[Mrs. W. W. Macomber, The Gossip of Gold Hill, The Overland Monthly, March 1873]

 

1873.]              THE GOSSIP OF GOLD HILL.           209

 

THE GOSSIP OF GOLD HILL

            THE Pioneer stage-coach that had rumbled its way along from Sacramento, attended by a pillar of cloud—more alkaline, doubtless, but none the less faithful than that of Israelitish renown — suddenly projected itself upon the Silver City vision, according to its daily wont, one languid July afternoon. Of course, it was a remote July, when stage companies flourished and fattened, and railroad monopolies existed only in the covetous visions of greedy speculators. The passengers, twelve in number—ten, including a little child, inside, and two on the box—had passed through the experience common to travelers on that route. They had sweltered uncomfortably through the day, and had shivered in the coolness of the mountain night-air. From serenest altitudes of ribbon-like smoothness, they had gazed upon the rugged picture of the pine-clad heights beneath them, calmly sleeping in the moonlight, and had instinctively drawn toward the inside of the grade, as the sharp-faced man on the middle seat designated the precise locality of the last stage disaster, when horses, coach, and passengers were precipitated into a heterogeneous compound, two hundred feet below. They had fallen into fitful dozes, and proved, by severe cranial experiences, the equality of action and reaction, until their powers of philosophizing on the subject were quite benumbed ; and, with the general exhaustion and the democratic level of beauty to which they had been reduced by alluvial deposits, they had almost lost their individuality, and had quite forgotten the intensity of interest with which they had looked forward to the wonderful new mining towns which had sprung up almost in a night, when, "Passing through Devil's Gate," pronounced with appropriate solemnity by the sharp-faced man, startled the torpid life into a momentary spasm of rebellion. Then a brutal voice outside was heard, saying, " D—n you, let go, or I'll make a corpse of you," adding a catalogue of expletives impossible of repetition ; and the little lady on the back-seat looked out of the window and saw the veritable Devil's Gate, in all its wild beauty, closing behind her, and felt a sudden oppression, as if she had been unexpectedly thrust into Satanic regions, with no hope of reprieve.

            Up the long, irregular cañon, bristling with quartz-mills, and lined with queer, little houses, hastily improvised of wood, and cloth, and paper; through the narrow main street, blocked with a tangle of teams and men, the verdureless mountains rising bleakly on either side, covered to a certain height with a medley of buildings, trestles, and dumps of blue earth ; bewildered by the thunder of the mills and the jargon of blasphemous tongues, they rattled on into what seemed to be a very pandemonium. They passed a few saloons, a store or two, then suddenly drew up, and the driver shouted, "Vesey House." The coach-door opened from without, there was a stir inside, an uncomfortable compression of dry-goods and humanity, a folding together of the middle-seat, and a gentleman with the child alighted, and handed out the little lady from the back-seat. As they passed into the hotel, a group of loungers on the steps took careful observations, and one exclaimed, "What the devil's Bliss up to now?" " D—d if she don't look like a lady, any-

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how," came the quick response. "Not one of his kind, I reckon." As the lady was passing to her room, Bliss, as he had been dubbed at the door, with quick instinct, divined her look of sudden hopelessness, and, with charming courtesy and kindliness, spoke a few cheerful words, adding, "So, hasten your toilet, or he'll be here before you are ready."

            Twenty years before, this same little lady had made her embryonic appearance in a quiet New England village. She had met her mother on the threshold of eternity, received her first, last kiss, and, passing into time, had unconsciously taken up the broken threads of affection that had once encircled the departed. She crept quietly into her father's vacant heart and warmed it with her soft nestling. She became the Little Amy of the village, whose claim to love was neither questioned nor limited. With a certain royalty of birthright, she had made childish appropriation of the most promising boy of the village, and had grown up in the enjoyment of his tacit proprietorship ; so that when, with characteristic precipitation, he had declared his purpose to seek a quick fortune in the new dorados of the West, the good old deacon conceded to him the first right to his little Amy, and the village pronounced a quiet amen. The honey-moon passed in a subdued pathos begotten of the impending separation, and then he was gone. At nineteen, little Amy became a mother, and, with the development of maternity, received a full supplement of character—a strength born of weakness—for an all-potent motherhood, in its infinite necessities, laid strong hold of an Almighty arm, and was exalted in the two best possibilities of love—the love of God and that of little children.

            Another year passed, redolent of baby bloom, and then the old man died. It was Amy's first grief, and, in her sore extremity, she naturally turned to her distant husband for sympathy and shelter. With an energy born of intense loneliness, she heralded her approach by telegram, then set out in the care of friends to San Francisco, and pushed on to the Washoe mines alone. By accident of conversation, she had heard her fellow-traveler, Mr. Bliss, mention Gold Hill, and then speak in a familiar way of the mine in which she knew her husband to be most interested, and, in response to some proffered courtesy at one of the stations, she had timidly made herself known, and found in him an old comrade of Harry's, and thenceforth her own kind friend and escort.

            The dust and stain of travel removed, and baby dressed in dainty white muslin and fresh blue ribbons, she sat in tremulous expectation of she scarce knew what, so strangely had her spirits sunk. She even betrayed no surprise when Mr. Bliss returned alone, and, with forced cheerfulness, told her that Harry was out of town, he did not know exactly where ; had gone on a sort of exploring expedition to the Reese River country, and possibly to San Francisco; had missed her telegram, starting the day before it arrived, but would doubtless return soon, and in the meantime no effort should be spared to find and hasten him.

            When she went to dinner that afternoon, there was the usual stare at the new-comer, with a reaction of excessive masculine deference, which quite disconcerted poor Amy, and made her feel very much out of place. She had begun to entertain a conscious longing for companionship with her own sex, but a generous specimen of female corpulency at the end of the table, talking incessantly with a most gratuitous prodigality of voice, to a select coterie of admirers, and two elaborately-dressed young ladies, with a dash of bold prettiness and an extravagance of white powder on their faces, bandying jokes and slang

1873.]              THE GOSSIP OF GOLD HILL.           211

phrases with their vis-a-vis across the table, robbed isolation of its sense of loss. Her convictions on this point were somewhat confirmed, when, an hour later, Mr. Bliss, at her request, guided her to the little cabin on the side-hill where Harry had been " baching it," whence she discovered what seemed to her a singular phenomenon in the person of a richly-dressed lady sitting in a remote doorway, smoking a cigar, with all the nonchalance of one well accustomed to that innocent diversion.

            Harry's cabin was a rude one, like its fellows, which seemed to have perched like so many crows in the most precarious situations on the barren hill-side ; but Harry was proverbially nice in his tastes, and so the legendary dishes, cleaned by turning on the other side, were put away in all the dull neatness of the most orthodox propriety, and the bunk on which Harry bad enjoyed his Bohemian slumbers, shut off from the main room by the ordinary cloth partition, was cleanly draped ; while, in spite of the thick covering of dust which had sifted through the inevitable cracks, the floor gave evidence of intimacy with the broom, doing inverted penance behind the door. On the table lay a scrap of paper full of penciled figures, and, over all, "Amy" was scribbled in two or three places, as if the writer's mind had involuntarily wandered from his mathematical computations to the dearer thoughts of home; and, in one corner, " Harry" was carefully executed in large hand, then, within the parallels of the H, "Amy" was written in small characters, and within the A was the tiny word, "Baby." This papery circumstance, through the subtile kinship of mind and matter, threw Amy into a lachrymose condition, alike distressing to Mr. Bliss and baby ; and, after a little, the three returned.

            Next day, Amy learned the fabulous cost of living at the hotel, counted her money twice over, calculated just how long it would give her a right to stay there, looked greatly perplexed for half an hour, then paid her bill, and with baby made her way to Harry's cabin on the hill. When Mr. Bliss found her there, he remonstrated, as he would have done to any independent mind, on the ground of unsafety, with a hint that it was not best, for some other reason wholly unintelligible to Amy ; but she, with child-like innocence, trusted all humanity, and was not afraid. Dependent all her life upon the wisdom of others, she would have readily obeyed a command, but none came, and so her own judgment prevailed.

            Her appearance at the hotel as the protégée of a notoriously "fast man," had inspired some unhallowed conjectures, in spite of the contradiction in her face and demeanor, and now, from her sudden disappearance, had sprung up a whole crop of wicked inferences. Nevada society never has adjusted itself to the stereotyped grooves of social teas and neighborly gossip, and it never will. Two unsophisticated ladies from the East once conceived the benevolent device of both leavening the community and benefiting the poor, by means of a sewing society. It began well, with the moral support of the best female influence in town ; but a discouraging deficiency of that mild type of gossip which is the natural pabulum of such institutions, and a series of social shocks which caused everybody to regard everybody else with that distant deference which one might naturally accord to an electric eel, caused it soon to degenerate into an uproarious evening sociable, which few ladies found time to attend, and where gentlemen, to whom the attractions of the saloons had become monotonous, made free contributions, ranging from "four bits" to five dollars, until the treasury was overburdened. Everybody was

212      THE GOSSIP OF GOLD HILL.           [MARCH

then living in the enjoyment of prospective opulence, since the fat washerwoman down the cañon had "struck it rich," and two or three illiterate miners had suddenly found themselves transformed to wealthy speculators, while several Irish ladies had risen, by means of wildcat stock, from despised biddies to a high state of matrimonial eligibility, not to mention those of more pretentious quality who had taken fortune "at the flood ;" so, in sheer lack of more legitimate beneficiaries, the money was donated to the minister's wife, and the society abandoned to a quiet death.

            Physical barrenness and moral rankness and excess is the law of life there.  The same climatic influences which dry up the springs of a sanitary vegetation, seem to foster a tropical luxuriance of evil in the moral soil. There are a few souls whose unsoiled spotlessness has proved their utter lack of chemical affinity with the surrounding elements, or rather the steadfastness of that mystic anchor within the vail; but the great multitude of men and women are intent on "making their pile " and their escape as speedily as possible, and meanwhile they are willing to free themselves of the hampering amenities of a more decorous life. Timid natures do not seek such fields of enterprise ; and so, where hundreds of buildings go up in a day, and fortunes are made and lost in intoxicating succession, slander bursts full-blown into existence, without the ordinary germ and bud of gossip. The women—be it said to their praise—being vastly in the minority, and their services much in demand, generally attended to their own business, and found little time to form original conclusions concerning their neighbors. The rigidly conservative among them seemed inclined to consign new-corners of their own sex, who lacked the flourish of an indorsement, to an eternal quarantine, fearing doubtless some deadly contagion ; but, with feminine inconsistency, they welcomed newly-arrived gentlemen as if their manhood was mail-proof against infection.

            Amy's lonely life and the unvitalizing air of that great altitude were well calculated to induce an unhealthy state of depression, both physical and mental. For prudential reasons known to that gentleman, Mr. Bliss had not called for two or three days ; and so, one stifling afternoon, when baby's feverish state filled her with anxiety, she resolved upon an effort at friendship with the woman whom she had seen in a cabin near.  Approaching timidly, she essayed a propitiatory form of speech, but was rudely interrupted with, "I am a dacent woman, mum, and wuddent wish to associate with the likes of you ; so ye may as well take yerself off." Amy did not comprehend this rebuff, but she went home and wept bitterly. The next day, when she went down the hill for water, and a miner took the pail, filled, and carried it back for her, then said, awkwardly, "I'm always at your service, miss, if I can do anything for you—errands, or the like o' that ; you don't look like you were used to roughing it much," her voice failed her to make answer, and the miner, looking back, saw her weeping just as bitterly as she had wept the day before. This was apparently unreasonable ; but she was learning the value of kindness by contrast —a miserable lesson that must come, sooner or later, to all. Two or three more days passed, and baby pined and grew worse, until Amy, who could not leave it, took it in her arms and went down the hill, then up the main street toward the divide, looking wistfully for doctors' signs. Seeing one at length, she turned into the office. The doctor was not there, and, after waiting some time, she left an urgent order, describing as well as she could on the slate, the situation of her cabin, and went home. The day was hot, and the trip did not benefit the child. At even-

1873.]              THE GOSSIP OF GOLD HILL.           212

ing, it was so much worse that she left it, and ran quickly to a house where she had seen children playing, and so hoped to touch a mother's sympathy. Fearing she should again be repulsed before her errand was told, she precipitately cried out, "O won't you come and stay with me to-night ? my baby is sick." A kindly glance overspread the woman's face for an instant, but she was the unwilling mother of a numerous offspring, which had persisted intact through all the minor details of childhood, from colic to scarlet fever, so that she did not regard a sick child as a very appalling circumstance. Moreover, she was a good Methodist sister, who had given the small entirety of her being to her Lord, but had not yet burst the chrysalis-shell of her narrow limitations, and, thinking thus to please her Master, she was always making the gate straiter and the way narrower than did He who built them. To her, falling from grace seemed like an ever-impending calamity, ready to surprise her at any instant, and since her residence at Gold Hill, its Protean form most often assumed the shape of the "world's people," especially those of reputed laxity of virtue. So when she asked Amy where she lived, and what friends she had, an unfortunate memory of something she had overheard "the men folks" saying prompted a frigid excuse. Amy turned away with a chill at her heart. The world that had hitherto been her nursing-mother, had suddenly cast her off. The air was stifling, and the blue concavity of sky above seemed like the cover of an exhausted receiver closing down upon her.

            All that night she carried her little one to and fro, and sang tender lullabies, until her own voice frightened her into silence. The whir of the mills never ceased, and a confused sound of bacchanal revelry mingled with it from the saloons below. The night previous, in her wakefulness, Amy had heard vaguely a short altercation, a scuffling sound, and then two quick reports of a pistol near her dwelling, and, while in the doctor's office, she had read an item in the paper which made her blood run cold. The paragraph was quite unique in its way, being couched in an emotionless brevity worthy of a Euclid. It is, however, but justice to the editorial heart of that period and locality to say, that the frequency of such occurrences necessitated either an unobtrusive terseness or an attractive facetiousness of statement, in order to add to the popularity and financial success of the paper. Yet it did not have a good effect upon Amy, who had imbibed certain antiquated notions concerning the sacredness of human life. Still, she was not afraid now. A certain pallor and blueness about the eyes, and a pinched contraction of baby's dimpled chin, lifted her above fear, into the regions of awe. She heard an approaching footstep, and ran out and asked a man, who was passing, to go for a doctor quick. The man consented, and turned back, as if to go at once, but he was drunk, and never reached his destination.

            Some hours later, the miner who had compassionated Amy at the spring, passed along on his way to his "morning shift." He had a tin lunch - pail in his hand, and a hard, prosaic expression on his grimy face. He was not apparently a favorable medium through which a subtile spiritual influence might scent out trouble and send relief. But as he neared the little cabin, he remembered its occupant, and fell to wondering who she was, and how such a little timid creature came to be there alone. Perhaps it was the peaceful hush of earth, and air, and sky, that sent a rush of gentle thoughts through his mind ; perhaps it was the sudden uprising of a far-off memory that made him turn when he had passed, with a look of protection at the cabin. All was quiet, and he wondered

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to see the flickering of a lamp within, dimmed by the morning sun. The door was ajar, and he felt a strange impulse to enter. There was no response to his light knock, and he pushed the door a trifle further open. There sat Amy — tearless, and rigid almost as the lifeless baby in her arms. The horror that had rested in the child's eyes during the last convulsive agony, had transferred itself now to the amazed mother's, and there was only peace and beauty on the baby face.

            O! ye whose tender buds of promise have been plucked from fairest gardens, which lacked neither dew nor rain, thank God that you were spared the sharper anguish of those patient mourners who have watched the light of life go out, for lack of the abundance just beyond their grasp—forever haunted by the memory of childish eyes full of unreasoning appeals for simplest comforts which they could not give.

            The miner dropped his lunch-pail and his awkwardness together, and gently disengaging the child, laid Amy on her bed, and ran for brandy and female assistance. Entertaining a vague conviction that a minister would constitute an appropriate feature of the scene, he afterwards left the Methodist sister, devoutly hoping that the Lord's dealings might not be in vain, and giving the hapless mother many pious exhortations, walked to Virginia, in quest of a recent ecclesiastical importation which that city possessed in the person of a young Episcopal rector. There was a funeral that afternoon, at the expense of the miner and his friends, for sympathy in that climate generally takes a circuitous route through the pocket. Amy was quiet and tearless again ; and the Methodist sister despairingly remarked, as she was enjoying her first drive in Washoe at the vicarious expense already mentioned, "that it was mighty strange how hard- hearted some folks were ; for if Mollie should die now, in one of her croupy spells, she should take on awfully, she was sure ; but, then, there was no accountin' for the difference in people, and for her part, she could never be too thankful that the Lord had made her to differ ; and she hoped it would be a lesson to them all." Probably it was a lesson, for they all seemed disinclined to talk, and so she gradually subsided into silence. A decent colored woman, who dropped in to the service at the house, took Amy's hand as she went out, and said : "Bress you, honey; I'se sure de Lord hisself is wid you, or you couldn't be so quiet-like, an' de dear baby gone." A kind lady from Virginia came down with the rector, and insisted on taking the stricken mother home with her ; but Amy, docile in all else, refused to go.

            They did not leave her again ; and after a few days of delirium, in which Harry was painfully absent, while baby seemed ever before her—now a child of earth, with wants unsatisfied ; then an angel child, treading with charmed feet the courts of Paradise ; and, again, a happy babe, pressing with soft clasp the mother's aching breast —she gathered herself up, one early twilight, and with the mother- love flashing from her eyes, put out both her arms, saying softly, "Mamma is coming," and was gone.

            In a different community, this martyrdom of innocent life might at least have borne a harvest of love and charity for other starving souls to reap ; but in that strange land, whose silver-hoards benumb the heart, the sacrifice was lost, like a bubble in the sea. I do not even know that there was any record of it in the Daily News, for the next day there was a "development in the mines" which made every one wild with excitement, and editors and readers alike were absorbed in their own sordid possibilities.