Sally Dows and Other Stories

B >> Bret Harte >> Sally Dows and Other Stories


"Did you come here to insult my husband?" said Mrs. Bunker in the rage
of desperation.

"To insult yo' husband! Well--I came here to get a letter that his wife
received from his political and natural enemy and--perhaps I DID!" With
a side glance at Mrs. Bunker's crimson cheek she added carelessly, "I
have nothing against Captain Bunker; he's a straightforward man and
must go with his kind. He helped those hounds of Vigilantes because he
believes in them. We couldn't bribe him if we wanted to. And we don't."

If she only knew something of this woman's relations to Marion--which
she only instinctively suspected--and could retaliate upon her, Mrs.
Bunker felt she would have given up her life at that moment.

"Colonel Marion seems to find plenty that he can bribe," she said
roughly, "and I've yet to know who YOU are to sit in judgment on them.
You've got your letter, take it and go! When he wants to send you
another through me, somebody else must come for it, not you. That's
all!"

She drew back as if to let the intruder pass, but the lady, without
moving a muscle, finished the reading of her letter, then stood
up quietly and began carefully to draw her handsome cloak over her
shoulders. "Yo' want to know who I am, Mrs. Bunker," she said, arranging
the velvet collar under her white oval chin. "Well, I'm a So'th'n woman
from Figinya, and I'm Figinyan first, last, and all the time." She shook
out her sleeves and the folds of her cloak. "I believe in State rights
and slavery--if you know what that means. I hate the North, I hate the
East, I hate the West. I hate this nigger Government, I'd kill that man
Lincoln quicker than lightning!" She began to draw down the fingers of
her gloves, holding her shapely hands upright before her. "I'm hard and
fast to the Cause. I gave up house and niggers for it." She began to
button her gloves at the wrist with some difficulty, tightly setting
together her beautiful lips as she did so. "I gave up my husband for
it, and I went to the man who loved it better and had risked more for it
than ever he had. Cunnle Marion's my friend. I'm Mrs. Fairfax,
Josephine Hardee that was; HIS disciple and follower. Well, maybe those
puritanical No'th'n folks might give it another name!"

She moved slowly towards the door, but on the threshold paused, as
Colonel Marion had, and came back to Mrs. Bunker with an outstretched
hand. "I don't see that yo' and me need quo'll. I didn't come here for
that. I came here to see yo'r husband, and seeing YO' I thought it was
only right to talk squarely to yo', as yo' understand I WOULDN'T talk to
yo'r husband. Mrs. Bunker, I want yo'r husband to take me away--I want
him to take me to the cunnle. If I tried to go in any other way I'd
be watched, spied upon and followed, and only lead those hounds on his
track. I don't expect yo' to ASK yo' husband for me, but only not to
interfere when I do."

There was a touch of unexpected weakness in her voice and a look of pain
in her eyes which was not unlike what Mrs. Bunker had seen and pitied in
Marion. But they were the eyes of a woman who had humbled her, and Mrs.
Bunker would have been unworthy her sex if she had not felt a cruel
enjoyment in it. Yet the dominance of the stranger was still so strong
that she did not dare to refuse the proffered hand. She, however,
slipped the ring from her finger and laid it in Mrs. Fairfax's palm.

"You can take that with you," she said, with a desperate attempt to
imitate the other's previous indifference. "I shouldn't like to deprive
you and YOUR FRIEND of the opportunity of making use of it again. As for
MY husband, I shall say nothing of you to him as long as you say nothing
to him of me--which I suppose is what you mean."

The insolent look came back to Mrs. Fairfax's face. "I reckon yo' 're
right," she said quietly, putting the ring in her pocket as she fixed
her dark eyes on Mrs. Bunker, "and the ring may be of use again.
Good-by, Mrs. Bunker."

She waved her hand carelessly, and turning away passed out of the house.
A moment later the boat and its two occupants pushed from the shore, and
disappeared round the Point.

Then Mrs. Bunker looked round the room, and down upon her empty finger,
and knew that it was the end of her dream. It was all over now--indeed,
with the picture of that proud, insolent woman before her she wondered
if it had ever begun. This was the woman she had allowed herself to
think SHE might be. This was the woman HE was thinking of when he sat
there; this was the Mrs. Fairfax the officers had spoken of, and who
had made her--Mrs. Bunker--the go-between for their love-making! All
the work that she had done for him, the deceit she had practiced on her
husband, was to bring him and this woman together! And they both knew
it, and had no doubt laughed at her and her pretensions!

It was with a burning cheek that she thought how she had intended to go
to Marion, and imagined herself arriving perhaps to find that shameless
woman already there. In her vague unformulated longings she had never
before realized the degradation into which her foolish romance might
lead her. She saw it now; that humiliating moral lesson we are all apt
to experience in the accidental display of our own particular vices in
the person we hate, she had just felt in Mrs. Fairfax's presence. With
it came the paralyzing fear of her husband's discovery of her secret.
Secure as she had been in her dull belief that he had in some way
wronged her by marrying her, she for the first time began to doubt if
this condoned the deceit she had practiced on him. The tribute Mrs.
Fairfax had paid him--this appreciation of his integrity and honesty
by an enemy and a woman like herself--troubled her, frightened her, and
filled her with her first jealousy! What if this woman should tell him
all; what if she should make use of him as Marion had of her! Zephas was
a strong Northern partisan, but was he proof against the guileful
charms of such a devil? She had never thought before of questioning his
fidelity to her; she suddenly remembered now some rough pleasantries of
Captain Simmons in regard to the inconstancy of his calling. No! there
was but one thing for her to do: she would make a clean breast to him;
she would tell him everything she had done except the fatal fancy that
compelled her to it! She began to look for his coming now with alternate
hope and fear--with unabated impatience! The night that he should have
arrived passed slowly; morning came, but not Zephas. When the mist had
lifted she ran impatiently to the rocks and gazed anxiously towards the
lower bay. There were a few gray sails scarce distinguishable above
the grayer water--but they were not his. She glanced half mechanically
seaward, and her eyes became suddenly fixed. There was no mistake! She
knew the rig!--she could see the familiar white lap-streak as the vessel
careened on the starboard tack--it was her husband's schooner slowly
creeping out of the Golden Gate!


PART III.


Her first wild impulse was to run to the cove, for the little dingey
always moored there, and to desperately attempt to overtake him. But
the swift consciousness of its impossibility was followed by a dull,
bewildering torpor, that kept her motionless, helplessly following the
vessel with straining eyes, as if they could evoke some response from
its decks. She was so lost in this occupation that she did not see that
a pilot-boat nearly abreast of the cove had put out a two-oared gig,
which was pulling quickly for the rocks. When she saw it, she trembled
with the instinct that it brought her intelligence. She was right;
it was a brief note from her husband, informing her that he had been
hurriedly dispatched on a short sea cruise; that in order to catch the
tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain
everything on his return. Her relief was only partial; she was already
experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble
one. He could easily have "fetched" the bluff in tacking out of the Gate
and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat. The next day she
locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where
the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took up passengers to San
Francisco. Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this last trip;
indeed, did not know that he had gone out of the Bay. Mrs. Bunker was
seized with a desperate idea. She called upon the Secretary of the
Fishing Trust. That gentle man was business-like, but neither expansive
nor communicative. Her husband had NOT been ordered out to sea by them;
she ought to know that Captain Bunker was now his own master, choosing
his own fishing grounds, and his own times and seasons. He was not
aware of any secret service for the Company in which Captain Bunker was
engaged. He hoped Mrs. Bunker would distinctly remember that the little
matter of the duel to which she referred was an old bygone affair,
and never anything but a personal matter, in which the Fishery had no
concern whatever, and in which HE certainly should not again engage. He
would advise Mrs. Bunker, if she valued her own good, and especially her
husband's, to speedily forget all about it. These were ugly times, as
it was. If Mrs. Bunker's services had not been properly rewarded or
considered it was certainly a great shame, but really HE could not be
expected to make it good. Certain parties had cost him trouble enough
already. Besides, really, she must see that his position between her
husband, whom he respected, and a certain other party was a delicate
one. But Mrs. Bunker heard no more. She turned and ran down the
staircase, carrying with her a burning cheek and blazing eye that
somewhat startled the complacent official.

She did not remember how she got home again. She had a vague
recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the
people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived
by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in
knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the
bulletin boards that had such strange legends as "The Crisis," "Details
of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government," "The Assassin of
Henderson to the Fore Again," "Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier."
Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied
they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried
treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her
benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had
happened long ago. When she reached her house, late that night, the
familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with
it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it,
that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that
with their meeting she would know it no more. For through all her
childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one
steadfast resolution. She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst.
Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet
him.

And so the days and nights slowly passed. The solitude which her
previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions
now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery. Had she
been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have
suffered less. Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest
knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she
accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her
wrongdoing. Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs. Fairfax--and SHE
could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs. Bunker knew now
that she herself had never had one--and was alone! Mrs. Fairfax had
broken openly with her husband; but SHE had DECEIVED hers, and the
experience and reckoning were still to come. In her miserable confession
it was not strange that this half child, half woman, sometimes looked
towards that gray sea, eternally waiting for her,--that sea which had
taken everything from her and given her nothing in return,--for an
obliterating and perhaps exonerating death!

The third day of her waiting isolation was broken upon by another
intrusion. The morning had been threatening, with an opaque, motionless,
livid arch above, which had taken the place of the usual flying scud and
shaded cloud masses of the rainy season. The whole outlying ocean, too,
beyond the bar, appeared nearer, and even seemed to be lifted higher
than the Bay itself, and was lit every now and then with wonderful
clearness by long flashes of breaking foam like summer lightning. She
knew that this meant a southwester, and began, with a certain mechanical
deliberation, to set her little domain in order against the coming gale.
She drove the cows to the rude shed among the scrub oaks, she collected
the goats and young kids in the corral, and replenished the stock of
fuel from the woodpile. She was quite hidden in the shrubbery when she
saw a boat making slow headway against the wind towards the little cove
where but a moment before she had drawn up the dingey beyond the reach
of breaking seas. It was a whaleboat from Saucelito containing a few
men. As they neared the landing she recognized in the man who seemed to
be directing the boat the second friend of Colonel Marion--the man who
had come with the Secretary to take him off, but whom she had never
seen again. In her present horror of that memory she remained hidden,
determined at all hazards to avoid a meeting. When they had landed,
one of the men halted accidentally before the shrubbery where she was
concealed as he caught his first view of the cottage, which had been
invisible from the point they had rounded.

"Look here, Bragg," he said, turning to Marion's friend, in a voice
which was distinctly audible to Mrs. Bunker. "What are we to say to
these people?"

"There's only one," returned the other. "The man's at sea. His wife's
here. She's all right."

"You said she was one of us?"

"After a fashion. She's the woman who helped Marion when he was here. I
reckon he made it square with her from the beginning, for she forwarded
letters from him since. But you can tell her as much or as little as you
find necessary when you see her."

"Yes, but we must settle that NOW," said Bragg sharply, "and I propose
to tell her NOTHING. I'm against having any more petticoats mixed up
with our affairs. I propose to make an examination of the place without
bothering our heads about her."

"But we must give some reason for coming here, and we must ask her to
keep dark, or we'll have her blabbing to the first person she meets,"
urged the other.

"She's not likely to see anybody before night, when the brig will be in
and the men and guns landed. Move on, and let Jim take soundings off
the cove, while I look along the shore. It's just as well that there's
a house here, and a little cover like this"--pointing to the
shrubbery--"to keep the men from making too much of a show until after
the earthworks are up. There are sharp eyes over at the Fort."

"There don't seem to be any one in the house now," returned the other
after a moment's scrutiny of the cottage, "or the woman would surely
come out at the barking of the dog, even if she hadn't seen us. Likely
she's gone to Saucelito."

"So much the better. Just as well that she should know nothing until
it happens. Afterwards we'll settle with the husband for the price of
possession; he has only a squatter's rights. Come along; we'll have
bad weather before we get back round the Point again, but so much the
better, for it will keep off any inquisitive longshore cruisers."

They moved away. But Mrs. Bunker, stung through her benumbed and
brooding consciousness, and made desperate by this repeated revelation
of her former weakness, had heard enough to make her feverish to hear
more. She knew the intricacies of the shrubbery thoroughly. She knew
every foot of shade and cover of the clearing, and creeping like a cat
from bush to bush she managed, without being discovered, to keep
the party in sight and hearing all the time. It required no great
discernment, even for an inexperienced woman like herself, at the end of
an hour, to gather their real purpose. It was to prepare for the secret
landing of an armed force, disguised as laborers, who, under the outward
show of quarrying in the bluff, were to throw up breastworks, and
fortify the craggy shelf. The landing was fixed for that night, and was
to be effected by a vessel now cruising outside the Heads.

She understood it all now. She remembered Marion's speech about the
importance of the bluff for military purposes; she remembered the visit
of the officers from the Fort opposite. The strangers were stealing a
march upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It was
perhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension that
she took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there was
little to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terrible
catastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, of
which any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least those
officers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers of
the Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed with
an inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?

But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to San
Francisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself,
rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security of
success. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was getting
up--but she would try.

She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous
dread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished round
the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her
husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was a
heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not until
she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind
and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. She
had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few
points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff
bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while
it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from
swamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never
impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up
its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast
gaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering free
from any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threatening
seas on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her very
weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all
the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but
persistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headway
to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current
sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now
sluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, she
was delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of her
cottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it. She was, in fact,
on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of the
gale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination in
a semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed. She was
moving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, above
its green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, and
whose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from the
rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the
wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated
by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden
fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it
was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging
frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the
boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to
capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began
to drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could
hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above
her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms
moving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitless
effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards
the Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.

She knew now what it all meant. This was what she had come for; this
was the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer to
wait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she had
longed for but had not dared to seek. It was not her fault; they could
not blame HER. He would come back and never know what had happened--nor
even know how she had tried to atone for her deceit. And he would find
his house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not die
yet, at least not until she had warned the Fort. She seized the oars
again with frenzied strength; the boat had stopped under the unwonted
strain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of it
over her bow, struck down Mrs. Bunker under half a ton of blue water
that wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, swept
them over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of the
boat.

*****

"Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down."

"Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!"

"Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook. Now then,
hold har-rd!"

The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound of
rasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousers
around her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.

When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in a
soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery
corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge
she had remembered. But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish
lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew of
mingled artillerymen and infantry.

"And where did ye drift from, darlint?"

Mrs. Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.

"I didn't drift. I was going to the Fort."

"The Fort, is it?"

"Yes. I want to see the general."

"Wadn't the liftenant do ye? Or shure there's the adjutant; he's a foine
man."

"Silence, Flanigan," said the young officer sharply. Then turning to
Mrs. Bunker he said, "Don't mind HIM, but let his wife take you to the
canteen, when we get in, and get you some dry clothes."

But Mrs. Bunker, spurred to convalescence at the indignity, protested
stiffly, and demanded on her arrival to be led at once to the general's
quarters. A few officers, who had been attracted to the pier by the
rescue, acceded to her demand.

She recognized the gray-haired, handsome man who had come ashore at her
house. With a touch of indignation at her treatment, she briefly told
her story. But the general listened coldly and gravely with his eyes
fixed upon her face.

"You say you recognized in the leader of the party a man you had seen
before. Under what circumstances?"

Mrs. Bunker hesitated with burning cheeks. "He came to take Colonel
Marion from our place."

"When you were hiding him,--yes, we've heard the story. Now, Mrs.
Bunker, may I ask you what you, as a Southern sympathizer, expect to
gain by telling me this story?"

But here Mrs. Bunker burst out. "I am not a Southern sympathizer! Never!
Never! Never! I'm a Union woman,--wife of a Northern man. I helped that
man before I knew who he was. Any Christian, Northerner or Southerner,
would have done the same!"

Her sincerity and passion were equally unmistakable. The general rose,
opened the door of the adjoining room, said a few words to an orderly on
duty, and returned. "What you are asking of me, Mrs. Bunker, is almost
as extravagant and unprecedented as your story. You must understand, as
well as your husband, that if I land a force on your property it will be
to TAKE POSSESSION of it in the name of the Government, for Government
purposes."

"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Bunker eagerly; "I know that. I am willing; Zephas
will be willing."

"And," continued the general, fixing his eyes on her face, "you will
also understand that I may be compelled to detain you here as a hostage
for the safety of my men."

"Oh no! no! please!" said Mrs. Bunker, springing up with an imploring
feminine gesture; "I am expecting my husband. He may be coming back at
any moment; I must be there to see him FIRST! Please let me go back,
sir, with your men; put me anywhere ashore between them and those men
that are coming. Lock me up; keep me a prisoner in my own home; do
anything else if you think I am deceiving you; but don't keep me here to
miss him when he comes!"