The Reincarnation of Smith

The Reincarnation of Smith

The extravagant supper party by which Mr. James Farendell celebrated
the last day of his bachelorhood was protracted so far into the
night, that the last guest who parted from him at the door of the
principal Sacramento restaurant was for a moment impressed with the
belief that a certain ruddy glow in the sky was already the dawn.
But Mr. Farendell had kept his head clear enough to recognize it as
the light of some burning building in a remote business district, a
not infrequent occurrence in the dry season. When he had dismissed
his guest he turned away in that direction for further information.
His own counting-house was not in that immediate neighborhood, but
Sacramento had been once before visited by a rapid and far-sweeping
conflagration, and it behooved him to be on the alert even on this
night of festivity.

Perhaps also a certain anxiety arose out of the occasion. He was to
be married to-morrow to the widow of his late partner, and the
marriage, besides being an attractive one, would settle many
business difficulties. He had been a fortunate man, but, like many
more fortunate men, was not blind to the possibilities of a change
of luck. The death of his partner in a successful business had at
first seemed to betoken that change, but his successful, though
hasty, courtship of the inexperienced widow had restored his chances
without greatly shocking the decorum of a pioneer community.
Nevertheless, he was not a contented man, and hardly a determined--
although an energetic one.

A walk of a few moments brought him to the levee of the river,--a
favored district, where his counting-house, with many others, was
conveniently situated. In these early days only a few of these
buildings could be said to be permanent,--fire and flood perpetually
threatened them. They were merely temporary structures of wood, or
in the case of Mr. Farendell's office, a shell of corrugated iron,
sheathing a one-storied wooden frame, more or less elaborate in its
interior decorations. By the time he had reached it, the distant
fire had increased. On his way he had met and recognized many of
his business acquaintances hurrying thither,--some to save their
own property, or to assist the imperfectly equipped volunteer fire
department in their unselfish labors. It was probably Mr.
Farendell's peculiar preoccupation on that particular night which
had prevented his joining in their brotherly zeal.

He unlocked the iron door, and lit the hanging lamp that was used
in all-night sittings on steamer days. It revealed a smartly
furnished office, with a high desk for his clerks, and a smaller
one for himself in one corner. In the centre of the wall stood a
large safe. This he also unlocked and took out a few important
books, as well as a small drawer containing gold coin and dust to
the amount of about five hundred dollars, the large balance having
been deposited in bank on the previous day. The act was only
precautionary, as he did not exhibit any haste in removing them to
a place of safety, and remained meditatively absorbed in looking
over a packet of papers taken from the same drawer. The closely
shuttered building, almost hermetically sealed against light, and
perhaps sound, prevented his observing the steadily increasing
light of the conflagration, or hearing the nearer tumult of the
firemen, and the invasion of his quiet district by other equally
solicitous tenants. The papers seemed also to possess some
importance, for, the stillness being suddenly broken by the turning
of the handle of the heavy door he had just closed, and its opening
with difficulty, his first act was to hurriedly conceal them,
without apparently paying a thought to the exposed gold before him.
And his expression and attitude in facing round towards the door
was quite as much of nervous secretiveness as of indignation at the
interruption.

Yet the intruder appeared, though singular, by no means formidable.
He was a man slightly past the middle age, with a thin face,
hollowed at the cheeks and temples as if by illness or asceticism,
and a grayish beard that encircled his throat like a soiled worsted
"comforter" below his clean-shaven chin and mouth. His manner was
slow and methodical, and even when he shot the bolt of the door
behind him, the act did not seem aggressive. Nevertheless Mr.
Farendell half rose with his hand on his pistol-pocket, but the
stranger merely lifted his own hand with a gesture of indifferent
warning, and, drawing a chair towards him, dropped into it
deliberately.

Mr. Farendell's angry stare changed suddenly to one of surprised
recognition. "Josh Scranton," he said hesitatingly.

"I reckon," responded the stranger slowly. "That's the name I
allus bore, and YOU called yourself Farendell. Well, we ain't seen
each other sens the spring o' '50, when ye left me lying nigh
petered out with chills and fever on the Stanislaus River, and sold
the claim that me and Duffy worked under our very feet, and
skedaddled for 'Frisco!"

"I only exercised my right as principal owner, and to secure my
advances," began the late Mr. Farendell sharply.

But again the thin hand was raised, this time with a slow, scornful
waiving of any explanations. "It ain't that in partickler that
I've kem to see ye for to-night," said the stranger slowly, "nor it
ain't about your takin' the name o' 'Farendell,' that friend o'
yours who died on the passage here with ye, and whose papers ye
borrowed! Nor it ain't on account o' that wife of yours ye left
behind in Missouri, and whose letters you never answered. It's
them things all together--and suthin' else!"

"What the d---l do you want, then?" said Farendell, with a
desperate directness that was, however, a tacit confession of the
truth of these accusations.

"Yer allowin' that ye'll get married tomorrow?" said Scranton
slowly.

"Yes, and be d----d to you," said Farendell fiercely.

"Yer NOT," returned Scranton. "Not if I knows it. Yer goin' to
climb down. Yer goin' to get up and get! Yer goin' to step down
and out! Yer goin' to shut up your desk and your books and this
hull consarn inside of an hour, and vamose the ranch. Arter an
hour from now thar won't be any Mr. Farendell, and no weddin'
to-morrow."

"If that's your game--perhaps you'd like to murder me at once?"
said Farendell with a shifting eye, as his hand again moved towards
his revolver.

But again the thin hand of the stranger was also lifted. "We ain't
in the business o' murderin' or bein' murdered, or we might hev kem
here together, me and Duffy. Now if anything happens to me Duffy
will be left, and HE'S got the proofs."

Farendell seemed to recognize the fact with the same directness.
"That's it, is it?" he said bluntly. "Well, how much do you want?
Only, I warn you that I haven't much to give."

"Wotever you've got, if it was millions, it ain't enough to buy us
up, and ye ought to know that by this time," responded Scranton,
with a momentary flash in his eyes. But the next moment his
previous passionless deliberation returned, and leaning his arm on
the desk of the man before him he picked up a paperweight
carelessly and turned it over as he said slowly, "The fact is, Mr.
Farendell, you've been making us, me and Duffy, tired. We've bin
watchin' you and your doin's, lyin' low and sayin' nothin', till we
concluded that it was about time you handed in your checks and left
the board. We ain't wanted nothin' of ye, we ain't begrudged ye
nothin', but we've allowed that this yer thing must stop."

"And what if I refuse?" said Farendell.

"Thar'll be some cussin' and a big row from YOU, I kalkilate--and
maybe some fightin' all round," said Scranton dispassionately.
"But it will be all the same in the end. The hull thing will come
out, and you'll hev to slide just the same. T'otherwise, ef ye
slide out NOW, it's without a row."

"And do you suppose a business man like me can disappear without a
fuss over it?" said Farendell angrily. "Are you mad?"

"I reckon the hole YOU'LL make kin be filled up," said Scranton
dryly. "But ef ye go NOW, you won't be bothered by the fuss, while
if you stay you'll have to face the music, and go too!"

Farendell was silent. Possibly the truth of this had long since
been borne upon him. No one but himself knew the incessant strain
of these years of evasion and concealment, and how he often had
been near to some such desperate culmination. The sacrifice
offered to him was not, therefore, so great as it might have
seemed. The knowledge of this might have given him a momentary
superiority over his antagonist had Scranton's motive been a purely
selfish or malignant one, but as it was not, and as he may have had
some instinctive idea of Farendell's feeling also, it made his
ultimatum appear the more passionless and fateful. And it was this
quality which perhaps caused Farendell to burst out with desperate
abruptness,--

"What in h-ll ever put you up to this!"

Scranton folded his arms upon Farendell's desk, and slowly wiping
his clean jaw with one hand, repeated deliberately, "Wall--I reckon
I told ye that before! You've been making us--me and Duffy--
tired!" He paused for a moment, and then, rising abruptly, with a
careless gesture towards the uncovered tray of gold, said, "Come!
ye kin take enuff o' that to get away with; the less ye take,
though, the less likely you'll be to be followed!"

He went to the door, unlocked and opened it. A strange light, as
of a lurid storm interspersed by sheet-like lightning, filled the
outer darkness, and the silence was now broken by dull crashes and
nearer cries and shouting. A few figures were also dimly flitting
around the neighboring empty offices, some of which, like
Farendell's, had been entered by their now alarmed owners.

"You've got a good chance now," continued Scranton; "ye couldn't
hev a better. It's a big fire--a scorcher--and jest the time for a
man to wipe himself out and not be missed. Make tracks where the
crowd is thickest and whar ye're likely to be seen, ez ef ye were
helpin'! Ther' 'll be other men missed tomorrow beside you," he
added with grim significance; "but nobody'll know that you was one
who really got away."

Where the imperturbable logic of the strange man might have failed,
the noise, the tumult, the suggestion of swift-coming disaster, and
the necessity for some immediate action of any kind, was convincing.
Farendell hastily stuffed his pockets with gold and the papers he
had found, and moved to the door. Already he fancied he felt the
hot breath of the leaping conflagration beyond. "And you?" he said,
turning suspiciously to Scranton.

"When you're shut of this and clean off, I'll fix things and leave
too--but not before. I reckon," he added grimly, with a glance at
the sky, now streaming with sparks like a meteoric shower, "thar
won't be much left here in the morning."

A few dull embers pattered on the iron roof of the low building and
bounded off in ashes. Farendell cast a final glance around him,
and then darted from the building. The iron door clanged behind
him--he was gone.

Evidently not too soon, for the other buildings were already
deserted by their would-be salvors, who had filled the streets with
piles of books and valuables waiting to be carried away. Then
occurred a terrible phenomenon, which had once before in such
disasters paralyzed the efforts of the firemen. A large wooden
warehouse in the centre of the block of offices, many hundred feet
from the scene of active conflagration--which had hitherto remained
intact--suddenly became enveloped in clouds of smoke, and without
warning burst as suddenly from roof and upper story into vivid
flame. There were eye-witnesses who declared that a stream of
living fire seemed to leap upon it from the burning district, and
connected the space between them with an arch of luminous heat. In
another instant the whole district was involved in a whirlwind of
smoke and flame, out of whose seething vortex the corrugated iron
buildings occasionally showed their shriveling or glowing outlines.
And then the fire swept on and away.

When the sun again arose over the panic-stricken and devastated
city, all personal incident and disaster was forgotten in the
larger calamity. It was two or three days before the full
particulars could be gathered--even while the dominant and
resistless energy of the people was erecting new buildings upon the
still-smoking ruins. It was only on the third day afterwards that
James Farendell, on the deck of a coasting steamer, creeping out
through the fogs of the Golden Gate, read the latest news in a San
Francisco paper brought by the pilot. As he hurriedly comprehended
the magnitude of the loss, which was far beyond his previous
conception, he experienced a certain satisfaction in finding his
position no worse materially than that of many of his fellow
workers. THEY were ruined like himself; THEY must begin their life
afresh--but then! Ah! there was still that terrible difference.
He drew his breath quickly, and read on. Suddenly he stopped,
transfixed by a later paragraph. For an instant he failed to grasp
its full significance. Then he read it again, the words imprinting
themselves on his senses with a slow deliberation that seemed to
him as passionless as Scranton's utterances on that fateful night.

"The loss of life, it is now feared, is much greater than at first
imagined. To the list that has been already published we must add
the name of James Farendell, the energetic contractor so well known
to our citizens, who was missing the morning after the fire. His
calcined remains were found this afternoon in the warped and
twisted iron shell of his counting-house, the wooden frame having
been reduced to charcoal in the intense heat. The unfortunate man
seems to have gone there to remove his books and papers,--as was
evidenced by the iron safe being found open,--but to have been
caught and imprisoned in the building through the heat causing the
metal sheathing to hermetically seal the doors and windows. He was
seen by some neighbors to enter the building while the fire was
still distant, and his remains were identified by his keys, which
were found beneath him. A poignant interest is added to his
untimely fate by the circumstance that he was to have been married
on the following day to the widow of his late partner, and that he
had, at the call of duty, that very evening left a dinner party
given to celebrate the last day of his bachelorhood--or, as it has
indeed proved, of his earthly existence. Two families are thus
placed in mourning, and it is a singular sequel that by this
untoward calamity the well-known firm of Farendell & Cutler may be
said to have ceased to exist."

Mr. Farendell started to his feet. But a lurch of the schooner as
she rose on the long swell of the Pacific sent him staggering
dizzily back to his seat, and checked his first wild impulse to
return. He saw it all now,--the fire had avenged him by wiping out
his persecutor, Scranton, but in the eyes of his contemporaries it
had only erased HIM! He might return to refute the story in his
own person, but the dead man's partner still lived with his secret,
and his own rehabilitation could only revive his former peril.

. . . . . .

Four years elapsed before the late Mr. Farendell again set foot in
the levee of Sacramento. The steamboat that brought him from San
Francisco was a marvel to him in size, elegance, and comfort; so
different from the little, crowded, tri-weekly packet he
remembered; and it might, in a manner, have prepared him for the
greater change in the city. But he was astounded to find nothing
to remind him of the past,--no landmark, nor even ruin, of the
place he had known. Blocks of brick buildings, with thoroughfares
having strange titles, occupied the district where his counting-
house had stood, and even obliterated its site; equally strange
names were upon the shops and warehouses. In his four years'
wanderings he had scarcely found a place as unfamiliar. He had
trusted to the great change in his own appearance--the full beard
that he wore and the tanning of a tropical sun--to prevent
recognition; but the precaution was unnecessary, there were none to
recognize him in the new faces which were the only ones he saw in
the transformed city. A cautious allusion to the past which he had
made on the boat to a fellow passenger had brought only the
surprised rejoinder, "Oh, that must have been before the big fire,"
as if it was an historic epoch. There was something of pain even
in this assured security of his loneliness. His obliteration was
complete.

For the late Mr. Farendell had suffered some change of mind with
his other mutations. He had been singularly lucky. The schooner
in which he had escaped brought him to Acapulco, where, as a
returning Californian, and a presumably successful one, his
services and experience were eagerly sought by an English party
engaged in developing certain disused Mexican mines. As the post,
however, was perilously near the route of regular emigration, as
soon as he had gained a sufficient sum he embarked with some goods
to Callao, where he presently established himself in business,
resuming his REAL name--the unambitious but indistinctive one of
"Smith." It is highly probable that this prudential act was also
his first step towards rectitude. For whether the change was a
question of moral ethics, or merely a superstitious essay in luck,
he was thereafter strictly honest in business. He became
prosperous. He had been sustained in his flight by the intention
that, if he were successful elsewhere, he would endeavor to
communicate with his abandoned fiancee, and ask her to join him,
and share not his name but fortune in exile. But as he grew rich,
the difficulties of carrying out this intention became more
apparent; he was by no means certain of her loyalty surviving the
deceit he had practiced and the revelation he would have to make;
he was doubtful of the success of any story which at other times he
would have glibly invented to take the place of truth. Already
several months had elapsed since his supposed death; could he
expect her to be less accessible to premature advances now than
when she had been a widow? Perhaps this made him think of the wife
he had deserted so long ago. He had been quite content to live
without regret or affection, forgetting and forgotten, but in his
present prosperity he felt there was some need of putting his
domestic affairs into a more secure and legitimate shape, to avert
any catastrophe like the last. HERE at least would be no
difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives before this in
Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had
made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by HER
in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected with
equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his
desertion--a sufficient cause in her own State--and re-married, he
would at least be more secure. He began, without committing
himself, by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. His wife, he
learnt, had left Missouri for Sacramento only a month or two after
his own disappearance from that place, and her address was unknown!

A complication so unlooked for disquieted him, and yet whetted his
curiosity. The only person she might meet in California who could
possibly identify him with the late Mr. Farendell was Duffy; he had
often wondered if that mysterious partner of Scranton's had been
deceived with the others, or had ever suspected that the body
discovered in the counting-house was Scranton's. If not, he must
have accepted the strange coincidence that Scranton had disappeared
also the same night. In the first six months of his exile he had
searched the Californian papers thoroughly, but had found no record
of any doubt having been thrown on the accepted belief. It was
these circumstances, and perhaps a vague fascination not unlike
that which impels the malefactor to haunt the scene of his crime,
that, at the end of four years, had brought him, a man of middle
age and assured occupation and fortune, back to the city he had
fled from.

A few days at one of the new hotels convinced him thoroughly that
he was in no danger of recognition, and gave him the assurance to
take rooms more in keeping with his circumstances and his own
frankly avowed position as the head of a South American house. A
cautious acquaintance--through the agency of his banker--with a few
business men gave him some occupation, and the fact of his South
American letters being addressed to Don Diego Smith gave a foreign
flavor to his individuality, which his tanned face and dark beard
had materially helped. A stronger test convinced him how complete
was the obliteration of his former identity. One day at the bank
he was startled at being introduced by the manager to a man whom he
at once recognized as a former business acquaintance. But the
shock was his alone; the formal approach and unfamiliar manner of
the man showed that he had failed to recognize even a resemblance.
But would he equally escape detection by his wife if he met her as
accidentally,--an encounter not to be thought of until he knew
something more of her? He became more cautious in going to public
places, but luckily for him the proportion of women to men was
still small in California, and they were more observed than
observing.

A month elapsed; in that time he had thoroughly exhausted the local
Directories in his cautious researches among the "Smiths," for in
his fear of precipitating a premature disclosure he had given up
his former anonymous advertising. And there was a certain
occupation in this personal quest that filled his business time.
He was in no hurry. He had a singular faith that he would
eventually discover her whereabouts, be able to make all necessary
inquiries into her conduct and habits, and perhaps even enjoy a
brief season of unsuspected personal observation before revealing
himself. And this faith was as singularly rewarded.

Having occasion to get his watch repaired one day he entered a
large jeweler's shop, and while waiting its examination his
attention was attracted by an ordinary old-fashioned daguerreotype
case in the form of a heart-shaped locket lying on the counter with
other articles left for repairs. Something in its appearance
touched a chord in his memory; he lifted the half-opened case and
saw a much faded daguerreotype portrait of himself taken in
Missouri before he left in the Californian emigration. He
recognized it at once as one he had given to his wife; the faded
likeness was so little like his present self that he boldly
examined it and asked the jeweler one or two questions. The man
was communicative. Yes, it was an old-fashioned affair which had
been left for repairs a few days ago by a lady whose name and
address, written by herself, were on the card tied to it.

Mr. James Smith had by this time fully controlled the emotion he
felt as he recognized his wife's name and handwriting, and knew
that at last the clue was found! He laid down the case carelessly,
gave the final directions for the repairs of his watch, and left
the shop. The address, of which he had taken a mental note, was,
to his surprise, very near his own lodgings; but he went straight
home. Here a few inquiries of his janitor elicited the information
that the building indicated in the address was a large one of
furnished apartments and offices like his own, and that the "Mrs.
Smith" must be simply the housekeeper of the landlord, whose name
appeared in the Directory, but not her own. Yet he waited until
evening before he ventured to reconnoitre the premises; with the
possession of his clue came a slight cooling of his ardor and
extreme caution in his further proceedings. The house--a
reconstructed wooden building--offered no external indication of
the rooms she occupied in the uniformly curtained windows that
front the street. Yet he felt an odd and pleasurable excitement in
passing once or twice before those walls that hid the goal of his
quest. As yet he had not seen her, and there was naturally the
added zest of expectation. He noticed that there was a new
building opposite, with vacant offices to let. A project suddenly
occurred to him, which by morning he had fully matured. He hired a
front room in the first floor of the new building, had it hurriedly
furnished as a private office, and on the second morning of his
discovery was installed behind his desk at the window commanding a
full view of the opposite house. There was nothing strange in the
South American capitalist selecting a private office in so popular
a locality.

Two or three days elapsed without any result from his espionage.
He came to know by sight the various tenants, the two Chinese
servants, and the solitary Irish housemaid, but as yet had no
glimpse of the housekeeper. She evidently led a secluded life
among her duties; it occurred to him that perhaps she went out,
possibly to market, earlier than he came, or later, after he had
left the office. In this belief he arrived one morning after an
early walk in a smart spring shower, the lingering straggler of the
winter rains. There were few people astir, yet he had been
preceded for two or three blocks by a tall woman whose umbrella
partly concealed her head and shoulders from view. He had noticed,
however, even in his abstraction, that she walked well, and managed
the lifting of her skirt over her trim ankles and well-booted feet
with some grace and cleverness. Yet it was only on her unexpectedly
turning the corner of his own street that he became interested. She
continued on until within a few doors of his office, when she
stopped to give an order to a tradesman, who was just taking down
his shutters. He heard her voice distinctly; in the quick emotion
it gave him he brushed hurriedly past her without lifting his eyes.
Gaining his own doorway he rushed upstairs to his office, hastily
unlocked it, and ran to the window. The lady was already crossing
the street. He saw her pause before the door of the opposite house,
open it with a latchkey, and caught a full view of her profile in
the single moment that she turned to furl her umbrella and enter.
It was his wife's voice he had heard; it was his wife's face that he
had seen in profile.

Yet she was changed from the lanky young schoolgirl he had wedded
ten years ago, or, at least, compared to what his recollection of
her had been. Had he ever seen her as she really was? Surely
somewhere in that timid, freckled, half-grown bride he had known in
the first year of their marriage the germ of this self-possessed,
matured woman was hidden. There was the tone of her voice; he had
never recalled it before as a lover might, yet now it touched him;
her profile he certainly remembered, but not with the feeling it
now produced in him. Would he have ever abandoned her had she been
like that? Or had HE changed, and was this no longer his old
self?--perhaps even a self SHE would never recognize again? James
Smith had the superstitions of a gambler, and that vague idea of
fate that comes to weak men; a sudden fright seized him, and he
half withdrew from the window lest she should observe him,
recognize him, and by some act precipitate that fate.

By lingering beyond the usual hour for his departure he saw her
again, and had even a full view of her face as she crossed the
street. The years had certainly improved her; he wondered with a
certain nervousness if she would think they had done the same for
him. The complacency with which he had at first contemplated her
probable joy at recovering him had become seriously shaken since he
had seen her; a woman as well preserved and good-looking as that,
holding a certain responsible and, no doubt, lucrative position,
must have many admirers and be independent. He longed to tell her
now of his fortune, and yet shrank from the test its exposure
implied. He waited for her return until darkness had gathered, and
then went back to his lodgings a little chagrined and ill at ease.
It was rather late for her to be out alone! After all, what did he
know of her habits or associations? He recalled the freedom of
Californian life, and the old scandals relating to the lapses of
many women who had previously led blameless lives in the Atlantic
States. Clearly it behooved him to be cautious. Yet he walked
late that night before the house again, eager to see if she had
returned, and with WHOM? He was restricted in his eagerness by the
fear of detection, but he gathered very little knowledge of her
habits; singularly enough nobody seemed to care. A little piqued
at this, he began to wonder if he were not thinking too much of
this woman to whom he still hesitated to reveal himself.
Nevertheless, he found himself that night again wandering around
the house, and even watching with some anxiety the shadow which he
believed to be hers on the window-blind of the room where he had by
discreet inquiry located her. Whether his memory was stimulated by
his quest he never knew, but presently he was able to recall step
by step and incident by incident his early courtship of her and the
brief days of their married life. He even remembered the day she
accepted him, and even dwelt upon it with a sentimental thrill that
he probably never felt at the time, and it was a distinct feature
of his extraordinary state of mind and its concentration upon this
particular subject that he presently began to look upon HIMSELF as
the abandoned and deserted conjugal partner, and to nurse a feeling
of deep injury at her hands! The fact that he was thinking of her,
and she, probably, contented with her lot, was undisturbed by any
memory of him, seemed to him a logical deduction of his superior
affection.

It was, therefore, quite as much in the attitude of a reproachful
and avenging husband as of a merely curious one that, one
afternoon, seeing her issue from her house at an early hour, he
slipped down the stairs and began to follow her at a secure
distance. She turned into the principal thoroughfare, and
presently made one of the crowd who were entering a popular place
of amusement where there was an afternoon performance. So complete
was his selfish hallucination, that he smiled bitterly at this
proof of heartless indifference, and even so far overcame his
previous caution as to actually brush by her somewhat rudely as he
entered the building at the same moment. He was conscious that she
lifted her eyes a little impatiently to the face of the awkward
stranger; he was equally, but more bitterly, conscious that she had
not recognized him! He dropped into a seat behind her; she did not
look at him again with even a sense of disturbance; the momentary
contact had evidently left no impression upon her. She glanced
casually at her neighbors on either side, and presently became
absorbed in the performance. When it was over she rose, and on her
way out recognized and exchanged a few words with one or two
acquaintances. Again he heard her familiar voice, almost at his
elbow, raised with no more consciousness of her contiguity to him
than if he were a mere ghost. The thought struck him for the first
time with a hideous and appalling significance. What was he but a
ghost to her--to every one! A man dead, buried, and forgotten!
His vanity and self-complacency vanished before this crushing
realization of the hopelessness of his existence. Dazed and
bewildered, he mingled blindly and blunderingly with the departing
crowd, tossed here and there as if he were an invisible presence,
stumbling over the impeding skirts of women with a vague apology
they heeded not, and which seemed in his frightened ears as hollow
as a voice from the grave.

When he at last reached the street he did not look back, but
wandered abstractedly through by-streets in the falling rain,
scarcely realizing where he was, until he found himself drenched
through, with his closed umbrella in his tremulous hand, standing
at the half-submerged levee beside the overflowed river. Here
again he realized how completely he had been absorbed and
concentrated in his search for his wife during the last three
weeks; he had never been on the levee since his arrival. He had
taken no note of the excitement of the citizens over the alarming
reports of terrible floods in the mountains, and the daily and
hourly fear that they experienced of disastrous inundation from the
surcharged river. He had never thought of it, yet he had read of
it, and even talked, and yet now for the first time in his selfish,
blind absorption was certain of it. He stood still for some time,
watching doggedly the enormous yellow stream laboring with its
burden and drift from many a mountain town and camp, moving
steadily and fatefully towards the distant bay, and still more
distant and inevitable ocean. For a few moments it vaguely
fascinated and diverted him; then it as vaguely lent itself to his
one dominant, haunting thought. Yes, it was pointing him the only
way out,--the path to the distant ocean and utter forgetfulness
again!

The chill of his saturated clothing brought him to himself once
more, he turned and hurried home. He went tiredly to his bedroom,
and while changing his garments there came a knock at the door. It
was the porter to say that a lady had called, and was waiting for
him in the sitting-room. She had not given her name.

The closed door prevented the servant from seeing the extraordinary
effect produced by this simple announcement upon the tenant. For
one instant James Smith remained spellbound in his chair. It was
characteristic of his weak nature and singular prepossession that
he passed in an instant from the extreme of doubt to the extreme of
certainty and conviction. It was his wife! She had recognized him
in that moment of encounter at the entertainment; had found his
address, and had followed him here! He dressed himself with
feverish haste, not, however, without a certain care of his
appearance and some selection of apparel, and quickly forecast the
forthcoming interview in his mind. For the pendulum had swung
back; Mr. James Smith was once more the self-satisfied, self-
complacent, and discreetly cautious husband that he had been at the
beginning of his quest, perhaps with a certain sense of grievance
superadded. He should require the fullest explanations and
guarantees before committing himself,--indeed, her present call
might be an advance that it would be necessary for him to check.
He even pictured her pleading at his feet; a very little stronger
effort of his Alnaschar imagination would have made him reject her
like the fatuous Persian glass peddler.

He opened the door of the sitting-room deliberately, and walked in
with a certain formal precision. But the figure of a woman arose
from the sofa, and with a slight outcry, half playful, half
hysterical, threw herself upon his breast with the single
exclamation, "Jim!" He started back from the double shock. For
the woman was NOT his wife! A woman extravagantly dressed, still
young, but bearing, even through her artificially heightened color,
a face worn with excitement, excess, and premature age. Yet a face
that as he disengaged himself from her arms grew upon him with a
terrible recognition, a face that he had once thought pretty,
inexperienced, and innocent,--the face of the widow of his former
partner, Cutler, the woman he was to have married on the day he
fled. The bitter revulsion of feeling and astonishment was
evidently visible in his face, for she, too, drew back for a moment
as they separated. But she had evidently been prepared, if not
pathetically inured to such experiences. She dropped into a chair
again with a dry laugh, and a hard metallic voice, as she said,--

"Well, it's YOU, anyway--and you can't get out of it."

As he still stared at her, in her inconsistent finery, draggled and
wet by the storm, at her limp ribbons and ostentatious jewelry, she
continued, in the same hard voice,--

"I thought I spotted you once or twice before; but you took no
notice of me, and I reckoned I was mistaken. But this afternoon at
the Temple of Music"--

"Where?" said James Smith harshly.

"At the Temple--the San Francisco Troupe performance--where you
brushed by me, and I heard your voice saying, 'Beg pardon!' I
says, 'That's Jim Farendell.'"

"Farendell!" burst out James Smith, half in simulated astonishment,
half in real alarm.

"Well! Smith, then, if you like better," said the woman impatiently;
"though it's about the sickest and most played-out dodge of a name
you could have pitched upon. James Smith, Don Diego Smith!" she
repeated, with a hysteric laugh. "Why, it beats the nigger
minstrels all hollow! Well, when I saw you there, I said, 'That's
Jim Farendell, or his twin brother;' I didn't say 'his ghost,' mind
you; for, from the beginning, even before I knew it all, I never
took any stock in that fool yarn about your burnt bones being found
in your office."

"Knew all, knew what?" demanded the man, with a bravado which he
nevertheless felt was hopeless.

She rose, crossed the room, and, standing before him, placed one
hand upon her hip as she looked at him with half-pitying effrontery.

"Look here, Jim," she began slowly, "do you know what you're doing?
Well, you're making me tired!" In spite of himself, a half-
superstitious thrill went through him as her words and attitude
recalled the dead Scranton. "Do you suppose that I don't know that
you ran away the night of the fire? Do you suppose that I don't
know that you were next to ruined that night, and that you took
that opportunity of skedaddling out of the country with all the
money you had left, and leaving folks to imagine you were burnt up
with the books you had falsified and the accounts you had doctored!
It was a mean thing for you to do to me, Jim, for I loved you then,
and would have been fool enough to run off with you if you'd told
me all, and not left me to find out that you had lost MY money--
every cent Cutler had left me in the business--with the rest."

With the fatuousness of a weak man cornered, he clung to unimportant
details. "But the body was believed to be mine by every one," he
stammered angrily. "My papers and books were burnt,--there was no
evidence."

"And why was there not?" she said witheringly, staring doggedly in
his face. "Because I stopped it! Because when I knew those bones
and rags shut up in that office weren't yours, and was beginning to
make a row about it, a strange man came to me and said they were
the remains of a friend of his who knew your bankruptcy and had
come that night to warn you,--a man whom you had half ruined once,
a man who had probably lost his life in helping you away. He said
if I went on making a fuss he'd come out with the whole truth--how
you were a thief and a forger, and"--she stopped.

"And what else?" he asked desperately, dreading to hear his wife's
name next fall from her lips.

"And that--as it could be proved that his friend knew your
secrets," she went on in a frightened, embarrassed voice, "you
might be accused of making away with him."

For a moment James Smith was appalled; he had never thought of
this. As in all his past villainy he was too cowardly to
contemplate murder, he was frightened at the mere accusation of it.
"But," he stammered, forgetful of all save this new terror, "he
KNEW I wouldn't be such a fool, for the man himself told me Duffy
had the papers, and killing him wouldn't have helped me."

Mrs. Cutler stared at him a moment searchingly, and then turned
wearily away. "Well," she said, sinking into her chair again, "he
said if I'd shut my mouth he'd shut his--and--I did. And this,"
she added, throwing her hands from her lap, a gesture half of
reproach and half of contempt,--"this is what I get for it."

More frightened than touched by the woman's desperation, James
Smith stammered a vague apologetic disclaimer, even while he was
loathing with a revulsion new to him her draggled finery, her still
more faded beauty, and the half-distinct consciousness of guilt
that linked her to him. But she waved it away, a weary gesture
that again reminded him of the dead Scranton.

"Of course I ain't what I was, but who's to blame for it? When you
left me alone without a cent, face to face with a lie, I had to do
something. I wasn't brought up to work; I like good clothes, and
you know it better than anybody. I ain't one of your stage
heroines that go out as dependants and governesses and die of
consumption, but I thought," she went on with a shrill, hysterical
laugh, more painful than the weariness which inevitably followed
it, "I thought I might train myself to do it, ON THE STAGE! and I
joined Barker's Company. They said I had a face and figure for the
stage; that face and figure wore out before I had anything more to
show, and I wasn't big enough to make better terms with the
manager. They kept me nearly a year doing chambermaids and fairy
queens the other side of the footlights, where I saw you today.
Then I kicked! I suppose I might have married some fool for his
money, but I was soft enough to think you might be sending for me
when you were safe. You seem to be mighty comfortable here," she
continued, with a bitter glance around his handsomely furnished
room, "as 'Don Diego Smith.' I reckon skedaddling pays better than
staying behind."

"I have only been here a few weeks," he said hurriedly. "I never
knew what had become of you, or that you were still here"--

"Or you wouldn't have come," she interrupted, with a bitter laugh.
"Speak out, Jim."

"If there--is anything--I can do--for you," he stammered, "I'm
sure"--

"Anything you can do?" she repeated, slowly and scornfully.
"Anything you can do NOW? Yes!" she screamed, suddenly rising,
crossing the room, and grasping his arms convulsively. "Yes! Take
me away from here--anywhere--at once! Look, Jim," she went on
feverishly, "let bygones be bygones--I won't peach! I won't tell
on you--though I had it in my heart when you gave me the go-by just
now! I'll do anything you say--go to your farthest hiding-place--
work for you--only take me out of this cursed place."

Her passionate pleading stung even through his selfishness and
loathing. He thought of his wife's indifference! Yes, he might be
driven to this, and at least he must secure the only witness
against his previous misconduct. "We will see," he said soothingly,
gently loosening her hands. "We must talk it over." He stopped as
his old suspiciousness returned. "But you must have some friends,"
he said searchingly, "some one who has helped you."

"None! Only one--he helped me at first," she hesitated--"Duffy."

"Duffy!" said James Smith, recoiling.

"Yes, when he had to tell me all," she said in half-frightened
tones, "he was sorry for me. Listen, Jim! He was a square man,
for all he was devoted to his partner--and you can't blame him for
that. I think he helped me because I was alone; for nothing else,
Jim. I swear it! He helped me from time to time. Maybe he might
have wanted to marry me if he had not been waiting for another
woman that he loved, a married woman that had been deserted years
ago by her husband, just as you might have deserted me if we'd been
married that day. He helped her and paid for her journey here to
seek her husband, and set her up in business."

"What are you talking about--what woman?" stammered James Smith,
with a strange presentiment creeping over him.

"A Mrs. Smith. Yes," she said quickly, as he started, "not a sham
name like yours, but really and truly SMITH--that was her husband's
name! I'm not lying, Jim," she went on, evidently mistaking the
cause of the sudden contraction of the man's face. "I didn't
invent her nor her name; there IS such a woman, and Duffy loves
her--and HER only, and he never, NEVER was anything more than a
friend to me. I swear it!"

The room seemed to swim around him. She was staring at him, but he
could see in her vacant eyes that she had no conception of his
secret, nor knew the extent of her revelation. Duffy had not dared
to tell all! He burst into a coarse laugh. "What matters Duffy or
the silly woman he'd try to steal away from other men."

"But he didn't try to steal her, and she's only silly because she
wants to be true to her husband while he lives. She told Duffy
she'd never marry him until she saw her husband's dead face. More
fool she," she added bitterly.

"Until she saw her husband's dead face," was all that James Smith
heard of this speech. His wife's faithfulness through years of
desertion, her long waiting and truthfulness, even the bitter
commentary of the equally injured woman before him, were to him as
nothing to what that single sentence conjured up. He laughed
again, but this time strangely and vacantly. "Enough of this Duffy
and his intrusion in my affairs until I'm able to settle my account
with him. Come," he added brusquely, "if we are going to cut out
of this at once I've got much to do. Come here again to-morrow,
early. This Duffy--does he live here?"

"No. In Marysville."

"Good! Come early to-morrow."

As she seemed to hesitate, he opened a drawer of his table and took
out a handful of gold, and handed it to her. She glanced at it for
a moment with a strange expression, put it mechanically in her
pocket, and then looking up at him said, with a forced laugh, "I
suppose that means I am to clear out?"

"Until to-morrow," he said shortly.

"If the Sacramento don't sweep us away before then," she interrupted,
with a reckless laugh; "the river's broken through the levee--a
clear sweep in two places. Where I live the water's up to the
doorstep. They say it's going to be the biggest flood yet. You're
all right here; you're on higher ground."

She seemed to utter these sentences abstractedly, disconnectedly,
as if to gain time. He made an impatient gesture.

"All right, I'm going," she said, compressing her lips slowly to
keep them from trembling. "You haven't forgotten anything?" As he
turned half angrily towards her she added, hurriedly and bitterly,
"Anything--for to-morrow?"

"No!"

She opened the door and passed out. He listened until the trail of
her wet skirt had descended the stairs, and the street door had
closed behind her. Then he went back to his table and began
collecting his papers and putting them away in his trunks, which he
packed feverishly, yet with a set and determined face. He wrote
one or two letters, which he sealed and left upon his table. He
then went to his bedroom and deliberately shaved off his disguising
beard. Had he not been so preoccupied in one thought, he might
have been conscious of loud voices in the street and a hurrying of
feet on the wet sidewalk. But he was possessed by only one idea.
He must see his wife that evening! How, he knew not yet, but the
way would appear when he had reached his office in the building
opposite hers. Three hours had elapsed before he had finished his
preparations. On going downstairs he stopped to give some
directions to the porter, but his room was empty; passing into the
street he was surprised to find it quite deserted, and the shops
closed; even a drinking saloon at the corner was quite empty. He
turned the corner of the street, and began the slight descent
towards his office. To his amazement the lower end of the street,
which was crossed by the thoroughfare which was his destination,
was blocked by a crowd of people. As he hurried forward to join
them he suddenly saw, moving down that thoroughfare, what appeared
to his startled eyes to be the smokestacks of some small, flat-
bottomed steamer. He rubbed his eyes; it was no illusion, for the
next moment he had reached the crowd, who were standing half a
block away from the thoroughfare, and on the edge of a lagoon of
yellow water, whose main current was the thoroughfare he was
seeking, and between whose houses, submerged to their first
stories, a steamboat was really paddling. Other boats and rafts
were adrift on its sluggish waters, and a boatman had just landed a
passenger in the backwater of the lower half of the street on which
he stood with the crowd.

Possessed of his one idea, he fought his way desperately to the
water edge and the boat, and demanded a passage to his office. The
boatman hesitated, but James Smith promptly offered him double the
value of his craft. The act was not deemed singular in that
extravagant epoch, and the sympathizing crowd cheered his solitary
departure, as he declined even the services of the boatman. The
next moment he was off in mid-stream of the thoroughfare, paddling
his boat with a desperate but inexperienced hand until he reached
his office, which he entered by the window. The building, which
was new and of brick, showed very little damage from the flood, but
in far different case was the one opposite, on which his eyes were
eagerly bent, and whose cheap and insecure foundations he could see
the flood was already undermining. There were boats around the
house, and men hurriedly removing trunks and valuables, but the one
figure he expected to see was not there. He tied his own boat to
the window; there was evidently no chance of an interview now, but
if she were leaving there would be still the chance of following
her and knowing her destination. As he gazed she suddenly appeared
at a window, and was helped by a boatman into a flat-bottomed barge
containing trunks and furniture. She was evidently the last to
leave. The other boats put off at once, and none too soon; for
there was a warning cry, a quick swerving of the barge, and the end
of the dwelling slowly dropped into the flood, seeming to sink on
its knees like a stricken ox. A great undulation of yellow water
swept across the street, inundating his office through the open
window and half swamping his boat beside it. At the same time he
could see that the current had changed and increased in volume and
velocity, and, from the cries and warning of the boatmen, he knew
that the river had burst its banks at its upper bend. He had
barely time to leap into his boat and cast it off before there was
a foot of water on his floor.

But the new current was carrying the boats away from the higher
level, which they had been eagerly seeking, and towards the channel
of the swollen river. The barge was first to feel its influence,
and was hurried towards the river against the strongest efforts of
its boatmen. One by one the other and smaller boats contrived to
get into the slack water of crossing streets, and one was swamped
before his eyes. But James Smith kept only the barge in view. His
difficulty in following it was increased by his inexperience in
managing a boat, and the quantity of drift which now charged the
current. Trees torn by their roots from some upland bank; sheds,
logs, timber, and the bloated carcasses of cattle choked the
stream. All the ruin worked by the flood seemed to be compressed
in this disastrous current. Once or twice he narrowly escaped
collision with a heavy beam or the bed of some farmer's wagon.
Once he was swamped by a tree, and righted his frail boat while
clinging to its branches.

And then those who watched him from the barge and shore said
afterwards that a great apathy seemed to fall upon him. He no
longer attempted to guide the boat or struggle with the drift, but
sat in the stern with intent forward gaze and motionless paddles.
Once they strove to warn him, called to him to make an effort to
reach the barge, and did what they could, in spite of their own
peril, to alter their course and help him. But he neither answered
nor heeded them. And then suddenly a great log that they had just
escaped seemed to rise up under the keel of his boat, and it was
gone. After a moment his face and head appeared above the current,
and so close to the stern of the barge that there was a slight cry
from the woman in it, but the next moment, and before the boatman
could reach him, he was drawn under it and disappeared. They lay
on their oars eagerly watching, but the body of James Smith was
sucked under the barge, and, in the mid-channel of the great river,
was carried out towards the distant sea.

. . . . . .

There was a strange meeting that night on the deck of a relief
boat, which had been sent out in search of the missing barge,
between Mrs. Smith and a grave and anxious passenger who had
chartered it. When he had comforted her, and pointed out, as,
indeed, he had many times before, the loneliness and insecurity of
her unprotected life, she yielded to his arguments. But it was not
until many months after their marriage that she confessed to him on
that eventful night she thought she had seen in a moment of great
peril the vision of the dead face of her husband uplifted to her
through the water.

-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: The Reincarnation of Smith

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