Blocks of brick buildings, with
thoroughfares having strange titles, occupied the district where his
counting-house had stood, and even obliterated its site; equally strange
names were upon the shops and warehouses. In his four years' wanderings
he had scarcely found a place as unfamiliar. He had trusted to the
great change in his own appearance--the full beard that he wore and the
tanning of a tropical sun--to prevent recognition; but the precaution
was unnecessary, there were none to recognize him in the new faces which
were the only ones he saw in the transformed city. A cautious allusion
to the past which he had made on the boat to a fellow passenger had
brought only the surprised rejoinder, "Oh, that must have been before
the big fire," as if it was an historic epoch. There was something of
pain even in this assured security of his loneliness. His obliteration
was complete.

For the late Mr. Farendell had suffered some change of mind with his
other mutations. He had been singularly lucky. The schooner in which he
had escaped brought him to Acapulco, where, as a returning Californian,
and a presumably successful one, his services and experience were
eagerly sought by an English party engaged in developing certain disused
Mexican mines. As the post, however, was perilously near the route
of regular emigration, as soon as he had gained a sufficient sum he
embarked with some goods to Callao, where he presently established
himself in business, resuming his REAL name--the unambitious but
indistinctive one of "Smith." It is highly probable that this prudential
act was also his first step towards rectitude. For whether the change
was a question of moral ethics, or merely a superstitious essay in luck,
he was thereafter strictly honest in business. He became prosperous.
He had been sustained in his flight by the intention that, if he
were successful elsewhere, he would endeavor to communicate with his
abandoned fiancee, and ask her to join him, and share not his name but
fortune in exile. But as he grew rich, the difficulties of carrying out
this intention became more apparent; he was by no means certain of her
loyalty surviving the deceit he had practiced and the revelation he
would have to make; he was doubtful of the success of any story which
at other times he would have glibly invented to take the place of truth.
Already several months had elapsed since his supposed death; could he
expect her to be less accessible to premature advances now than when
she had been a widow? Perhaps this made him think of the wife he had
deserted so long ago. He had been quite content to live without regret
or affection, forgetting and forgotten, but in his present prosperity
he felt there was some need of putting his domestic affairs into a more
secure and legitimate shape, to avert any catastrophe like the last.
HERE at least would be no difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives
before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after
they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by
HER in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected
with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his
desertion--a sufficient cause in her own State--and re-married, he
would at least be more secure. He began, without committing himself,
by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. His wife, he learnt, had left
Missouri for Sacramento only a month or two after his own disappearance
from that place, and her address was unknown!

A complication so unlooked for disquieted him, and yet whetted his
curiosity. The only person she might meet in California who could
possibly identify him with the late Mr. Farendell was Duffy; he had
often wondered if that mysterious partner of Scranton's had been
deceived with the others, or had ever suspected that the body discovered
in the counting-house was Scranton's. If not, he must have accepted the
strange coincidence that Scranton had disappeared also the same night.
In the first six months of his exile he had searched the Californian
papers thoroughly, but had found no record of any doubt having been
thrown on the accepted belief. It was these circumstances, and perhaps
a vague fascination not unlike that which impels the malefactor to haunt
the scene of his crime, that, at the end of four years, had brought him,
a man of middle age and assured occupation and fortune, back to the city
he had fled from.

A few days at one of the new hotels convinced him thoroughly that he was
in no danger of recognition, and gave him the assurance to take rooms
more in keeping with his circumstances and his own frankly
avowed position as the head of a South American house. A cautious
acquaintance--through the agency of his banker--with a few business men
gave him some occupation, and the fact of his South American letters
being addressed to Don Diego Smith gave a foreign flavor to his
individuality, which his tanned face and dark beard had materially
helped. A stronger test convinced him how complete was the obliteration
of his former identity. One day at the bank he was startled at being
introduced by the manager to a man whom he at once recognized as a
former business acquaintance. But the shock was his alone; the formal
approach and unfamiliar manner of the man showed that he had failed to
recognize even a resemblance. But would he equally escape detection by
his wife if he met her as accidentally,--an encounter not to be thought
of until he knew something more of her? He became more cautious in going
to public places, but luckily for him the proportion of women to men was
still small in California, and they were more observed than observing.

A month elapsed; in that time he had thoroughly exhausted the local
Directories in his cautious researches among the "Smiths," for in his
fear of precipitating a premature disclosure he had given up his former
anonymous advertising. And there was a certain occupation in this
personal quest that filled his business time. He was in no hurry. He had
a singular faith that he would eventually discover her whereabouts, be
able to make all necessary inquiries into her conduct and habits, and
perhaps even enjoy a brief season of unsuspected personal observation
before revealing himself. And this faith was as singularly rewarded.

Having occasion to get his watch repaired one day he entered a large
jeweler's shop, and while waiting its examination his attention was
attracted by an ordinary old-fashioned daguerreotype case in the form of
a heart-shaped locket lying on the counter with other articles left for
repairs. Something in its appearance touched a chord in his memory; he
lifted the half-opened case and saw a much faded daguerreotype
portrait of himself taken in Missouri before he left in the Californian
emigration. He recognized it at once as one he had given to his wife;
the faded likeness was so little like his present self that he boldly
examined it and asked the jeweler one or two questions. The man was
communicative. Yes, it was an old-fashioned affair which had been left
for repairs a few days ago by a lady whose name and address, written by
herself, were on the card tied to it.

Mr. James Smith had by this time fully controlled the emotion he felt as
he recognized his wife's name and handwriting, and knew that at last
the clue was found! He laid down the case carelessly, gave the final
directions for the repairs of his watch, and left the shop. The address,
of which he had taken a mental note, was, to his surprise, very near
his own lodgings; but he went straight home. Here a few inquiries of
his janitor elicited the information that the building indicated in the
address was a large one of furnished apartments and offices like his
own, and that the "Mrs. Smith" must be simply the housekeeper of the
landlord, whose name appeared in the Directory, but not her own. Yet
he waited until evening before he ventured to reconnoitre the premises;
with the possession of his clue came a slight cooling of his ardor and
extreme caution in his further proceedings. The house--a reconstructed
wooden building--offered no external indication of the rooms she
occupied in the uniformly curtained windows that front the street.
Yet he felt an odd and pleasurable excitement in passing once or twice
before those walls that hid the goal of his quest. As yet he had not
seen her, and there was naturally the added zest of expectation. He
noticed that there was a new building opposite, with vacant offices to
let. A project suddenly occurred to him, which by morning he had fully
matured. He hired a front room in the first floor of the new building,
had it hurriedly furnished as a private office, and on the second
morning of his discovery was installed behind his desk at the window
commanding a full view of the opposite house. There was nothing strange
in the South American capitalist selecting a private office in so
popular a locality.

Two or three days elapsed without any result from his espionage. He came
to know by sight the various tenants, the two Chinese servants, and the
solitary Irish housemaid, but as yet had no glimpse of the housekeeper.
She evidently led a secluded life among her duties; it occurred to him
that perhaps she went out, possibly to market, earlier than he came,
or later, after he had left the office. In this belief he arrived one
morning after an early walk in a smart spring shower, the lingering
straggler of the winter rains. There were few people astir, yet he had
been preceded for two or three blocks by a tall woman whose umbrella
partly concealed her head and shoulders from view. He had noticed,
however, even in his abstraction, that she walked well, and managed the
lifting of her skirt over her trim ankles and well-booted feet with some
grace and cleverness. Yet it was only on her unexpectedly turning the
corner of his own street that he became interested. She continued on
until within a few doors of his office, when she stopped to give an
order to a tradesman, who was just taking down his shutters. He heard
her voice distinctly; in the quick emotion it gave him he brushed
hurriedly past her without lifting his eyes. Gaining his own doorway
he rushed upstairs to his office, hastily unlocked it, and ran to the
window. The lady was already crossing the street. He saw her pause
before the door of the opposite house, open it with a latchkey, and
caught a full view of her profile in the single moment that she turned
to furl her umbrella and enter. It was his wife's voice he had heard; it
was his wife's face that he had seen in profile.

Yet she was changed from the lanky young schoolgirl he had wedded ten
years ago, or, at least, compared to what his recollection of her had
been. Had he ever seen her as she really was? Surely somewhere in that
timid, freckled, half-grown bride he had known in the first year of
their marriage the germ of this self-possessed, matured woman was
hidden. There was the tone of her voice; he had never recalled it before
as a lover might, yet now it touched him; her profile he certainly
remembered, but not with the feeling it now produced in him. Would he
have ever abandoned her had she been like that? Or had HE changed, and
was this no longer his old self?--perhaps even a self SHE would never
recognize again? James Smith had the superstitions of a gambler, and
that vague idea of fate that comes to weak men; a sudden fright seized
him, and he half withdrew from the window lest she should observe him,
recognize him, and by some act precipitate that fate.

By lingering beyond the usual hour for his departure he saw her again,
and had even a full view of her face as she crossed the street. The
years had certainly improved her; he wondered with a certain nervousness
if she would think they had done the same for him. The complacency with
which he had at first contemplated her probable joy at recovering him
had become seriously shaken since he had seen her; a woman as well
preserved and good-looking as that, holding a certain responsible
and, no doubt, lucrative position, must have many admirers and be
independent. He longed to tell her now of his fortune, and yet shrank
from the test its exposure implied. He waited for her return until
darkness had gathered, and then went back to his lodgings a little
chagrined and ill at ease. It was rather late for her to be out alone!
After all, what did he know of her habits or associations? He recalled
the freedom of Californian life, and the old scandals relating to the
lapses of many women who had previously led blameless lives in the
Atlantic States. Clearly it behooved him to be cautious. Yet he
walked late that night before the house again, eager to see if she had
returned, and with WHOM? He was restricted in his eagerness by the
fear of detection, but he gathered very little knowledge of her habits;
singularly enough nobody seemed to care. A little piqued at this, he
began to wonder if he were not thinking too much of this woman to whom
he still hesitated to reveal himself. Nevertheless, he found himself
that night again wandering around the house, and even watching with some
anxiety the shadow which he believed to be hers on the window-blind
of the room where he had by discreet inquiry located her. Whether his
memory was stimulated by his quest he never knew, but presently he was
able to recall step by step and incident by incident his early courtship
of her and the brief days of their married life. He even remembered the
day she accepted him, and even dwelt upon it with a sentimental thrill
that he probably never felt at the time, and it was a distinct feature
of his extraordinary state of mind and its concentration upon this
particular subject that he presently began to look upon HIMSELF as the
abandoned and deserted conjugal partner, and to nurse a feeling of deep
injury at her hands! The fact that he was thinking of her, and she,
probably, contented with her lot, was undisturbed by any memory of him,
seemed to him a logical deduction of his superior affection.

It was, therefore, quite as much in the attitude of a reproachful and
avenging husband as of a merely curious one that, one afternoon, seeing
her issue from her house at an early hour, he slipped down the stairs
and began to follow her at a secure distance. She turned into the
principal thoroughfare, and presently made one of the crowd who were
entering a popular place of amusement where there was an afternoon
performance. So complete was his selfish hallucination, that he smiled
bitterly at this proof of heartless indifference, and even so far
overcame his previous caution as to actually brush by her somewhat
rudely as he entered the building at the same moment. He was conscious
that she lifted her eyes a little impatiently to the face of the awkward
stranger; he was equally, but more bitterly, conscious that she had not
recognized him! He dropped into a seat behind her; she did not look at
him again with even a sense of disturbance; the momentary contact had
evidently left no impression upon her. She glanced casually at
her neighbors on either side, and presently became absorbed in the
performance. When it was over she rose, and on her way out recognized
and exchanged a few words with one or two acquaintances. Again he
heard her familiar voice, almost at his elbow, raised with no more
consciousness of her contiguity to him than if he were a mere ghost.
The thought struck him for the first time with a hideous and appalling
significance. What was he but a ghost to her--to every one! A man dead,
buried, and forgotten! His vanity and self-complacency vanished before
this crushing realization of the hopelessness of his existence. Dazed
and bewildered, he mingled blindly and blunderingly with the departing
crowd, tossed here and there as if he were an invisible presence,
stumbling over the impeding skirts of women with a vague apology they
heeded not, and which seemed in his frightened ears as hollow as a voice
from the grave.

When he at last reached the street he did not look back, but wandered
abstractedly through by-streets in the falling rain, scarcely realizing
where he was, until he found himself drenched through, with his closed
umbrella in his tremulous hand, standing at the half-submerged levee
beside the overflowed river. Here again he realized how completely he
had been absorbed and concentrated in his search for his wife during the
last three weeks; he had never been on the levee since his arrival. He
had taken no note of the excitement of the citizens over the alarming
reports of terrible floods in the mountains, and the daily and hourly
fear that they experienced of disastrous inundation from the surcharged
river. He had never thought of it, yet he had read of it, and even
talked, and yet now for the first time in his selfish, blind absorption
was certain of it. He stood still for some time, watching doggedly the
enormous yellow stream laboring with its burden and drift from many
a mountain town and camp, moving steadily and fatefully towards the
distant bay, and still more distant and inevitable ocean. For a few
moments it vaguely fascinated and diverted him; then it as vaguely lent
itself to his one dominant, haunting thought. Yes, it was pointing him
the only way out,--the path to the distant ocean and utter forgetfulness
again!

The chill of his saturated clothing brought him to himself once more,
he turned and hurried home. He went tiredly to his bedroom, and while
changing his garments there came a knock at the door. It was the
porter to say that a lady had called, and was waiting for him in the
sitting-room. She had not given her name.

The closed door prevented the servant from seeing the extraordinary
effect produced by this simple announcement upon the tenant. For
one instant James Smith remained spellbound in his chair. It was
characteristic of his weak nature and singular prepossession that
he passed in an instant from the extreme of doubt to the extreme of
certainty and conviction. It was his wife! She had recognized him in
that moment of encounter at the entertainment; had found his address,
and had followed him here! He dressed himself with feverish haste, not,
however, without a certain care of his appearance and some selection of
apparel, and quickly forecast the forthcoming interview in his mind.
For the pendulum had swung back; Mr. James Smith was once more the
self-satisfied, self-complacent, and discreetly cautious husband that he
had been at the beginning of his quest, perhaps with a certain sense
of grievance superadded. He should require the fullest explanations and
guarantees before committing himself,--indeed, her present call might be
an advance that it would be necessary for him to check. He even pictured
her pleading at his feet; a very little stronger effort of his Alnaschar
imagination would have made him reject her like the fatuous Persian
glass peddler.

He opened the door of the sitting-room deliberately, and walked in with
a certain formal precision. But the figure of a woman arose from the
sofa, and with a slight outcry, half playful, half hysterical, threw
herself upon his breast with the single exclamation, "Jim!" He started
back from the double shock. For the woman was NOT his wife! A woman
extravagantly dressed, still young, but bearing, even through her
artificially heightened color, a face worn with excitement, excess, and
premature age. Yet a face that as he disengaged himself from her arms
grew upon him with a terrible recognition, a face that he had once
thought pretty, inexperienced, and innocent,--the face of the widow of
his former partner, Cutler, the woman he was to have married on the day
he fled. The bitter revulsion of feeling and astonishment was evidently
visible in his face, for she, too, drew back for a moment as they
separated. But she had evidently been prepared, if not pathetically
inured to such experiences. She dropped into a chair again with a dry
laugh, and a hard metallic voice, as she said,--

"Well, it's YOU, anyway--and you can't get out of it."

As he still stared at her, in her inconsistent finery, draggled and
wet by the storm, at her limp ribbons and ostentatious jewelry, she
continued, in the same hard voice,--

"I thought I spotted you once or twice before; but you took no notice of
me, and I reckoned I was mistaken. But this afternoon at the Temple of
Music"--

"Where?" said James Smith harshly.

"At the Temple--the San Francisco Troupe performance--where you brushed
by me, and I heard your voice saying, 'Beg pardon!' I says, 'That's Jim
Farendell.'"

"Farendell!" burst out James Smith, half in simulated astonishment, half
in real alarm.

"Well! Smith, then, if you like better," said the woman impatiently;
"though it's about the sickest and most played-out dodge of a name you
could have pitched upon. James Smith, Don Diego Smith!" she repeated,
with a hysteric laugh. "Why, it beats the nigger minstrels all hollow!
Well, when I saw you there, I said, 'That's Jim Farendell, or his twin
brother;' I didn't say 'his ghost,' mind you; for, from the beginning,
even before I knew it all, I never took any stock in that fool yarn
about your burnt bones being found in your office."

"Knew all, knew what?" demanded the man, with a bravado which he
nevertheless felt was hopeless.

She rose, crossed the room, and, standing before him, placed one hand
upon her hip as she looked at him with half-pitying effrontery.

"Look here, Jim," she began slowly, "do you know what you're doing?
Well, you're making me tired!" In spite of himself, a half-superstitious
thrill went through him as her words and attitude recalled the dead
Scranton. "Do you suppose that I don't know that you ran away the night
of the fire? Do you suppose that I don't know that you were next to
ruined that night, and that you took that opportunity of skedaddling
out of the country with all the money you had left, and leaving folks
to imagine you were burnt up with the books you had falsified and the
accounts you had doctored! It was a mean thing for you to do to me, Jim,
for I loved you then, and would have been fool enough to run off with
you if you'd told me all, and not left me to find out that you had lost
MY money--every cent Cutler had left me in the business--with the rest."

With the fatuousness of a weak man cornered, he clung to unimportant
details. "But the body was believed to be mine by every one," he
stammered angrily. "My papers and books were burnt,--there was no
evidence."

"And why was there not?" she said witheringly, staring doggedly in his
face. "Because I stopped it! Because when I knew those bones and rags
shut up in that office weren't yours, and was beginning to make a row
about it, a strange man came to me and said they were the remains of a
friend of his who knew your bankruptcy and had come that night to warn
you,--a man whom you had half ruined once, a man who had probably lost
his life in helping you away. He said if I went on making a fuss he'd
come out with the whole truth--how you were a thief and a forger,
and"--she stopped.

"And what else?" he asked desperately, dreading to hear his wife's name
next fall from her lips.

"And that--as it could be proved that his friend knew your secrets,"
she went on in a frightened, embarrassed voice, "you might be accused of
making away with him."

For a moment James Smith was appalled; he had never thought of this. As
in all his past villainy he was too cowardly to contemplate murder,
he was frightened at the mere accusation of it. "But," he stammered,
forgetful of all save this new terror, "he KNEW I wouldn't be such a
fool, for the man himself told me Duffy had the papers, and killing him
wouldn't have helped me."

Mrs. Cutler stared at him a moment searchingly, and then turned wearily
away. "Well," she said, sinking into her chair again, "he said if I'd
shut my mouth he'd shut his--and--I did. And this," she added,
throwing her hands from her lap, a gesture half of reproach and half of
contempt,--"this is what I get for it."