The Comstock Club Part 16

"Frank answered, 'As Mark Twain told those wild friends of his who perpetrated the bogus robbery upon him, "You did a marvelous sight too well for a mere amateur." But now, Judge, mum is the word about this business.'

"'Mum is the word,' was the reply.

"That evening Carey called at the home of his betrothed. A servant showed him into the parlor, but for the first time the young lady did not put in an appearance. In her stead her mother came. The elder lady, without sitting, in a severe tone said: 'Mr. Carey, my daughter has heard something to-day from Mrs. Cady. Until you explain that matter to my satisfaction my daughter will beg to decline to see you.'

"Carey replied: 'Since your daughter has heard of the matter, it does concern _her_, and I shall very gladly explain to her; but I cannot to any one else, not even to you.'

"'You could easily impose upon a silly girl who is in love, but I am no silly girl, and am not in love, especially not with _you_, and you will have to explain to _me_,' said the lady.

"'My dear madam,' said Carey, mildly, 'in one sense there is nothing in all that gossip. In another sense so much is involved that I would not under the rack whisper a word of it to any soul on earth save she who has promised to give her happiness into my keeping. When your daughter becomes my wife your authority as mother in our home shall never be questioned by me. Until then my business is not with you.'

"'It is not worth while to prolong this discussion,' said the old lady, excitedly. 'If you have nothing more to say, I will bid you good evening.'

"'Good evening, madam,' said Carey, and went out into the night.

"A year later the young lady married the wildest rake on the Comstock, but Carey never married, and died last year.

"When Cady saw how things were going, he went to Carey and said: 'Carey, let me go and explain to those ladies. It kills me to see you as your are.'

"'It will never do,' was the reply. 'They would not keep the secret, especially the elder one never would. It would kill her not to get even with your wife. It worried me a little at first, for I feared that ---- might grieve some and be disappointed; but she is all right. I watched her covertly at the play last night. She will forget me in a month. She will be married within the year. We will take no chance of having your home made unhappy. Dear friend, it is all just as I would have it.'"

"It was too bad," said Harding.

"That Carey was a right n.o.ble fellow," was Wright's comment.

Miller thought if he had been right game he would have seen that girl, old woman or no old woman.

"He was punished for his falsehood. He had to atone for his own and his friend's sins," was Brewster's conclusion.

"O, murther! I think he had a happy deliverance from the whole family intoirely," said Corrigan.

Carlin, addressing Brewster, said: "You say he was punished for the sins of himself and his friend; how do you dispose of the wickedness of the postmaster?"

"Possibly," was the response, "he is wicked by habit, and it may be he is being reserved for some particular judgment."

"All that I see remarkable about Carey's case," said Ashley, "is that he made the money in the first place. Had that stock been carried for me, the mine would have been flooded the next week and my work would have been mortgaged for a year to come to make good the loss."

"It was a hard case, no doubt," said Strong, "but I think with Corrigan, that the punishment was not without its compensations."

"He had his mirage and it was worse than wild Injuns, was it not, Wright?" asked Corrigan.

"Or worse, Barney," said Wright, "than a blacksmith, a foine mon and a mon of property."

"O, murther, Wright," said Corrigan; "stop that. There go the whistles.

Let us say good night."

CHAPTER XI.

About this time Virginia City was visited one day by a heavy rain storm accompanied with thunder. But as the sun was disappearing behind Mount Davidson, the clouds broke and rolled away from the west, while at the same time a faint rainbow appeared in the East, making one of those beautiful spectacles common to mountainous regions.

At the same time the flag on Mount Davidson caught the beams from the setting sun and stood out a banner of fire. This, too, is not an unfrequent spectacle in Virginia City, and long ago inspired a most gifted lady to write a very beautiful poem, "The Flag on Fire."

The storm and the sunset turned the minds of the Club to other beautiful displays of nature which they had seen. Said Miller, "I never saw anything finer than a sunset which I witnessed once at sea down off the Mexican coast.

"We were in a tub of a steams.h.i.+p, the old "Jonathan." We had been in a storm for four days, three of which the steamer had been thrown up into the wind, the machinery working slowly, just sufficient to keep steerageway on the s.h.i.+p.

"There were 600 pa.s.sengers on board, with an unusual number of women and children, and we had been miserable past expression. But at last, with the coming of the dawn, the wind ceased; as soon as the waves ran down so that it was safe to swing the s.h.i.+p, she was turned about and put upon her course.

"In a few hours the sea grew comparatively smooth, and the pa.s.sengers by hundreds sought the deck.

"All the afternoon the Mexican coast was in full view, blue and rock-bound and not many miles away.

"Just before the sun set its bended rays struck those blue head-lands and transfigured them. They took on the forms of walls and battlements and shone like a city of gold rising out of the sea in the crimson East, and looked as perhaps the swinging gardens of Semiramis did from within the walls of Babylon. In the West the disc of the sun, unnaturally large, blazed in insufferable splendor, while in glory this seeming city shone in the East. Between the two pictures the s.h.i.+p was plunging on her course and we could feel the pulses of the deep sea as they throbbed beneath us. The mult.i.tude upon the deck hardly made a sound; all that broke the stillness was the heavy respirations of the engines and the beating of the paddles upon the water. The spell lasted but a few minutes, for when the sun plunged beneath the sea, the darkness all at once began as is common in those lat.i.tudes, but while it lasted it was sublime.

"Speaking of Nature's pictures, in my judgment about the most impressive sight that is made in this world, is a storm at sea. I mean a real storm in which a three thousand ton s.h.i.+p is tossed about like a cork, when the roar of the storm makes human voices of no avail, and when the billows give notice that 'deep is answering unto deep.'

"When a boy I often went down under the overhanging rock over which the current of Niagara pours. As I listened to the roar and tried to compute the energy which had kept those thunders booming for, heaven only knows how many thousands of years, it used to make me feel small enough; but it never influenced me as does an ocean storm. When all the world that is in sight goes into the business of making Niagaras, and turns out a hundred of them every minute, I tell you about all an ordinary landsman can do is to sit still and watch the display.

"A real ocean storm--a sh.o.r.e shaker--is about the biggest free show that this world has yet invented."

Corrigan spoke next; said he: "Spakin' of storms, did you iver watch the phenomenon of a ragin' snow storm high up in the Sierras? When it is approaching there is a roar in the forest such as comes up a headland when the sea is bating upon its base. This will last for hours, the pines rocking like auld women at a wake, and thin comes the snow. Its no quiet, respectable snow such as you see in civilized countries, but it just piles down as though a new glacial period had descinded upon the worreld. As it falls all the voices of the smaller streams grow still and the wind itself grows m.u.f.fled as though it had a could in the head.

The trees up there are no shrubs you know. They grow three hundred feet high and have branches in proportion, and whin they git to roarin' and rockin', it is as though all the armies of the mountains were presentin'

arms.

"When the storm dies away, thin it is you see a picture, if the weather is not too cold. The snow ma.s.ses itself upon the branches, and thin you stand in a temple miles in extent, the floor of which is white like alabaster while the columns that support it are wrought in a lace-work of emerald and of frost more lofty and dilicate than iver was traced out by the patient hand of mortal in grand cathadrals."

Here Carlin interrupted.

"Say, Barney, is there not a great deal of frieze to one of those Sierra temples?"

"It might same so, lookin' from the standpoint of the nave," was Barney's quick reply.

Groans followed this outbreak, from various members of the Club. They were the first puns that had been fired into that peaceful company and they were hailed as omens of approaching trouble.

The gentle voice of Brewster next broke the silence.

"I saw," he said, "in Salt Lake City, three years ago on a summer evening, a sunset scene which I thought was very beautiful. The electric conditions had been strangely disturbed for several days; there had been clouds and a good deal of thunder and lightning. You know Salt Lake City lies at the western base of the Wasatch range. On this day toward evening the sky to the west had grown of a sapphire clearness, but in the east beyond the first high hills of the range a great electric storm was raging. The clouds of inky blackness which shrouded the more distant heights, and through which the lightnings were incessantly zigzaging, were in full view from the city, though the thunders were caught and tied in the deep caverns of the intervening hills. To the southeast the range with its imposing peaks was snow-crowned and under a clear sky. In the southwest the Oquirrh range was blue and beautiful. Just then from beyond the great lake the setting sun threw out his shafts of fire, and the whole firmament turned to glory. The sun blazed from beyond the waters in the west, the lightnings blazed beyond the nearer hills in the east, the snowy heights in the southeast were turned to purple, while in the city every spire, every pane of gla.s.s which faced the west, every speck of metal on house and temple in a moment grew radiant as burnished gold, and there was a s.h.i.+mmer of splendor in all the air. Then suddenly over the great range to the east and apparently against the black clouds in which the lightnings were blazing the glorious arch of a magnificent rainbow was upreared. All the colors were deep-dyed and perfectly distinct. There was neither break nor dimness in all the mighty arch.

There it stood, poised in indescribable splendor for quite five minutes.

So wonderful was the display that houses were deserted: men and women came out into the open air and watched the spectacle in silence and with uncovered heads.

"No one stopped to think that the glory which shone on high was made merely by sunlight s.h.i.+ning through falling water; the cold explanation made by science was forgotten, and hundreds of eyes furtively watched, half expecting to catch glimpses of a divine hand and brush, for the pictures were rare enough to be the perfect work of celestial beings sent to sketch for mortals a splendor which should kindle within them dim conceptions of the glories which fill the spheres where light is born.

"Salt Lake City is famous for its sunsets, but to this one was added new and unusual enchantments by the storm which was wheeling its sable squadrons in the adjacent mountains.

"As I watched that display I realized for the first time how it was that before books were made men learned to be devout and to pray; for the picture was as I fancy Sinai must have appeared, when all the elements combined to make a spectacle to awe the mult.i.tude before the mountain; and when they were told that the terrible cloud on the mountain's crest was the robe which the infinite G.o.d had drawn around Himself in mercy, lest at a glimpse of His unapproachable brightness they should perish, it was not strange if they believed it."