Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
ELEVEN POSSIBLE CASES.
FRANK R. STOCKTON, FRANKLIN FYLES, JOAQUIN MILLER, MAURICE THOMPSON,INGERSOLL LOCKWOOD, EDGAR FAWCETT, BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH, KIRKE MUNROE,NYM CRINKLE, ANNA KATHERINE GREEN, AND Q.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:_LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE._1891.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
CONTENTS.
1. THE ONLY GIRL AT OVERLOOK, _Franklin Fyles_
2. A THING THAT GLISTENED, _Frank R. Stockton_
3. A LION AND A LIONESS, _Joaquin Miller_
4. THE CHEATED JULIET, _Q._
5. THE MYSTIC KREWE, _Maurice Thompson_
6. STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MILLION DOLLARS, _Ingersoll Lockwood_
7. A LOST DAY, _Edgar Fawcett_
8. A TRAGEDY OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES, _Brainard Gardner Smith_
9. THE BUSHWHACKER'S GRATITUDE, _Kirke Munroe_
10. THE END OF ALL, _Nym Crinkle_
11. SHALL HE MARRY HER? _Anna Katherine Green_
THE ONLY GIRL AT OVERLOOK.
BY FRANKLIN FYLES.
CHAPTER I.
Two names were used for the only girl at Overlook. In addressing her,the men of the place always said "Miss Warriner." In mentioning her,they often said "Mary Mite." The reason for this distinctive differencewas revealed by the sight of Miss Mary Warriner herself, as she sat on ahigh stool behind a rude desk, under a roughly-boarded shelter, and withrapid fingers clicked the key of a telegraphic instrument. There was aperfect poise of quiet self-possession which would have been veryimpressive dignity in an older and bigger person, and which, althoughhere limited by eighteen years and one hundred pounds, still made ademand for respectful treatment. Therefore the men, when in herpresence, never felt like calling her anything else than "MissWarriner." If she had been less like a stately damsel in miniature, andmore like such a child as she was in size only; if her employment hadbeen something not so near to science as that of telegraphy, and not sofar off from juvenile simplicity; if her brown hair had been looselycurled, instead of closely coiled, and if her skirts had stopped at herankles instead of reaching to her feet, then she might have beennicknamed "Mary Mite" within her own hearing, as she was beyond it, bythose who described her smallness in a sobriquet. There may have been avariance of opinion among those dwellers at Overlook who had made anyestimate of her composure, but if there was one who believed that shemerely assumed a reserve of manner because she was among two hundredmen, he had not yet tried his chances of exceptional acquaintance.
Overlook was crude and temporary. The inhabitants were making a roadbedfor a new railway at a spot where the job was extraordinary, requiringan uncommonly large proportion of brain to brawn in the work. Those whowere mental laborers in the remarkable feat of engineering, or were atleast bosses of the physical toil, were the ones who had errands at thetelegraphic shed, and for whom Mary sent and received messages over thewires. The isolated colony of workers was one hundred miles deep in awilderness of mountain and forest, but not as many seconds distant,measured by the time necessary for electrical communication from theconstruction company's headquarters in a great city.
"Must you wait for an answer?" Mary said, as she clicked the last wordof a message. "It's an hour since your first telegram went, and theyseem in no hurry to reply."
Polite indifference, and nothing else, was in her clear, gentle voice.There was neither boldness nor shyness in the eyes that opened wide andblue, as she lifted them from the paper to the man whom she questioned.There was no more of a smile than of a pout on the mouth that worded theinquiry. She did not indicate the faintest interest as to whether hewent or stayed, although she did suggest that he might as well go.
"I'd rather lounge here, if you don't mind," was Gerald Heath's answer.
Here the alertness of the placid girl was faintly shown by a quickglance, but it was so furtive that the subject of her wariness did notknow his face was being scrutinized; and she was quickly convinced thatshe was not the cause of his remaining, for he said: "I'll tell you whyI'm anxious about the telegram, and in a hurry to get it."
Gerald Heath had been lazily leaning against the makeshift desk of thetelegrapher, as he waited, and for pastime had whittled the smooth birchsapling that formed its outer edge. He had chipped and shaved, after themanner of those to whom a sharp pocket knife and a piece of wood providea solace. There had been no conversation, except a few words concerningthe messages. But now he heightened himself to six feet by standingerect, and took on the outlines of a magnificent physique. Hisproportions had not been realized before by the girl at the other sideof the counter. She comprehended, too, that if his somewhat unkemptcondition were changed to one which included a face cleaned of stubbedbeard, a suit of modish clothes to replace the half-worn corduroys, andthe shine of a silk hat and polished boots at his now dusty extremities,he would become a young gentleman whose disregard might be anappreciable slight. That was the conclusion which she reached withoutany visible sign that her careless eyes were conveying any sort ofimpression to her mind. As it was, he looked an unusually burly specimenof the men to whom isolation from city life had imparted an aspect ofbarbarians. Before he had uttered another word she realized that he waswholly engrossed in the matter of his telegrams, and had no thought ofthe individuality of the listener. Not only was she not the thing thatmade him wait, but she might as well have been old, ugly, or a man, ifonly she had ears to hear.
It was a summer afternoon, and the clear, balmy weather was seasonable.The removal of protective canvas had left the structure an open shed,over the front of which hung the boughs of the two trees against whosemassive trunks it leaned. Gerald Heath reached up with both hands andheld the foliage aside.
"Do you get an unobstructed view?" he said. "Now, I've helped lay outrailroads through many a place, where it was a shame to let trains gofaster than a mile a day. I've surveyed routes that ought to providespecial trains for passengers with eyes in their heads--trains withspeed graduated between sixty miles an hour and sixty hours a mile. Itis an outrage on nature and art that travelers should ever be whiskedpast Overlook without a good chance to see what we're looking at. That'swhy I wrote to the president of the company a month ago, telling him howa slight deviation from the surveyed line would enable passengers to getwhat's in our view now. He asked how much the line would be lengthenedby my plan. 'A hundred yards,' I answered. And I submitted a map,showing how the tracks, after coming out from the tunnel, might make asmall detour to this very spot, instead of going behind a mass of rocksthat will completely hide this----" and a comprehensive gesture of onearm followed his sweep of vision.
Places that get their names on impulse are apt to have appropriate ones.Camps of railway makers in a hitherto unbroken country are not oftenmiscalled. An ensuing town on the same site may be unmeaningly named asa permanency, but the inspirations that afford transient nomenclatureare usually descriptive. It was so in the case of Overlook. The railwaytunneled through the mountain, and emerged at a height of 1000 feetabove a wide valley. Mary had daily, and all day long, sat overlookingthe prospect. It had astonished and enchanted her at first, butfamiliarity had blunted the keenness of her appreciation. As shown toher anew, it was like a fresh disclosure. Gerald Heath stood holdingaside the boughs, which otherwise obscured a part of the landscape, andseemed like an exhibitor of some wondrously big and beautiful picture.Miles away were hills rising behind one another, until they left only alittle of sky to be framed by the eave of the shed, as seen by thetelegrapher. The diversities of a wilderness, distantly s
trong in ruggedforms, but indistinct in details, became gradually definite andparticular as they came nearer, and were suggestive of conscious design,where they edged a broken, tumultuous river. Overlook was shelved sohigh on a precipitous mountain that, from Mary's point of vision, theforeground almost directly underneath passed out of her sight, and itwas as though the spectator stood on a platform before a painted canvas,too spacious for exhibition in an ordinary manner. But in this work theshapes and the colors, the grandeur and the beauty were inconceivablybeyond human copying.
Gerald Heath appeared to feel, however, that if he was not the painterof this enormous landscape, he at least had the proprietary interest ofa discoverer, and it was with something of the air of an art collector,proudly extolling his choicest possession, that he turned his eyes fromit to Mary Warriner. The expression of admiration on her face, althoughquiet and delicate, was quite satisfactory--for a moment only; and thenthe denotement of delight passed out of her visage, as though expelledby some physical pang. It was the suddenness of the change, for it wasof itself very slight, that made it perceptible. Gerald instinctivelyturned to look for the cause.
Into the picture had come a human figure. A few yards in front of thehut stood a man. In relation to the landscape far beyond he wasgigantic, and the shade of the trees made him devilishly black bycontrast with the sunlight of heaven that illumined the rest. He wasthus for an instant in silhouette, and it chanced that his sharpoutlines included a facial profile, with the points of a mustache andbeard giving satanic suggestion to an accidental attitude of maliciousintrusion. The illusion was almost startling, but it was momentary, andthen the form became the commonplace one of Tonio Ravelli, who walkedunder the shelter.
"Do-a I eentrude?" he asked, with an Italian accent and an Italianbearing. "I suppose no, eh? Thece ees a placa beesness."
Mary's small departure from a business-like perfunctory manner ended atonce. She took the scrap of paper which Ravelli laid on her desk, andwithout a word translated its writing into telegraphic clicks. Ravelliwas a sub-contractor, and this was one of his frequent communicationswith officials at the company's city office. The response was likely tobe immediate, and he waited for it.
"To get the full value of this view," Gerald Heath resumed, and now headdressed himself to Mary directly, as though with almost a purpose ofignoring Ravelli, to whose greeting he had barely responded, "you needto come upon it suddenly--as I once did. We had been for months blastingand digging through the mountain. Every day's duty in that hole was likea spell of imprisonment in a dark, damp dungeon. And your men, Ravelli,looked like a chain-gang of convicts."
"You woulda no dare say so mooch to their-a fa-ces," Ravelli retorted,with an insolence that was unmistakably intentional.
"O, I didn't mean a reflection on them," said Gerald, disregarding theother's quarrelsome aggressiveness. "We all look rascally in the mud,drip, and grime of tunnel work. And your gang of swarthy Italians arebound to have a demoniac aspect underground."
It was more careless than intentional that Gerald thus provoked Ravelli.There had been dislike between them, growing out of friction betweentheir respective duties as a civil engineer and a sub-contractor, forthe former was necessarily a critic of the latter's work. But they hadnever quarreled, and Gerald saw nothing in this occasion, as Ravelliseemed to, for any outbreak of temper.
"Bettare be civ-vil with-a your tongue," Ravelli sneered.
"Well, I think so, too, as we are with a lady."
"Zat ees why-a I inseest you treat-a me as one gentleman."
So it seemed that he was especially regardful of how he figured in thepresence of Mary Warriner.
"Like one gentleman? Oh, I will treat you like two gentlemen--sopolitely;" and Gerald began to again nonchalantly whittle the birchenpole. "I was going to tell how, when at last we broke through the rockat this end of the tunnel, I happened to be right there. A blast toreout an aperture several feet wide. We saw daylight through the smoke. Werushed pell-mell over the broken stone, and struggled with one anotherto get through first. It was--why, it was you, Ravelli, wasn't it?--whomI tussled with. Yes, we got into the breach together. You tried to pushme back. You couldn't--of course, you couldn't;" and the narrator'sreference to his own superior strength was exasperatingly accompanied bya glance not free from contempt.
"Eet was-a all een fun," Ravelli smilingly explained to Mary, and thenhis eyes turned darkly upon Gerald: "Eef eet had-a been one ear-nestfight----," the different result was vaguely indicated by a hard clinchof fists and a vicious crunch of teeth.
It was beyond a doubt that Ravelli could not bear to be belittled toMary; but she and Gerald were alike inattentive to his exhibition ofwrath.
"No prisoner was ever more exultant to escape," Heath went on, "than Iwas to get out of that dark, noisome hole into clean sunlight. I ran tothis very spot, and--well, the landscape was on view, just as it is now.It was like getting from gloom out into glory."
The young man's exuberant words were not spoken with much enthusiasm,and yet they had sufficient earnestness to prove their sincerity. He hadstopped whittling, and his knife lay on the desk, as he turned his backagainst the sapling and rested both elbows on it.
"So I've been writing to the president of the company, urging him todeflect the route a trifle, so that passengers might come out of thetunnel to see a landscape worth a thousand miles of special travel, andto be had by going less than as many feet. This is the very latest dayfor changing the survey. To-morrow will be too late. That is why I'mtelegraphing so urgently."
Click, click, click. Mary went to the telegraphic instrument. Shedelivered the message by word of mouth, instead of taking it down in theusual manner with a pen.
"Gerald Heath, Overlook," she translated from the metallic language ofthe instrument. "Your idea is foolish. We cannot entertain it. HenryDeckerman, president."
Gerald looked like a man receiving a jury's verdict involving greatpecuniary loss, if not one of personal condemnation, as he listened tothe telegram.
"Zat ees what-a I theenk," remarked Ravelli, with insolent elation; "youar-r-e one-a fool, as ze president he say."
Gerald was already angered by the dispatch. The taunting epithet wastimed to excite him to fury, which he impulsively spent upon the moreimmediate provoker. He seized Ravelli by the throat, but without chokinghim, and almost instantly let him go, as though ashamed of havingassailed a man of not much more than half his own strength and nearlytwice his age. With Italian quickness Ravelli grabbed Gerald's knifefrom the desk, against which he was flung. He would have used it too, ifself-defense had been necessary, but he saw that he was not to befurther molested, and so he concealed the weapon under his arm, whileGerald strode away, unaware of his escape from a stab.
"He is-a one beeg bully," said Ravelli, with forced composure. "Eef alady had-a not been here----"
"You tormented him," the girl interrupted. "I once saw the best-naturedmastiff in the world lose his temper and turn on a----" She stoppedbefore saying "cur," and added instead: "If he was foolish, you were notvery wise to tease him."
"He is-a what to you, zat you take-a hees part?"
She bit her lip in resentment, but made no reply.
"Pare-haps he is one-a lover oof you?"
Still she would not reply to his impertinence. That angered him morethan the severest rejoinder would have done.
"Oh, I am sure-a zat he ees one suitor."
She gave way at length to his provocation, and yet without any violentwords, for she simply said: "You are insulting, while he is at leastreasonably polite--when he heeds me at all, which isn't often."
"Not-a often? But some-what closely he heed-a you. See zat."
With an open palm he struck the place on the sapling where Gerald hadwhittled. The spot was on the outer edge, where Mary could not see itfrom her seat. She went around to the front of the primitivelyconstructed desk, or high counter, to gratify her curiosity. There shesaw that Gerald had carved a hand--her own hand, as she i
nstantlyperceived. The small and shapely member was reproduced in the fresh,pale wood with rare fidelity. She had unconsciously posed it, whileworking the key of the telegraphic instrument under the jack-knifesculptor's eyes, and there had been ample time for him to whittle afac-simile into the birch.
"He is almost as impertinent as you are," she said, and turned to seehow Ravelli took the comment.
But Ravelli had disappeared.
Then, being alone, she laid a hand of her own coquettishly alongside itswooden counterpart, and critically admired the likeness.
"It was an unwarranted liberty," she said to herself, "but he did itvery well."
The delicate fiber of the wood had favored the carver's purpose. Theimitation hand bore a shade of flattery in the barely tinted birchenwhite, and in the fine grained satin smoothness that the keen blade hadwrought, but this was not too much for more than a reasonablecompliment. As to the modeling, that was sincerely accurate, and thefingers rested on the key precisely as Mary had seen them during manyhours of many days. It is an excessively vain girl who admires herselfas actually as she does a portrait, and the telegrapher really saw morebeauty in the birchen hand than she had ever observed in the live one.As she contemplated it, Ravelli returned noiselessly behind her.
"I a-wish to say something, Mees Warriner."
The Italian accent of Ravelli grated with unnatural harshness on Mary'sears, and if he had been an intruder upon her privacy, instead of a manin a really public place, she would not have been surprised into a deepflush. She snatched her hand away from its wooden counterpart, andclasped it with its mate behind her, as she leaned her shoulder againstthe carving to hide it.
"If you have a message to send," she said, "I can't get it on the wiretoo soon. It's within five minutes of time to shut off."
She started to go behind the desk. He stopped her with a touch upon hershoulder, and she shrank away reprovingly, although it was solely theman's earnestness that had made him do it.
"No, no; it ees not words for-a ze wire zat I have-a for you," he said."I wish-a to tell to yourself something. Will you lees-ten?"
"Yes, if it is something that I ought to hear."
"Thees eez it. I am a-more than I seem here--deef-e-rent--so deef-e-rentyou would hardly know-a me. In zis place I am on-ly a contractor for zelaborer. I am-a as com-mon as my gang in-a clothes--in-a manner, too,eh? But een one hour--een one minute--I could-a con-veence you zat Iam-a something finer."
Mary did not show in her perfectly regained composure that she was somuch as puzzled by the man's enigmatic talk. She said: "I don't see howit could be worth while, Mr. Ravelli."
"O, yes--I beg-a par-don for ze contradiction--yes, it ees worth-awhile. Away from-a here, Mary, I would-a be so deef-e-rent zat youa-love me."
"Stop, Mr. Ravelli--stop."
The command was positive, but it was not obeyed.
"I love-a you."
He caught her by one wrist as he began. She was utterly unresistant. Ifshe had struggled or cried out, he would have gone on with his voluble,excited declaration; but her placidity was incomprehensible to him.
"Mr. Ravelli," she began after a moment, "you understand English?"
"Perfectly, Mees Warriner."
"Well, here is plain English for you. I would use Italian if I could, sothat you mightn't mistake me. You are to let go of my hand."
He did it.
"You are to go away instantly, and never come here again except onbusiness. Go at once."
That he did not do.
"For what-a did you come here, into one camp oof men eef----"
"If I didn't expect to be unsafe? I'll tell you. It was a mistake.Operator No. 9 was ordered to this post. No. 9 had been a man, who hadwithin a week been discharged, and his number given to me. By anoversight, no alteration was made in the record to show the sex of thenew No. 9. I couldn't afford to lose the work. Besides----"
"Well-a, besides----"
"Besides, I reasoned that every man at Overlook would protect me againstall the other men--if----"
"Yes, eef----"
"Yes, if I cared absolutely nothing for any single one of them.Therefore, I am not afraid. But you must not annoy me."
Fury flashed into the man's eyes, into his reddened face, into thesudden tension of his gripped hands. The girl's contemptuousindifference maddened him. She saw this, and was at once alarmed, forshe realized that here was a reckless lover--one who heated dangerouslywhere another would have chilled under disdain; but she maintained anunshaken voice, as she said: "You may as well know, however, that I amamply protected. The night watchman is ordered to include this combinedoffice and residence of mine in every round he makes. So I sleep quiteunconcernedly. In the daytime, too, I shall have defense, if it becomesnecessary."
"O, have-a no alarm, Mees Warriner," and the man's facial expressionsoftened singularly as he gazed wistfully at the girl. "I haf said Ilove-a you." Then, with a startlingly quick transition, he glaredmenacingly off in the direction that Gerald Heath had gone. It seemedcurious to Mary, too, that in his rage his English was clearer thanusual, as he growled: "It is your lover that should be afraid of me." Heflung out one fist in a fierce menace, and added in Italian: "Nelvindicarvi bisogna ch'egli mi rende la sua vita."
Eleven Possible Cases Page 1
