Page:The Californian volume 1 issue 1.djvu/9

 “Poor fellow!” he said to himself in pity. “He has lost his wits! See, my boy,” he said to me, rising and walking toward her. “Emp- ty space, all empty space.”

He swung his arms about him, but she moved swiftly toward me, still with the same air of warning me, then paused and spread her arms as if to keep us apart.

“Elinor! What is it? Speak!” I cried, rush- ing. toward her.

But Brande caught me in his arms, and by main force bore me to a chair in spite of my struggles and prayers. A look of despair came in her face. Her warnings doubled in zeal and number.

“Let me go!” I panted.

“T can not let you dash your brains out against the wall,” he said.

I made one more vain strain to leave my seat. He held me in a grasp of iron.

“What shall I do?” he groaned to himself, and turned white about the lips, for unseen I had made out to draw my pistol from my pocket, and now suddenly held it toward him.

“Yorke Rhys!” he shouted, but did not let go his hold.

How can I tell it? The room turned black tome. Then I found Elinor had fled, and my

friend lay at my feet with a bullet through his heart !

I have a confused remembrance of the board-

ers rushing in. I knew the glint of the French lady’s diamond ear-drops, and the down on her opera-cloak, just from the theatre, the wrought band of the German professor’s smoking-cap, and the palm-leaves on the Spanish lady’s cash- mere shawl, thrown over her night-robes as she came from her bed. They thought Brande had shot himself, for I sat there vaguely asking over and over:

“Why did he do it?”

There was a murmur of “Don’t tell him.” The crowd gave way for Elinor’s aunt, who came and laid my head against her breast in dear motherly fashion.

“What does Elinor want?” I asked. has just been here.”

She only said, “Poor boy!” and smoothed my hair.

Something in their faces smote me with dread. “He is out of his head!” they whispered.

“Tell me,” I urged, “where is Elinor? was here just now.”

The Spanish and the French lady looked in- quiringly at Elinor’s aunt. I turned my face up to hers just in time ere I lost my senses (or did that make me faint?) to see her lips shape the words:

“Elinor died just now!”

“She

She

Act IV.

I lay on my bed, dimly aware of a long, slow lapse of time. Was it of weeks, months or years? I could not tell. Sometimes I saw the sunshine veer round the room, and knew day after day passed, but not how many. Some of the boarders came and went, to my dull senses like visions in dreams: the French lady, trim and straight, nodded and twinkled past, whiffs from the German professor’s pipe curled near me, the tinkle of the Spanish lady’s guitar rang faint and far. Elinor’s aunt had often shaken and smoothed my pillow, but I did not know why nor how I came to be in this weak state of mind and body, and no one spoke of it to me even after I could sit up, till one day Nora brought me a folded page of note-paper, which, she said, fell from my clothes when I was un- dressed the night I fainted, and she had kept it for me, “because it had Miss Elinor’s writing on it.” It was “The Lost Pleiad.” All my weight of woe dropped on me anew. I knew what star had fallen from my sky.

“You kept it for me all this time?” I said, as I gave her some money. “I suppose I was sick some weeks.”

“Months,” she answered.

I sighed. How much in debt such long idle- ness and illness must have brought me! And I must have lost my chance for work in China. Letters must be written. I opened my desk. It had not been locked, and a pile of receipted board and doctor’s bills I had never seen lay in it, with a letter dated the very day that Elinor— that Noel—that I fell ill, from Brande’s friends on California Street. It told me that through his strong efforts I was given a place with them, which made sure the income I had longed for to let me marry and stay in my own country. They had kept the place waiting for me, and meanwhile paid my bills. Through Brande’s influence! And I had killed my best friend! I gasped for air, opened the windows and walked the room. I could trace my troubles all back to that infernal Si-ki. Hastily making ready, I stole out unseen, and rushed to Tong-ko-lin- sing. As I went in, his Tien-Sien lark was fill- ing the room with its song, standing on the floor of its cage, which was on the table in front of his master, who sat reading. in his bamboo easy-chair. Tong-ko-lin-sing was struck with the change in me, and wished to talk of it.

“T must find Si-ki,” I said.

“In a field of melons do not pull up your shoes,” said he; “under a plum-tree do not ad- just your cap. If I go with you, it will look as if I knew where to find him. I do not.”