A to Z Classics - Bram Stoker - The Complete Novels

“Oh, look! Esse! look! look! the whole garden is a sun-dial!”

Esse looked, and sure enough all around her, at intervals, rose groups of tall, slim pines, but at varied distances, so that there was no appearance of a ring. Some of them leaned from the perpendicular in a queer way, and yet all were so arranged that a perfect sun-dial with Roman numerals was formed, and the shadow of the great pine fell with the movement of the whirling earth, and told the tale of flying hours. There was a long pause, and Esse turned to Dick.

“Dick, did you do this?”

Again the hunter slapped his thigh in mirth and his wild, resonant cachinnation seemed to sound louder than ever, as though there were some containing acoustic quality in the prickly fence. Esse got somewhat nettled, and there was a red spot on each cheek as she said:

“I don’t see much to laugh at in that. I don’t see why you can’t answer a simple question without being rude!”

Dick sobered at once, and, with a grave courtesy that seemed like a knightly act by a natural man, took off his cap and bowed his head.

“Askin’ yer pardon, Little Missy. I’d no mind to be rude, nor no call to. Why, I’d not a thought of that in a thousand years. That was all done by the old doctor who found this place, and built the house, and fixed up the fence and the garden. Took a mighty deal o’ pleasure in it too, seemin’ly. Every year he was here he left it less and less, till at the end he wouldn’t ha’ quitted, not for a farce-comedy speciality an’ a comicopera troupe rolled inter one! ‘Pears to me, Little Missy, that you’ve come along jest in time, for there’s many as would like to hev the place if onst they knowed of it.”

Esse made no other reply than:

“Come along, Dick, and show me the view. I want to see the Pacific from up here.”

Without a word Dick strode away to the rocky ledge over which the stream tumbled. As they got near it Miss Gimp, who had been grizzling with the indifference of all to her presence, overtook them, and said in a tone which all could hear:

“Wants to show her all the kingdoms of the earth from a high place! We know what to make of him!” and she snorted.

Esse looked at her with an amused smile, but Mrs. Elstree felt annoyed, and, in order to get rid of her, asked her to go into the house and see Mrs. Le Maistre, who was the housekeeper, as to the arrival. She complied with outward calmness, but was shortly afterwards seen going to the house with several Indians. One of them carried the cats, and another the dog, while a third held out at arm’s length the cage of the parrot, which, from its talking, he evidently regarded with some very remarkable awe. She was letting off steam by poking the Indians in the back with the point of her umbrella. They did not resent it, but took it with that outward stoicism which marked their bearing. This aggravated her even more, and she poked the harder; but still the Indians did not resent it. She would have been not a little mortified had she known the cause of their forbearance.

Mrs. Elstree and Esse stood for a long time looking at the view, and then Dick took them northward along a ledge of rock behind the belt of trees. Here there was a high, bare rock with a flat top, and on it was a natural seat of rock, resting whereon they looked round the whole horizon, except where the giant bulk of Shasta shut out the southern aspect.

Esse was in a trance of delight. Below her the mountain fell away in billows of green, through which the rivers ran like threads of silver. Far away, where the whole landscape became merged in one dark, misty expanse, she could see the Pacific, a grey mass of nothingness, fringed on the near side with the jagged edge of the coast, and beyond, the arc of the horizon. Here and there in the plain hills rose and valleys dipped; but their heights and depths were lost in the distance, and had no more individual existence than the pattern of a carpet. Then she looked south, and her eye travelled up the steep side of the mountain, passing from the lessening fringe of forest to where the hardy trees stood out starkly one by one in the isolation of their strength to endure; up the rolling steep where rushes and scanty herbage grew in the shelter of the rocks; upward still, where the bare rock stood out from the grey mass of primeval rubble wherein is no vital strength, and where the snow and ice ran down in spurs into the sheltered gorges; upward still, to where the snow lay like a winding-sheet, and where the ruggedness of Nature was softened into flowing lines. And then her eye lit on the mighty curve of the mountain top, whose edges, as the high sun took them, were fringed with dazzling light. She turned to her mother, and with a sort of hysterical cry fell over against her, clasping her in her arms and hiding her tears on her bosom.

“Take me in, mother,” she said; “I am tired, tired! and it is too sweet to see all at once!”

Mrs. Elstree felt her arms relax, and bent down anxiously; Esse had fainted. The mother knew of her long illness, and was not altogether surprised, but Dick was overcome with anxiety, as strong natural men are where womankind and her weakness are concerned, and he said, in an awe-struck whisper:

“The poor, purty little thing! Let me carry her for ye, marm. I’ll bear her very gently!”

Mrs. Elstree nodded, and he took her up in his powerful arms as though she was a baby, and together they went softy to the house.

At the door they were met by the entire household with Mrs. Le Maistre at the head; Miss Gimp rushed out on seeing the body of Esse carried limply, and began to scream and call out:

“Is she dead? Is it an accident? Oh, my child, my child!” and she beat her hands wildly together.

Miss Gimp was a good creature in spite of her eccentricity, and Grizzly Dick summed her up fairly when he said: The old girl is a crank from Crankville; but her heart is in the right location all the same. ’ Mrs. Elstree tried to soothe her, and raised her hand as she said:

“Hush, hush! she has only fainted. The journey and the hot sun have been too much for her. She will be all right presently!”

Then Mrs. Le Maistre, who had been her nurse, took her in her strong arms, and carried her in, not without protest from Dick.

“Let me carry her, marm. Purty Little Missy, I’ll be as gentle as her mother!”

As they entered the doorway Esse opened her eyes, and, after looking at them all for a few seconds, in a dazed sort of way, said suddenly, whilst a bright blush took the place of her pallor:

“Oh, let me down, I’m all right now! Don’t let Dick see me like this; he’ll think me a baby!”

Miss Gimp sniffed as she looked over at Dick, but said nothing, for it was borne in upon her, swiftly but conclusively, that he was a mighty fine figure of a man.

Towards evening, when, after a lie down and a cup of tea, Esse was feeling quite restored, she asked her mother if she might go out and see the sunset. Without a word, Mrs. Elstree tied a scarf over her head, for the evening was growing chilly at this altitude, and taking her daughter’s arm they strolled out towards the entrance gate and across the plateau. Once more they sat upon the rocky seat and looked out westward. Once again they saw the sun sink, a red globe, into the western sea, and the dark shadow of night climb up the hill-side, and the summit of Shasta gleam ghostly white.

And then they went in.

For several weeks the life on the Shasta was ideal, and Mrs. Elstree’s heart rejoiced to see the changes it was working in Esse. Her languidness seemed to have disappeared, and she was now bright, brisk, and alert, for ever devising new ways of passing the time, and helping with invention and design to improve the place. Le Maistre, who had a pretty mechanical aptitude of his own, had designed a new water supply for the house, and was already carrying it into execution. From the rocky basin which stood up the mountain nearly three hundred feet above the house, he was to lay a series of logs, pierced with great augers, now being brought up from San Francisco on purpose. These were to be joined together, and would convey so easily applicable as well as so abundant a supply that Esse had designed several fountains for round the house, each of which would throw up a fair sheet of water to a considerable height. Thus from whatever way the wind blew, something of the cooling spray could be borne to the house. In this work Dick was of great use, not only by his lending a hand himself, but by being able to induce the Indians to help. A few nondescript settlers of lower down the mountain were glad to earn a little money, and altogether muscular power was not wanting. Dick was only present now and again, for his hunting pursuits took him away sometimes for a few days at a time. But his time was not wasted in so far as the household was concerned, for it was he who kept the larder supplied with fresh meat. There was always abundance of all sorts of game, and a very liberal supply of necessaries had been laid in; the garden afforded a good supply of fruit and vegetables, and altogether no need for comfort was lacking.