The Spinner\'s Book of Fiction

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[Illustration: "THE DEVIL SIT IN FILON'S EYES AND LAUGH--LAUGH--SOME
TIME HE GO AWAY LIKE A MAN AT A WINDOW, BUT HE COME AGAIN.
M'siu, he live there!" From a Painting by E. Almond Withrow.]

THE SPINNERS' BOOK OF FICTION

BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, MARY AUSTIN
GERALDINE BONNER, MARY HALLECK FOOTE
ELEANOR GATES, JAMES HOPPER, JACK LONDON
BAILEY MILLARD, MIRIAM
MICHELSON, W. C. MORROW
FRANK NORRIS, HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD, ISOBEL STRONG
RICHARD WALTON TULLY AND
HERMAN WHITAKER

WITH A DEDICATORY POEM BY GEORGE STERLING

COLLECTED BY THE BOOK COMMITTEE OF THE SPINNERS' CLUB

ILLUSTRATED BY LILLIE V. O'RYAN, MAYNARD DIXON ALBERTINE RANDALL
WHEELAN, MERLE JOHNSON E. ALMOND WITHROW AND GORDON ROSS INITIALS AND
DECORATIONS BY SPENCER WRIGHT

PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK

_Published in behalf_ _of The Spinners' Benefit Fund_
_Ina D. Coolbrith_ _First Beneficiary_
_Copyright_, 1907 _by_ PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY

* * * * *

TO INA D. COOLBRITH

WITH WILDER SIGHING IN THE PINE
THE WIND WENT BY, AND SO I DREAMED;
AND IN THAT DUSK OF SLEEP IT SEEMED
A CITY BY THE SEA WAS MINE.

TO STATELIER SPRANG THE WALLS OF TYRE
FROM SEAWARD CLIFF OR STABLE HILL;
AND LIGHT AND MUSIC MET TO FILL
THE SPLENDID COURTS OF HER DESIRE--

(EXTOLLING CHORDS THAT CRIED HER PRAISE,
AND GOLDEN REEDS WHOSE MELLOW MOAN
WAS LIKE AN OCEAN'S UNDERTONE
DYING AND LOST ON FOREST WAYS).

BUT SWEETER FAR THAN ANY SOUND
THAT RANG OR RIPPLED IN HER HALLS,
WAS ONE BEYOND HER EASTERN WALLS,
BY SUMMER GARDENS GIRDLED ROUND.

TWAS FROM A NIGHTINGALE, AND OH!
THE SONG IT SANG HATH NEVER WORD!
SWEETER IT SEEMED THAN LOVE'S, FIRST-HEARD,
OR LUTES IN AIDENN MURMURING LOW.

FAINT, AS WHEN DROWSY WINDS AWAKE
A SISTERHOOD OF FAERY BELLS,
IT WON REPLY FROM HIDDEN DELLS,
LOYAL TO ECHO FOR ITS SAKE....

I DREAMT I SLEPT, BUT CANNOT SAY
HOW MANY DREAMLAND SEASONS FLED,
NOR WHAT HORIZON OF THE DEAD
GAVE BACK MY DREAM'S UNCERTAIN DAY.

BUT STILL BESIDE THE TOILING SEA
I LAY, AND SAW--FOR WALLS O'ERGROWN--
THE CITY THAT WAS MINE HAD KNOWN
TIME'S SURE AND ANCIENT TREACHERY.

ABOVE HER RAMPARTS, BROAD AS TYRE'S,
THE GRASSES' MOUNTING ARMY BROKE;
THE SHADOW OF THE SPRAWLING OAK
USURPT THE SPLENDOR OF HER FIRES.

BUT O'ER THE FALLEN MARBLES PALE
I HEARD, LIKE ELFIN MELODIES
BLOWN OVER FROM ENCHANTED SEAS,
THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHTINGALE.

GEORGE STERLING.

THE STORIES

CONCHA ARGUeELLO, SISTER DOMINICA
_by Gertrude Atherton_

THE FORD OF CREVECOEUR
_by Mary Austin_

A CALIFORNIAN
_by Geraldine Bonner_

GIDEON'S KNOCK
_by Mary Halleck Foote_

A YELLOW MAN AND A WHITE
_by Eleanor Gates_

THE JUDGMENT OF MAN
_by James Hopper_

THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN
_by Jack London_

DOWN THE FLUME WITH THE SNEATH PIANO
_by Bailey Millard_

THE CONTUMACY OF SARAH L. WALKER
_by Miriam Michelson_

BREAKING THROUGH
_by W. C. Morrow_

A LOST STORY
_by Frank Norris_

HANTU
_by Henry Milner Rideout_

MISS. JUNO
_by Charles Warren Stoddard_

A LITTLE SAVAGE GENTLEMAN
_by Isobel Strong_

LOVE AND ADVERTISING
_by Richard Walton Tully_

THE TEWANA
_by Herman Whitaker_

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

"The devil sit in Filon's eyes and laugh--laugh--some time
he go away like a man at a window, but he come again.
M'siu, he _live_ there!"
_from a painting by E. Almond Withrow_

"She was always very sweet, our Concha, but there never was
a time when you could take a liberty with her."
_from a painting by Lillie V. O'Ryan_

"The petal of a plum blossom."
_from a painting by Albertine Randall Wheelan_

"Not twenty feet from me Miller sat upright in his canoe as
if petrified." _Opp. Page_
_from a painting by Merle Johnson_

"All their ways lead to death."
_from a painting by Maynard Dixon_

"Dawn was flooding the east, and still the boy lurched and
floundered on and on."
_from a painting by Gordon Ross_

WHEREFORE?

_Wherefore this book of fiction by Californian writers? And why its
appeal otherwise than that of obvious esthetic and literary qualities?
They who read what follows will know._

_The fund, which the sale of this book is purposed to aid, was planned
by The Spinners soon after the eighteenth of April, 1906, and was
started with two hundred dollars from their treasury. To this, Mrs.
Gertrude Atherton added another two hundred dollars. Several women's
clubs and private individuals also generously responded, so that now
there is a thousand dollars to the credit of the fund. A bond has been
bought and the interest from it will be paid to Ina D. Coolbrith, the
poet, and first chosen beneficiary of the fund. The Spinners feel
assured that this book will meet with such a ready sale as to make
possible the purchase of several bonds, and so render the accruing
interest a steady source of aid to Miss. Coolbrith._

_All who have read and fallen under the charm of her "Songs from the
Golden Gate," or felt the beauty and tenderness of the verses "When the
Grass Shall Cover Me," will, without question, unite in making
"assurance doubly sure" to such end._

_From the days of the old_ Overland Monthly, _when she worked side by
side with Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard, to the present moment,
Miss. Coolbrith's name has formed a part of the literary history of San
Francisco._

_The eighteenth of April, 1906, and the night which followed it, left
her bereft of all literary, and other, treasures; but her poem bearing
the refrain, "Lost city of my love and my desire," rings with the old
genius, and expresses the feeling of many made desolate by the
destruction of the city which held their most cherished memories._

_When Miss. Coolbrith shall no longer need to be a beneficiary of the
fund, it is intended that it shall serve to aid some other writer,
artist or musician whose fortunes are at the ebb._

_To the writers, artists and publishers who have so heartily and
generously made this book possible, The Spinners return unmeasured
thanks._

_San Francisco, June 22, 1907._

CONCHA ARGUeELLO, SISTER DOMINICA

BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON

DEDICATED TO CAROLINA XIMENO

Written for THE SPINNERS' BOOK OF FICTION _All Rights Reserved_

SISTER TERESA had wept bitterly for two days. The vanity for which she
did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white
robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors
in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow.
There had been moments when she had argued that her vanity had its
rights, for had it not played its part in weaning her from the
world?--that wicked world of San Francisco, whose very breath,
accompanying her family on their monthly visits to Benicia, made her
cross herself and pray that all good girls whom fate had stranded there
should find the peace and shelter of Saint Catherine of Siena. It was
true that before Sister Dominica toiled up Rincon Hill on that wonderful
day--here her sobs became so violent that Sister Maria Sal, praying
beside her with a face as swollen as her own, gave her a sharp poke in
the ribs, and she pressed her hands to her mouth lest she be marched
away. But her thoughts flowed on; she could pray no more. Sister
Dominica, with her romantic history and holy life, her halo of fame in
the young country, and her unconquerable beauty--she had never seen such
eyelashes, never, never!--_what_ was she thinking of at such a time?
She had never believed that such divine radiance could emanate from any
mortal; never had dreamed that beauty and grace could be so enhanced by
a white robe and a black veil----Oh, well! Her mind was in a rebellious
mood; it had been in leash too long. And what of it for once in a way?
No ball dress she had ever seen in the gay disreputable little
city--where the good citizens hung the bad for want of law--was half as
becoming as the habit of the Dominican nun, and if it played a part in
weaning frivolous girls from the world, so much more to the credit of
Rome. God knew she had never regretted her flight up the bays, and even
had it not been for the perfidy of--she had forgotten his name; that at
least was dead!--she would have realized her vocation the moment Sister
Dominica sounded the call. When the famous nun, with that passionate
humility all her own, had implored her to renounce the world, protested
that her vocation was written in her face--she really looked like a
juvenile mater dolorosa, particularly when she rolled up her
eyes--eloquently demanded what alternative that hideous embryo of a city
could give her--that rude and noisy city that looked as if it had been
tossed together in a night after one of its periodical fires, where the
ill-made sidewalks tripped the unwary foot, or the winter mud was like a
swamp, where the alarm bell summoned the Vigilance Committee day and
night to protect or avenge, where a coarse and impertinent set of
adventurers stared at and followed an inoffensive nun who only left the
holy calm of the convent at the command of the Bishop to rescue brands
from the burning; then had Teresa, sick with the tragedy of youth, an
enchanting vision of secluded paths, where nuns--in white--walked with
downcast eyes and folded hands; of the daily ecstasy of prayer in the
convent chapel misty with incense.

And in some inscrutable way Sister Dominica during that long
conversation, while Mrs. Grace and her other daughters dispensed egg-nog
in the parlor--it was New Year's Day--had made the young girl a part of
her very self, until Teresa indulged the fancy that without and within
she was a replica of that Concha Argueello of California's springtime;
won her heart so completely that she would have followed her not only
into the comfortable and incomparably situated convent of the saint of
Siena, but barefooted into that wilderness of Soledad where the Indians
still prayed for their lost "Beata." It was just eight months tonight
since she had taken her first vows, and she had been honestly aware that
there was no very clear line of demarcation in her fervent young mind
between her love of Sister Dominica and her love of God. Tonight, almost
prostrate before the coffin of the dead nun, she knew that so far at
least all the real passion of her youth had flowed in an undeflected
tide about the feet of that remote and exquisite being whose personal
charm alone had made a convent possible in the chaos that followed the
discovery of gold. All the novices, many of the older nuns, the pupils
invariably, worshipped Sister Dominica; whose saintliness without
austerity never chilled them, but whose tragic story and the impression
she made of already dwelling in a heaven of her own, notwithstanding
her sweet and consistent humanity, placed her on a pinnacle where any
display of affection would have been unseemly. Only once, after the
beautiful ceremony of taking the white veil was over, and Teresa's
senses were faint from incense and hunger, ecstasy and a new and
exquisite terror, Sister Dominica had led her to her cell and kissing
her lightly on the brow, exclaimed that she had never been happier in a
conquest for the Church against the vileness of the world. Then she had
dropped the conventional speech of her calling, and said with an
expression that made her look so young, so curiously virginal, that the
novice had held her breath: "Remember that here there is nothing to
interrupt the life of the imagination, nothing to change its course,
like the thousand conflicting currents that batter memory and character
to pieces in the world. In this monotonous round of duty and prayer the
mind is free, the heart remains ever young, the soul unspotted; so that
when----" She had paused, hesitated a moment, then abruptly left the
room, and Teresa had wept a torrent in her disappointment that this
first of California's heroines--whose place in history and romance was
assured--had not broken her reserve and told her all that story of many
versions. She had begged Sister Maria Sal--the sister of Luis Argueello's
first wife--to tell it her, but the old nun had reproved her sharply for
sinful curiosity and upon one occasion boxed her ears. But tonight she
might be in a softer mood, and Teresa resolved that when the last rites
were over she would make her talk of Concha Argueello.

A few moments later she was lifted to her feet by a shaking but still
powerful arm.

"Come!" whispered Sister Maria. "It is time to prepare. The others have
gone. It is singular that the oldest and the youngest should have loved
her best. Ay! Dios de mi alma! I never thought that Concha Argueello
would die. Grow old she never did, in spite of the faded husk. We will
look at her once more."

The dead nun in her coffin lay in the little parlor where she had turned
so many wavering souls from fleeting to eternal joys. Her features,
wasted during years of delicate health, seemed to regain something of
their youth in the soft light of the candles. Or was it the long black
eyelashes that hid the hollows beneath the eyes?--or the faint
mysterious almost mocking smile? Had the spirit in its eternal youth
paused in its flight to stamp a last sharp impress upon the prostrate
clay? Never had she looked so virginal, and that had been one of the
most arresting qualities of her always remarkable appearance; but there
was something more--Teresa held her breath. Somehow, dead and in her
coffin, she looked less saintly than in life; although as pure and
sweet, there was less of heavenly peace on those marble features than of
some impassioned human hope. Teresa excitedly whispered her unruly
thoughts to Sister Maria, but instead of the expected reproof the old
nun lifted her shoulders.

"Perhaps," she said. "Who knows?"

* * * * *

It was Christmas eve and all the inmates of the convent paused in their
sorrow to rejoice in the happy portent of the death and burial of one
whom they loyally believed to be no less entitled to beatification than
Catherine herself. Her miracles may not have been of the irreducible
protoplastic order, but they had been miracles to the practical
Californian mind, notwithstanding, and worthy of the attention of
consistory and Pope. Moreover, this was the season when all the vivacity
and gaiety of her youth had revived, and she made merry, not only for
the children left at the convent by their nomadic parents, but for all
the children of the town, whatever the faith of their somewhat anxious
elders.

An hour after sundown they carried the bier on which her coffin rested
into the chapel. It was a solemn procession that none, taking part, was
likely to forget, and stirred the young hearts at least with an ecstatic
desire for a life as saintly as this that hardly had needed the crown of
death.

Following the bier was the cross-bearer, holding the emblem so high it
was half lost in the shadows. Behind her were the young scholars dressed
in black, then the novices in their white robes and veils, carrying
lighted tapers to symbolize the eternal radiance that awaited the pure
in spirit. The nuns finished the procession that wound its way slowly
through the long ill-lighted corridors, chanting the litany of the dead.
From the chapel, at first almost inaudible, but waxing louder every
moment, came the same solemn monotonous chant; for the Bishop and his
assistants were already at the altar....

Teresa, from the organ loft, looked eagerly down upon the beautiful
scene, in spite of the exaltation that filled her: her artistic sense
was the one individuality she possessed. The chapel was aglow with the
soft radiance of many wax candles. They stood in high candelabra against
the somber drapery on the walls, and there were at least a hundred about
the coffin on its high catafalque before the altar; the Argueellos were
as prodigal as of old. About the catafalque was an immense mound of
roses from the garden of the convent, and palms and pampas from the
ranch of Santiago Argueello in the south. The black-robed scholars knelt
on one side of the dead, the novices on the other, the relatives and
friends behind. But art had perfected itself in the gallery above the
lower end of the chapel. This also was draped with black which seemed to
absorb, then shed forth again the mystic brilliance of the candles; and
kneeling, well apart, were the nuns in their ivory white robes and black
veils, their banded softened features as composed and peaceful as if
their own reward had come.

The Bishop and the priests read the Requiem Mass, the little organ
pealed the _De Profundis_ as if inspired; and when the imperious
triumphant music of Handel followed, Teresa's fresh young soprano
seemed, to her excited imagination, to soar to the gates of heaven
itself. When she looked down again the lights were dim in the incense,
her senses swam in the pungent odor of spices and gum. The Bishop was
walking about the catafalque casting holy water with a brush against the
coffin above. He walked about a second time swinging the heavy copper
censer, then pronounced the _Requiescat in pace_, "dismissing," as we
find inscribed in the convent records, "a tired soul out of all the
storms of life into the divine tranquillity of death."

The bier was again shouldered, the procession reformed, and marched,
still with lighted tapers and chanting softly, out into the cemetery of
the convent. It was a magnificent, clear night and as mild as spring.
Below the steep hill the little town of Benicia celebrated the eve of
Christmas with lights and noise. Beyond, the water sparkled like running
silver under the wide beams of the moon poised just above the peak of
Monte Diablo, the old volcano that towered high above this romantic and
beautiful country of water and tule lands, steep hillsides and canons,
rocky bluffs overhanging the straits. In spite of the faint discords
that rose from the town and the slow tolling of the convent bell, it was
a scene of lofty and primeval grandeur, a fit setting for the last
earthly scene of a woman whose lines had been cast in the wilderness,
but yet had found the calm and the strength and the peace of the old
mountain, with its dead and buried fires.

The grave closed, the mourners returned to the convent, but not in
order. At the door Teresa felt her arm taken possession of by a strong
hand with which she had had more than one disconcerting encounter.

"Let us walk," said Sister Maria Sal in her harsh but strong old voice.
"I have permission. I must talk of Concha tonight or I should burst. It
is not for nothing one keeps silent for years and years. I at least am
still human. And you loved her the best and have spoiled your pretty
face with weeping. You must not do that again, for the young love a
pretty nun and will follow her into the one true life on earth far
sooner than an ugly old phiz like mine."

Sister Maria, indeed, retained not an index of the beauty with which
tradition accredited her youth. She was a stout unwieldy old woman with
a very red face covered half over with black down, and in the bright
moonlight Teresa could see the three long hairs that stood out straight
from a mole above her mouth and scratched the girls when she kissed
them. Tonight her nose was swollen and her eyes looked like appleseeds.
Teresa hastily composed her features and registered a vow that in her
old age she would look like Sister Dominica, not like that. She had
heard that Concha, too, had been frivolous in her youth, and had not she
herself a tragic bit of a story? True, her youthful love-tides had
turned betimes from the grave beside the Mission Dolores to the lovely
nun and the God of both, and she had heard that Dona Concha had proved
her fidelity to a wonderful Russian throughout many years before she
took the veil. Perhaps--who knew?--her more conformable pupil might have
restored the worthless to her heart before he was knifed in the full
light of day on Montgomery Street by one from whom he had won more than
thousands the night before; perhaps have consoled herself with another
less eccentric, had not Sister Dominica sought her at the right moment
and removed her from the temptations of the world. Well, never mind, she
could at least be a good nun and an amiable instructor of youth, and if
she never looked like a living saint she would grow soberer and nobler
with the years and take care that she grew not stout and red.

For a time Sister Maria did not speak, but walked rapidly and heavily up
and down the path, dragging her companion with her and staring out at
the beauty of the night. But suddenly she slackened her pace and burst
into speech.

"Ay yi! Ay de mi! To think that it is nearly half a century--forty-two
years to be precise--for will it not be 1858 in one more week?--since
Rezanov sailed out through what Fremont has called 'The Golden Gate'!
And forty-one in March since he died--not from the fall of a horse, as
Sir George Simpson (who had not much regard for the truth anyway, for he
gave a false picture of our Concha), and even Doctor Langsdorff, who
should have known better, wrote it, but worn out, worn out, after
terrible hardships, and a fever that devoured him inch by inch. And he
was so handsome when he left us! Dios de mi alma! never have I seen a
man like that. If I had I should not be here now, perhaps, so it is as
well. But never was I even engaged, and when permission came from Madrid
for the marriage of my sister Rafaella with Luis Argueello--he was an
officer and could not marry without a special license from the King, and
through some strange oversight he was six long years getting it--; well,
I lived with them and took care of the children until Rafaella--Ay yi!
what a good wife she made him, for he 'toed the mark,' as the Americans
say--; well, she died, and one of those days he married another; for
will not men be men? And Luis was a good man in spite of all, a fine
loyal clever man, who deserves the finest monument in the cemetery of
the Mission Dolores--as they call it now. The Americans have no respect
for anything and will not say San Francisco de Assisi, for it is too
long and they have time for nothing but the gold. Were it not a sin,
how I should hate them, for they have stolen our country from us--but
no, I will not; and, to be sure, if Rezanov had lived he would have had
it first, so what difference? Luis, at least, was spared. He died in
1830--and was the first Governor of Alta California after Mexico threw
off the yoke of Spain. He had power in full measure and went before
these upstart conquerors came to humble the rest of us into the dust.
Peace to his ashes--but perhaps you care nothing for this dear brother
of my youth, never heard of him before--such a giddy thing you were;
although at the last earthquake the point of his monument flew straight
into the side of the church and struck there, so you may have heard the
talk before they put it back in its place. It is of Sister Dominica you
think, but I think not only of her but of those old days--Ay, Dios de
mi! Who remembers that time but a few old women like myself?

"Concha's father, Don Jose Dario Argueello, was Commandante of the
Presidio of San Francisco then; and there was nothing else to call San
Francisco but the Mission. Down at Yerba Buena, where the Americans
flaunt themselves, there was but a Battery that could not give even a
dance. But we had dances at the Presidio; day and night the guitar
tinkled and the fiddles scraped; for what did we know of care, or old
age, or convents or death? I was many years younger than Rafaella and
did not go to the grand balls, but to the little dances, yes, many and
many. When the Russians came--it was in 1806--I saw them every day, and
one night danced with Rezanov himself. He was so gay--ay de mi! I
remember he swung me quite off my feet and made as if he would throw me
in the air. I was angry that he should treat me like a baby, and then he
begged me so humbly to forgive him, although his eyes laughed, that of
course I did. He had come down from Sitka to try and arrange for a
treaty with the Spanish government that the poor men in the employ of
the Russian-American Company might have breadstuffs to eat and not die
of scurvy, nor toil through the long winter with no flesh on their
bones. He brought a cargo with him to exchange for our corn and flour
meanwhile. We had never seen any one so handsome and so grand and he
turned all our heads, but he had a hard time with the Governor and Don
Jose--there are no such Californians now or the Americans would never
have got us--and it took all his diplomacy and all the help Concha and
the priests could give him before he got his way, for there was a law
against trading with foreigners. It was only when he and Concha became
engaged that Governor Arillaga gave in--how I pick up vulgar expressions
from these American pupils, I who should reform them! And did I not
stand Ellen O'Reilley in the corner yesterday for calling San Francisco
'Frisco'?--_San Francisco de Assisi!_ But all the saints have fled from
California.

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