Part 34

“Looks like a squaw, eh?” interrupted a critic, “or a cursed Chinaman?”

“And if it's of metal, it will weigh a ton! How are we going to get it up here?” said another.

But here Mr. Trigg was on sure ground. “I've ordered it cast holler, and, if necessary, in two sections,” he returned triumphantly. “A child could tote it round and set it up.”

Its arrival was therefore looked forward to with great expectancy when the hotel was finished and occupied by the combined Excelsior companies. It was to come from New York via San Francisco, where, however, there was some delay in its transshipment, and still further delay at Sacramento. It finally reached the settlement over the new wagon road, and was among the first freight carried there by the new express company, and delivered into the new express office. The box--a packing-case, nearly three feet square by five feet long--bore superficial marks of travel and misdirection, inasmuch as the original address was quite obliterated and the outside lid covered with corrected labels. It was carried to a private sitting-room in the hotel, where its beauty was to be first disclosed to the president of the united companies, three of the committee, and the excited and triumphant purchaser. A less favored crowd of members and workmen gathered curiously outside the room. Then the lid was carefully removed, revealing a quantity of shavings and packing paper which still hid the outlines of the goddess. When this was promptly lifted a stare of blank astonishment fixed the faces of the party! It was succeeded by a quick, hysteric laugh, and then a dead silence.

Before them lay a dressmaker's dummy, the wire and padded model on which dresses are fitted and shown. With its armless and headless bust, abruptly ending in a hooped wire skirt, it completely filled the sides of the box.

“Shut the door,” said the president promptly.

The order was obeyed. The single hysteric shriek of laughter had been followed by a deadly, ironical silence. The president, with supernatural gravity, lifted it out and set it up on its small, round, disk-like pedestal.

“It's some cussed fool blunder of that confounded express company,” burst out the unlucky purchaser. But there was no echo to his outburst. He looked around with a timid, tentative smile. But no other smile followed his.

“It looks,” said the president, with portentous gravity, “like the beginnings of a fine woman, that MIGHT show up, if you gave her time, into a first-class goddess. Of course she ain't all here; other boxes with sections of her, I reckon, are under way from her factory, and will meander along in the course of the year. Considerin' this as a sample--I think, gentlemen,” he added, with gloomy precision, “we are prepared to accept it, and signify we'll take more.”

“It ain't, perhaps, exactly the idee that we've been led to expect from previous description,” said Dick Flint, with deeper seriousness; “for instance, this yer branch of thorns we heard of ez bein' held behind her is wantin', as is the arms that held it; but even if they had arrived, anybody could see the thorns through them wires, and so give the hull show away.”

“Jam it into its box again, and we'll send it back to the confounded express company with a cussin' letter,” again thundered the wretched purchaser.

“No, sonny,” said the president with gentle but gloomy determination, “we'll fasten on to this little show jest as it is, and see what follows. It ain't every day that a first-class sell like this is worked off on us ACCIDENTALLY.”

It was quite true! The settlement had long since exhausted every possible form of practical joking, and languished for a new sensation. And here it was! It was not a thing to be treated angrily, nor lightly, nor dismissed with that single hysteric laugh. It was capable of the greatest possibilities! Indeed, as Washington Trigg looked around on the imperturbably ironical faces of his companions, he knew that they felt more true joy over the blunder than they would in the possession of the real statue. But an exclamation from the fifth member, who was examining the box, arrested their attention.

“There's suthin' else here!”

He had found under the heavier wrapping a layer of tissue-paper, and under that a further envelope of linen, lightly stitched together. A knife blade quickly separated the stitches, and the linen was carefully unfolded. It displayed a beautifully trimmed evening dress of pale blue satin, with a dressing-gown of some exquisite white fabric armed with lace. The men gazed at it in silence, and then the one single expression broke from their lips,--

“Her duds!”

“Stop, boys,” said “Clint” Grey, as a movement was made to lift the dress towards the model, “leave that to a man who knows. What's the use of my having left five grown-up sisters in the States if I haven't brought a little experience away with me? This sort of thing ain't to be 'pulled on' like trousers. No, sir!--THIS is the way she's worked.”

With considerable dexterity, unexpected gentleness, and some taste, he shook out the folds of the skirt delicately and lifted it over the dummy, settling it skillfully upon the wire hoops, and drawing the bodice over the padded shoulders. This he then proceeded to fasten with hooks and eyes,--a work of some patience. Forty eager fingers stretched out to assist him, but were waved aside, with a look of pained decorum as he gravely completed his task. Then falling back, he bade the others do the same, and they formed a contemplative semicircle before the figure.

Up to that moment a delighted but unsmiling consciousness of their own absurdities, a keen sense of the humorous possibilities of the original blunder, and a mischievous recognition of the mortification of Trigg--whose only safety now lay in accepting the mistake in the same spirit--had determined these grown-up schoolboys to artfully protract a joke that seemed to be providentially delivered into their hands. But NOW an odd change crept on them. The light from the open window that gave upon the enormous pines and the rolling prospect up to the dim heights of the Sierras fell upon this strange, incongruous, yet perfectly artistic figure. For the dress was the skillful creation of a great Parisian artist, and in its exquisite harmony of color, shape, and material it not only hid the absurd model, but clothed it with an alarming grace and refinement! A queer feeling of awe, of shame, and of unwilling admiration took possession of them. Some of them--from remote Western towns--had never seen the like before; those who HAD had forgotten it in those five years of self-exile, of healthy independence, and of contiguity to Nature in her unaffected simplicity. All had been familiar with the garish, extravagant, and dazzling femininity of the Californian towns and cities, but never had they known anything approaching the ideal grace of this type of exalted, even if artificial, womanhood. And although in the fierce freedom of their little republic they had laughed to scorn such artificiality, a few yards of satin and lace cunningly fashioned, and thrown over a frame of wood and wire, touched them now with a strange sense of its superiority. The better to show its attractions, Clinton Grey had placed the figure near a full-length, gold-framed mirror, beside a marble-topped table. Yet how cheap and tawdry these splendors showed beside this work of art! How cruel was the contrast of their own rough working clothes to this miracle of adornment which that same mirror reflected! And even when Clinton Grey, the enthusiast, looked towards his beloved woods for relief, he could not help thinking of them as a more fitting frame for this strange goddess than this new house into which she had strayed. Their gravity became real; their gibes in some strange way had vanished.

“Must have cost a pile of money,” said one, merely to break an embarrassing silence.

“My sister had a friend who brought over a dress from Paris, not as high-toned as that, that cost five hundred dollars,” said Clinton Grey.

“How much did you say that spirit-clad old rag of yours cost--thorns and all?” said the president, turning sharply on Trigg.

Trigg swallowed this depreciation of his own purchase meekly. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars, without the express charges.”

“That's only two-fifty more,” said the president thoughtfully, “if we call it quits.”

“But,” said Trigg in alarm, “we must send it back.”

“Not much, sonny,” said the president promptly. “We'll hang on to this until we hear where that thorny old chump of yours has fetched up and is actin' her conundrums, and mebbe we can swap even.”

“But how will we explain it to the boys?” queried Trigg. “They're waitin' outside to see it.”

“There WON'T be any explanation,” said the president, in the same tone of voice in which he had ordered the door shut. “We'll just say that the statue hasn't come, which is the frozen truth; and this box only contained some silk curtain decorations we'd ordered, which is only half a lie. And,” still more firmly, “THIS SECRET DOESN'T GO OUT OF THIS ROOM, GENTLEMEN--or I ain't your president! I'm not going to let you give yourselves away to that crowd outside--you hear me? Have you ever allowed your unfettered intellect to consider what they'd say about this,--what a godsend it would be to every man we'd ever had a 'pull' on in this camp? Why, it would last 'em a whole year; we'd never hear the end of it! No, gentlemen! I prefer to live here without shootin' my fellow man, but I can't promise it if they once start this joke agin us!”