An Oregon Girl: A Tale of American Life in the New West

“Indade I do, so I do!”

“Why do you think so?” Sam asked, a tinge of annoyance at Smith’s persistence still appearing in the manner of asking.

“Isn’t she an angel? An’ it’s only the divil cud sipporate an angel from her husband. Sure, man, dear, what more do yees want to prove it?”

A twitching of Virginia’s eyelids at that moment caught Sam’s attention. It was nature’s first harbinger of approaching consciousness. He held up his hand for Smith to be silent. The twitching, however, ceased, and her eyelid remaining closed, again became motionless.

“A false alarm!” he muttered, and proceeded to chafe her hands more industriously than before. It was evident that Sam liked the occupation; for this young lady had unconsciously woven a mesh of enthralling servitude about his heart, and his idolizing; passionate fondness had at last been rewarded by unexpectedly finding himself permitted to caress her at will; to stroke her hair, to contemplate her fair face, to press her hands between his own.

Sam shrewdly suspected that Virginia was somehow the cause of Thorpe’s estrangement from his wife, but wherefore and why, were parts that she alone could explain, and her lips were sealed.

That she was also mysteriously connected with the abduction of the child, he felt was a moral certainty. And her meeting with the Italian in the lonely park at dead of night could have offered no other solution. It had acted as a temporary restraining factor upon the ardor of his love and admiration. But now, as she lay so still and insensible in his care and protection; now, as he gazed on her fair features, all his doubts of her chastity and loyalty to those she loved vanished, and an all conquering fondness suddenly burst in a flood of radiance upon him, sweeping away all his misgivings before it, irresistible and impetuous as the flight of an avalanche.

It was very quiet at that moment; so still that the rippling water, as it lapped along the logs which supported the cabin, sounded very distinct. Smith imagined he heard a splash, and assuming a listening attitude, said cautiously, “Phwat may that mane?”

After a pause, Sam alertly remarked, “We have not kept a lookout. What if the dago’s partner should steal in on us?”

Smith’s eyes blazed with anger. Laying Constance’s hand down, he sprang to his feet. “Be the power ave justice,” he exclaimed between his teeth, “sure, an’ it do be a divil ave a bad job the rogue’ll take on, to boord us now.”

“If you see anybody lurking near, call me,” said Sam.

“Niver yees moind! Just lave the thavin’ blackguard to me! I’ll attind to him!” Smith answered, a savage joy betrayed on his face, and, seizing hold of the axe, he crept softly to the door. After listening a moment, he opened it and stepped out, closing the door behind him.

Again there was silence. Again Sam tenderly smoothed away Virginia’s abundant silky black hair from her face, and fondly chafed her temples. And as he thought of her swift recovery, a recovery that would place a great gulf between him and this one girl who could make him the happiest being on all God’s green earth, he muttered; “Oh, for one touch of those ruby colored lips – even if it be stolen.”

Virginia’s face was very close to him, and as he looked at her he detected a faint warmth in her cheeks; noted the fine mold, the delicate tracery of blue veins through her clear white skin – the temptation was very great. His heart thumped wildly and then – unmindful of the impropriety, or unwilling to resist the natural inclination of his arm to slip under her full, round, snowy neck – raised her head and touched her lips with his. The contact germinated a magnetic spark that raced through her veins and instantly awoke her to life.

She sprang to her feet, the red blood of active youth flushing her face to crimson. For one moment she looked indignant, fully conscious of the liberty he had taken. Sam bent his head abashed, and said apologetically – said in tones and manner that left no mistake as to his honest love and deep respect for her – “You looked so beautiful that – really now – I could not help it – forgive me!”

Her mobile face, that had set in a shock of alarm, indignation and scorn, softened and, as the events of the night flooded her memory, changed to a smile. For one moment it loitered in her eyes and on her lips, and then again changed to a grave, serious look that developed tears in her beautiful blue eyes. She held out her hand to him. Were his eyes deceiving him? Could he believe it? Yes, and he stood dazed with overpowering joy that she was not offended at the liberty.

He took her hand and gently carried it to his lips. Then she turned to the aid of Constance, knelt beside her, felt her hands, her face, her neck, and asked him. “Who was so mean to strike her down?”

For answer he sadly shook his head, and replied gravely, “She sank to the floor after John Thorpe refused her.”

Then bitter tears trickled down Virginia’s face as she continued to chafe her hands; but finding her efforts to restore warmth were unavailing, the same gripping at her heartstrings again possessed her. She raised her eyes to him, a frantic pleading in her voice, “Help me, Sam; oh, help me bring back the life that has nearly fled!”

“Help you!” he repeated proudly, as he stood in front of the girl who had for the first time asked of him a favor in her distress, the favor of a “good samaritan.”

And then, looking straight at her, he said, very seriously, as he knelt and took Constance’s other hand, “The strength that God has given me is at your service, now and forever!”

She understood, and he noted with pleasure that no swift questioning glance of anger, no look of weariness and turning away, as once before, followed his magnanimity.

At that moment Smith, who stood on the platform just outside the cabin door, was heard to say in a loud voice:

“Move on there! The channel be over beyant, in the middle ave the water! Kape yees head more sout be aste!” Then he was heard muttering indistinctly, with only such disjointed words as “blackguard,” “whillip” and “divilish rat,” clearly audible.

It was soon, however, followed by angry words delivered in an aggressively belligerent voice: “Be hivins, don’t yees come near us! Kape off, sure, d’yees moind, yees blackguards, or I’ll put a hole through yees bottom that’ll sink yees down to the place where yees do belong, so ye do!”

Suddenly changing his voice to an anxious tone, said, “Phwat d’yees want? Phwat’s that? Doctor, sure! Praise be to God! Oh, we’ve been waitin’ for yees, doctor dear, till our hearts do be broken entirely. Be me soul, it’s the thruth; not wan bit more nor less. Come, dear, yees do be wanted quick!”

A lurch at the cabin told that the launch had arrived. The door was hastily opened and Smith pushed the doctor in.

“There they be, sure, lyin’ en the flure wid no sinse in thim at all, at all. Do yees be quick, doctor, and hivin’ll reward yees!”

Skillful application of proven restoratives, however, failed to produce sensibility, and the doctor considered the case so grave that he ordered Constance be removed to her home as quickly as possible.

She was, therefore, tenderly taken on board the launch and conveyed home.

The sun’s rays had burst through and dispersed the early morning mists before Constance recovered from the shock, but, alas! with the shadow of a wreck enveloping her.

CHAPTER XVIII

The next morning Sam determined upon a personal interview with the prisoner. Upon arrival at the County jail, where the prisoner had been transferred, Sam encountered Smith, who was standing on the curb talking to a policeman.

“How dy yus do, Sor?” was Smith’s greeting.

“Getting along as fast as could be expected,” he answered.

“It do be surprisin’ the number ave blackguards there do be infesting the straits ove Portland after dark these days. Houldups, an’ ‘break-o-day Johnnies’ an’ ‘shanghoin’ an’ – an’ kidnappin’ – an’ what bates me, all the worrk to be had at good wages the while – whill wan ave the rogues do be off his bait for a time, so he do!”

“Sure, Smith, no mistake about that,” Sam laughed. “We slipped it over him in fine shape last night. Have you seen him this morning?”

“Indade oi ’ave, Sor, and he’s the very wan that run the soule ave his plexis ferninst me hand the other day for spakin’ disrespectful ave a lady.”

“I came to see him,” Sam said, with a smile at Smith’s chivalry.

“Indade! Sure yees’ll not recognize him as the wan we tuk last night at all, fir the color ave hair do be turnin’ from black to a faded straw, so it do.”

“Through terror of his position, I suppose.”

“Not wan bit, sor. It came out in the wash. It do be this way. Yees see, the orficers cudn’t get him to spake wan worrd an’ no sweatbox or other terror ave the force did he fear, at all, sure! So they turned the water on him, after takin’ off his clothes with the aid of two ‘trustys,’ and it was raymarked by the jailer that his skin do look uncommon fair, an the hair on his limbs was a sandy color, an’ not black, like the hair on his hid, and his mustache oily black, too, so it do.”

“Artificial coloring,” suggested Sam.

“Sure, that’s jist phat the jailor sid, the very same worrds, although do yees naw the color blend av his nick from the color bone up was a beautiful bit of worrk, as nate an’ natural as anything yees would want to see.”

“He is possibly an Italian artist.”

“Sure, he’s no Italian at all, fir the trustys soaped an’ lathered an’ scrubbed all the Dago off ave him. He raysisted loike a madman, but it was no use, and whin they held him under the shower bath his heavy black mustache fell off onto the floor. Wan ave the trustys picked it up and said, says he: ‘By jimminy, he’s no Dago at all; he’s a scoogy.’ An’ I say so, too, so I do. And the jailer raymarked it was just as he expected, and then he tould them to get the scoogy into his duds.”

“I will try and get permission to see him.”

Sam then entered the office, followed by Smith. They were readily allowed to see the prisoner, and upon approaching his cell, Sam recognized him at once, and the Sheriff wrote on the record, opposite the name of George Golda – “Alias, Jack Shore.”

An hour later Sam Harris was closeted with Detective Simms, in his office.

“I believe the fellow who escaped from the cabin last night,” said Sam, “was Jack Shore’s partner Philip Rutley, otherwise known as ‘Lord Beauchamp’.”

“Why do you suspect the lord to be Philip Rutley?” inquired the detective.

“Because they were partners in business, and inseparable chums socially,” replied Sam. “And where one was to be found, the other was not far away.”

“You say he got ten thousand dollars from the bank on your uncle’s indorsement?” inquired the detective.

“Yes,” replied Sam, “and tomorrow afternoon he is to be uncle’s guest at Rosemont.”

“Well, tonight my lord will attempt to leave the city, but he will find it impracticable,” remarked the detective, dryly. “I desire you to keep strictly mum on this matter for twenty-four hours, and I promise you positive identification of his lordship.”

Later, Detective Simms, smoking a cigar, sauntered carelessly into the “sweatbox,” where Jack Shore was still confined, and dumb as a stone statue on the question of kidnapping.

After silently looking at Jack for a time, he said with a smile: “If you had been shrewd you would not be here. You were sold.”

“Then I am either a knave or a fool?” interrogated Jack, carelessly.

“To be frank,” laughed Simms, “you are both. A knave for trusting Rutley, and a fool for doing his dirty work. I suppose you will think it is a lie when I say he ‘tipped’ us to the cabin for the ten thousand dollars reward offered by Mr. Thorpe for recovery of the child, and a promise of immunity from imprisonment.”

“Who is Rutley?” nonchalantly asked Jack.

“Why, your partner; that fellow who has been masquerading as a lord.”

“Lord who?”

“Come, now,” Simms laughed. “Why, me Lord Beauchamp! Surprised, eh?” and again Simms laughed and looked at Jack questioningly. “Well,” he continued at length, “you must be a cheap guy to believe that fellow true to you. See here, he gave the whole thing away. Don’t believe it, eh? Well, I’ll prove it. We knew the time Miss Thorpe was to be at the cabin. We knew the dog was on watch and removed it. We knew the exact time Rutley was to be with you, and arranged for him to get away without your suspicion. Why, our man was waiting with a boat as soon as he got out of the cabin.”

“Did he get away?” It was the first question that Jack had asked, though non-committal, in which Simms detected a faint anxiety. Simms was the very embodiment of coolness and indifference. “Not from us, no; but he is out on bail.”

That assertion was a masterstroke of ingenuity, and he followed it up with the same indifference. “Would you like to know who his sureties are?”

Jack maintained a gloomy silence.

“Just to convince you that I am not joking, I will show you the document.” And Simms turned lazily on his heel and left him. Returning a few moments later with a document, he held it for Jack to look at.

“Do you note the amount? And the signatures? – James Harris, John Thorpe. You must be familiar with them,” and the detective smiled as he thought of the trick he was employing to fool the prisoner, for he had himself written the signatures for the purpose.

“Jack’s breathing was heavier and his face somewhat whiter, yet by a superhuman effort he still maintained a gloomy frown of apparent indifference.

“The reward was paid to him this morning,” continued the detective, between his puffs of smoke.

“How much?” asked Jack, unconcerned.

“Ten thousand dollars!”

“Quite a hunk!” Jack said, carelessly. For he thought of the package that Rutley had deftly abstracted from his pocket in the cabin, and he was glad of it, for it would be used in his defense. And then he muttered to himself: “This ‘duffer’ is slick and thinks he can work me, but I’ll fool him.”

“The fellow is pretty well fixed,” continued the detective, as he eyed Jack inquisitively.

“Clear of this case with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket.”

“What!” exclaimed Jack, for the first time amazed, and then checking himself, said negligently:

“I understood you to say the reward was ten thousand dollars?”

“So I did. Ten thousand reward and that ransom money of Miss Thorpe’s.”

“The devil he has!”

Jack was beginning to waver. He thought of Rutley holding back the “tip” that he was shadowed, and also about the dog not barking at his approach, for some time after he had entered the cabin. Either of which incidents, had it been mentioned immediately upon entry, would have made escape possible. It seemed to corroborate the detective’s assertion – that he was sold. His jaws set hard.

“Can you prove that to me?”

“Sure!”

CHAPTER XIX

On the afternoon of the second day following the rescue of Dorothy, Mr. Thorpe, accompanied by his child, visited Mr. Harris by urgent invitation. The trees were still dressed in their leafy glow of autumn glory and, with the luxuriant green velvety grass of the lawn, invited a pause for contemplation of the entrancingly serene and happy condition earth intended her children to enjoy. Above was a clear, infinitely beautiful blue sky, through which the radiant orb of day poured down its golden shafts of light in masses of exuberant splendor and warmth.

It was an environment singularly touching and persuasive in its appeal to human nature for “Peace on earth and good will toward men.”

As John Thorpe and his child walked up the path toward the house and arrived near the spot where his quarrel with Mr. Corway had taken place, just one week previous, he could not but halt, sensitive to the insidious influence so softly streaming about him – so gentle, yet so powerful in contra-distinction to the unhappy change that had so recently come into his life. Oh, for something to banish the bitter memories conjured up as his gaze riveted on the “damned spot” where his wife’s inconstancy had been told to him.

And as he looked, a far-off dreamy stare settled in his eyes, as there unrolled before his vision the sweet bliss of happy years fled – gone, as he thought, never to return.

“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, overwhelmed with sudden emotion, and he clapped his hand to his forehead as an involuntary groan of anguish welled up from his heart.

His composure slowly returned to him, but the eroding effect of his smothered anguish would not obliterate, and he found himself thinking, “It was unwise to come to this place – here where memory is embittered by recollections of what has been. Terrible revelation! Terrible! Yet – I could not have been brought to credit it but for the evidence of my eyes.”

These words seemed to startle him with a new light, for he paused, and then in a voice almost reduced to a whisper, fruitful with eager doubt, said, “What have my eyes proved to me? Is there room for a possibility of a mistake? No, no! The ring is evidence of her guilt. Oh, Constance, when I needed you, the world owned no purer or more perfect woman; but now – fallen, fallen, fallen!”

While deeply absorbed in sad reflection, Dorothy stole to his side and, looking up, wistfully, in his face, said:

“Dear papa, isn’t mama here, either?”

The question from the child, uppermost in her mind, aroused him from his heart-aching reverie. He looked at her sternly. “Mama,” he repeated; “child, breathe that name no more! Banish it from your memory! Oh, no, no, no! I did not mean that!” and he turned his head aside with downcast eyes, shocked and ashamed at his passionate outburst in the presence of his little child.

He sat down on a bench and put her on his knee, and as he did so became conscious of the child again looking wistfully in his eyes.

“Well, you are sorry for leaving mama in that old cabin, aren’t you?”

It forced him to turn his eyes away from her, and with a tremor of pain in his voice, muttered: “Twenty times the child has said that to me today,” and, turning to her, he said gently and with infinite compassion:

“Dorothy, you are too young to comprehend. It is my intention to remove you from the home of your birth, to take you East, and educate you there. Now, don’t trouble me with questions, dear,” and he kissed the fair young brow and, looking into her sweet innocent brown eyes, he saw reflected in them her mother’s.

Then he turned his head aside and muttered: “So much like her mother! Oh, Constance! Constance! My judgment condemns you, but my heart – my heart will not leave you!”

Down from the house leisurely strolled Mr. Harris and Hazel.

“His Grace has just communicated to me the most amazing information about Virginia. It is so absurd that I felt quite angry with him for mentioning it,” Hazel said quite seriously.

“And what did he tell you?” inquired Mr. Harris. “If it is no secret?”

“He told me that it is common talk that she was found in the cabin with Constance at the time of Dorothy’s rescue by her father, having just rewarded the Italian for abducting the child, and that they both swooned when uncle found them there.”

“Lord Beauchamp must have been misinformed,” broke in Mr. Harris, with a grave face. “If such were the case Sam would have told me. All idle tattle – mischievous gossip!”

“Ah! Mr. Thorpe and Dorothy!”

“Oh, darling!” exclaimed Hazel, and she gathered the child in her arms, kissed her, and flew off to the house with her.

“Well, John, I am glad to meet you again,” shaking his hand, “though to tell the truth, I did not expect you.”

“It has cost me bitter memories, Mr. Harris.”

“I have long since discovered,” continued Mr. Harris, “that while time cannot heal a deep-rooted sorrow, it softens many of its asperities. When do you depart for the East?”

“I have made arrangements to leave tomorrow.”

“You are doing just what would prompt any man in like position to do. I trust we shall hear from you occasionally.”

“It is now my purpose, after arranging for Dorothy’s education, to travel abroad for an indefinite period, but I shall endeavor to keep in communication with you.”

Linking his arm in that of his guest, Mr. Harris said: “Come, John, let us join Mrs. Harris on the piazza. She is anxious to have a chat with you.”

Turning in the direction of the house, to their surprise they confronted Virginia. Mr. Thorpe at once withdrew his arm from that of Mr. Harris, and stepping aside with an offended dignity, remarked reproachfully:

“I was not aware of having merited the honor you do me.”

Mr. Harris threw up his hands deprecatingly. He understood the purport of the allusion and was dumb. He had been quite unaware of the presence of Virginia, and knowing of the estrangement between brother and sister, felt embarrassed. He was rescued from his dilemma by Virginia, who addressed him in a grave voice.

“Please leave us, Mr. Harris.”

His respect and esteem for her was sincere and great. Her good sense and becoming modesty had often impressed him as a woman of sterling qualities. Utterly disbelieving and discrediting the insinuations and innuendoes which Rutley had set afloat to his own advantage concerning her antagonistic relation with her brother, he conceived her to be the unhappy subject of a combination of circumstances over which she had no influence. A prey to anxiety, she retained little of the color and less of the vivacity formerly so conspicuously her heritage; yet her broad brow glistened white with an intellectuality that beautified her with spiritual chastity.

He was struck, too, with her very serious and pallid face, and his heart went out to her. He bowed low in answer to her request, and without a word gravely turned away and left them.

John Thorpe saw that Virginia was suffering from some great mental strain, nevertheless he chose to appear icily indifferent. He attributed her contrite appearance to the fact that he had surprised her and Constance in the cabin with the abductor of his child. He could conceive of no reason for them being there other than collusion with the Italian, for he believed they were cognizant of Dorothy’s place of imprisonment all the time, and while it was possible the Italian held the child for ransom, they kept her place of concealment secret, under the belief that she was safer from seizure by Thorpe than at home or with friends, and also that it would draw the sympathy of acquaintances to Constance, and though Dorothy told him in her childish way that Virginia had given George Golda money, a minute search of his clothes and about the cabin failed to disclose it, and John Thorpe interpreted her defense of Dorothy as an unexpected contingency arising from the frenzied fury of the Italian to save himself from capture when he found escape cut off.

When Virginia swooned, it mercifully relieved her from a most embarrassing and painful position.

Such were his thoughts as he directed a stony stare of freezing haughtiness upon her – the woman, his sister, whom he now regarded as beyond the pale of blood relationship.

“I did not expect to meet you here,” he said in a voice grave with a sense of the worry from which he was suffering and from which wrong he could not, no matter how he reasoned, disassociate the name of his sister.

“I have tried to find you – to meet you – to – in short, to demand an explanation of this affair; but until now I have been unsuccessful.”

She spoke hesitatingly and with a slight tremor in her voice, otherwise there was no indication of the great emotion that she was laboring under. In short, her demeanor, while firm and of simple dignity, was of the gravest character imaginable.

“You have broken all ties between us,” he answered slowly.

“John, John! Don’t turn away! Stop!” and she held up a warning finger as, stepping in front of him, she barred his way.

“You shall hear me. For I believe what I have to tell you is of the utmost importance. But first, what cause have you for divorcing Constance?”

“You ask that question?” he slowly emphasized.

“Yes, I ask that question,” as steadily and definitely she regarded him.

“If on my return from China you had not concealed from me her infatuation for that man – that fellow Corway – this unhappy trouble would have been over long ago.”

“I have concealed nothing from you! John, I am sure it is all a mistake.”