第37章
SHE hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her.He had only himself to thank.
Meantime the political excitement in which she had become a partisan without understanding or even conviction, presently culminated with the Presidential campaign and the election of Abraham Lincoln.The intrigues of Southern statesmen were revealed in open expression, and echoed in California by those citizens of Southern birth and extraction who had long, held place, power, and opinion there.There were rumors of secession, of California joining the South, or of her founding an independent Pacific Empire.A note from "J.E.Kirby" informed Mrs.Bunker that she was to carefully retain any correspondence that might be in her hands until further orders, almost at the same time that Zephas as regretfully told her that his projected Southern trip had been suspended.Mrs.Bunker was disappointed, and yet, in some singular conditions of her feelings, felt relieved that her meeting with Marion was postponed.It is to be feared that some dim conviction, unworthy a partisan, that in the magnitude of political events her own petty personality might be overlooked by her hero tended somewhat to her resignation.
Meanwhile the seasons had changed.The winter rains had set in;the trade winds had shifted to the southeast, and the cottage, although strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales.
There were long nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles, or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning.At such times, in her accepted solitude, Mrs.Bunker gave herself up to strange moods and singular visions; the more audacious and more striking it seemed to her from their very remoteness, and the difficulty she was beginning to have in materializing them.The actual personality of Wynyard Marion, as she knew it in her one interview, had become very shadowy and faint in the months that passed, yet when the days were heavy she sometimes saw herself standing by his side in some vague tropical surroundings, and hailed by the multitude as the faithful wife and consort of the great Leader, President, Emperor--she knew not what!
Exactly how this was to be managed, and the manner of Zephas'
effacement from the scene, never troubled her childish fancy, and, it is but fair to say, her woman's conscience.In the logic before alluded to, it seemed to her that all ethical responsibility for her actions rested with the husband who had unduly married her.Nor were those visions always roseate.In the wild declamation of that exciting epoch which filled the newspapers there was talk of short shrift with traitors.So there were days when the sudden onset of a squall of hail against her window caused her to start as if she had heard the sharp fusillade of that file of muskets of which she had sometimes read in history.
One day she had a singular fright.She had heard the sound of oars falling with a precision and regularity unknown to her.She was startled to see the approach of a large eight-oared barge rowed by men in uniform, with two officers wrapped in cloaks in the stern sheets, and before them the glitter of musket barrels.The two officers appeared to be conversing earnestly, and occasionally pointing to the shore and the bluff above.For an instant she trembled, and then an instinct of revolt and resistance followed.
She hurriedly removed the ring, which she usually wore when alone, from her finger, slipped it with the packet under the mattress of her bed, and prepared with blazing eyes to face the intruders.But when the boat was beached, the two officers, with scarcely a glance towards the cottage, proceeded leisurely along the shore.Relieved, yet it must be confessed a little piqued at their indifference, she snatched up her hat and sallied forth to confront them.
"I suppose you don't know that this is private property?" she said sharply.
The group halted and turned towards her.The orderly, who was following, turned his face aside and smiled.The younger officer demurely lifted his cap.The elder, gray, handsome, in a general's uniform, after a moment's half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure, gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.
"I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of that.We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a possible view of fortifying the bluff.It is very doubtful if you will be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government will not fail to make it good to you." He turned carelessly to the aide beside him."I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?""I don't know about that, general.They say that Marion, after he killed Henderson, escaped down this way," said the young man.
"Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?""They say that Mrs.Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for him.The story of the escape is all out now."They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs.Bunker, only the younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn't as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.
She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed.Who was this Mrs.Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was equally well known that he went in the ship alone.If they had heard that some woman was with him here--why should they have supposed it was Mrs.Fairfax? Zephas might know something--but he was away.The thought haunted her that day and the next.
On the third came a more startling incident.