The feud of Oakfield Creek : a novel of California life

Book I

THE LADY OF THE HILLSIDE ; a < : Tue SETTLERS AT OAKFIELD CREEK : 4 Boscowitz and Escorr Z| : ‘ : Tue Srory or a Lost Love . < : : A Weary Sunpay 3 ; ; ° ® ‘ A WINTER STORM ; ; é : : ;

A STRANGER GUEST ¥ . Z &

Book II

Tue Rose-GarDEN Atonzo ELDON, AND HIS TALE OF THE INDIAN FIGHT . ; : ; ; ‘

BOOK II.

BertTua BoscowiTz : : F 3 A THE ANNALS OF A FRIENDSHIP

Tue VISIT OF AN ENEMY

Tue TRAGEDY OF THE House oF ELDON A

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288 805 850 397 426

THE FEUD OF OAKFIELD CREEK.

BOOK I.— ELLEN ESCOTT. ae CHAPTER I.

THE LADY OF THE HILLSIDE.

Tom ELDON was the son of one of California’s wealthiest and oldest citizens, the well-known millionaire, Alonzo Eldon. But a few years since Tom lived on the old Dover estate, near East Oakland. This estate was his wife’s property, which she had inherited from her former husband, Peter Dover. Both Tom Eldon and his wife were still young. Tom was thirty - five. Margaret Eldon was five or six years younger. Her first marriage had been made by her mother’s ambition. It had been followed, after only a year, by the sudden death of the aged Peter Dover. Margaret, left free and rich, had been wooed by Tom Eldon, whom she had at first regarded with amusement, and afterwards had very mildly loved. They were married in 1878. They had one child, born the next year. In the autumn of 1882, when this tale begins, their friends knew that their lives had long been darkened by a one very gloomy shadow. Exactly how it had affected their relations, nobody could be sure. But obviously, as the years went by, it did not bring them any closer together.

Jealousy is a familiar cause for such griefs. But their jealousy, if it still existed, had had a curious beginning. Nobody was apt to call Tom Eldon, since his marriage, a man of careless life. Nor even before his marriage had the world at large ever thought ill of his morals or of his heart. Only one great mistake he had made. It was no greater mistake than many other men make. Yet fate had chosen to punish his fault almost beyond belief.

His fault was his unhappy relation, during the very year before his marriage, to Ellen Escott, the daughter of Alf Escott, an odd old literary man, half Bohemian, half professor, whom you may have heard mentioned occasionally by San Franciscans. Escott had formerly been a close friend of his contemporary, Alonzo Eldon, Tom’s father. But the two old men had quarreled, and Alf Escott, largely through the great Alonzo’s influence, had finally been driven from the professorship which he had held in the Sunset College. Tom Eldon, who had once been Alf Escott’s pupil in the Sunset. College itself, had somehow taken Escott’s side in the quarrel. After Escott, driven from his professorship, began once more to earn his living in his old way, as a newspaper writer in San Francisco, Tom Eldon-had remained his warm personal friend, and was constantly in a.

his house. Alf Escott was a high-spirited and warm-hearted man, and he loved Tom Eldon as a son, while Tom seemed to find in this friendship compensation for the loss of the great Alonzo’s favor. So things had gone on for some years before Tom’s marriage was thought of. Escott, who for many reasons had become a very unpopular man since his quarrel with Alonzo Eldon, had now lived a very quiet life. Save for his work a8 a newspaper writer on general, not on local, topics, he had little intercourse with his fellow-men. Tom used to talk with Escott about literature and about the world in general, and no doubt found very pleasing the flattery and the affection that the old professor showed him from day to day. Tom himself was a very gentle and mild-mannered youth. His mother had been the daughter of a Spanish heiress of old California days, and although Tom Eldon was but one fourth Spanish in blood, he had inherited enough of the Californian temperament to be indolent, clever, charming, promising, soft-voiced, and ineffective. Alf Escott had been fairly in love with him from the time of their first acquaintance.

Alf Escott’s daughter Ellen, meanwhile, had been her father’s favorite child. She showed her father’s strength of will, though not his rugged independence. She could love as he did, but she could not quarrel as he had so often done. Like her father, she was unsuspicious, careless of the world’s opinion, devoted to her friends, naturally cheerful, and fond of new things. Doubtless she came to love Tom Eldon quite unconsciously, and from the very simplicity and innocence of her heart. When he offered her his hand one day, she was overwhelmed with joyous terror. She was sure that she had never thought of such a thing. She was also sure that she had never been happy before. As for Alf Escott, he hailed the engagement as the fulfillment of all his hopes. This was late in the autumn of 1877. Many people, on hearing of this engagement (which for the rest was kept as private as possible), regarded the Escotts as very clever. To abuse the great Alonzo in public, to quarrel with him so fearlessly and bitterly, and then to capture his son and heir in this fashion,— who would have thought Alf Escott so worldly- wise? What would Alonzo say? Would he disinherit Tom? But Tom, as it chanced, had inherited from an uncle a little fortune in his own right. In any case the Escotts had gained a great triumph !

As a fact, however, Alf Escott and his daughter were quite innocent of any such thoughts. Tom seemed to them their most faithful friend, who had long been almost a member of their family. They had loved him so devotedly, and their love seemed to them so natural, that they never thought how it might appear to the world when they thus won the heir of so prominent a man. Moreover, Alf Escott was at heart still devoted to his old friend Alonzo. It was the tragedy of Escott’s life that, prone as he was to quarrel, quarreling could never affect his fidelity. He might seem nm, an uncompromising enemy, but if he had once loved you, he could never change his secret heart towards you. Amidst all his bitterness he would yearn to be reconciled. These men of strong inner life, too proud to show forbearance, too loyal to forget an old love, live very sad lives, and cannot be blamed if they eagerly hail a prospect of escape from any of their conflicts. Such a prospect Tom’s union with Ellen seemed to hold out to Escott. In fact, shortly after the betrothal of Tom and Ellen, the two fathers met once more, and agreed to bury the past. The meeting, to be sure, was rather a cold and formal one. They were both old Californians, and they dreaded to appear to each other in any wise unmanly. Bitter words had more than once passed between them. Cruel wrong had been done. Neither was ready to admit his fault. Both longed for forgetfulness. And in this interview they seemed to have made a beginning.

The reconciliation proved to be very transient ; for only a few months passed ere Escott accidentally discovered that Tom had all along been playing them false. Not Ellen, but Peter Dover’s widow, had been from the first Tom’s true beloved. And just before Tom offered his hand to Ellen, Mrs. Dover had either rejected him, or else had first accepted and then jilted him. Escott never cared to learn which. It was enough that the Escotts, by reason of their retirement from the world, and of their indifference to nearly all the people in it save Tom, had never heard before of

Tom’s friendship for the beautiful Mrs. Dover. As for her, she had lived, since her husband’s death, on the great Dover estate beyond the bay. Her mother was with her most of the time. Mrs. Dover was regarded as a brilliant woman, but she was very independent and exclusive in her life. San Francisco saw her seldom, although she was well acquainted with prominent families. Escott knew nothing of her, though her former husband, Peter Dover, had been well known to him. Tom had never mentioned her to Escott. And now, as suddenly appeared, Tom had been a suitor for her hand. Only when his suit had somehow ~ failed had he offered himself to Ellen Escott, simply out of spite, it appeared, or else because he knew that Ellen was always to be had by him for the asking.

Escott, as it chanced, found out these facts all of a sudden, and in such a way as to make them appear to him in the worst possible light. His rage at this treachery knew no bounds. The old feud of the Escotts and the Eldons opened afresh, and became far more bitter than before. ‘The engagement between Tom and Ellen was summarily broken off.

Then, however, followed in quick succession the events that ended in the darkening of Tom Eldon’s married life. When his relation to the Escotts had been finally broken off, he returned to his former love. How well or ill Margaret Dover understood at that time what had passed between Tom Eldon and the Escotts, nobody a among her friends learned. The engagement between Tom Eldon and Ellen had never been made fairly public. Margaret must surely have been ignorant of the extent of Tom’s treachery. At any rate, he managed after some time to win her favor once more, to explain his relation to Ellen Escott in some plausible way, and finally to marry Margaret in the autumn of 1878.

Tom Eldon acted through all this with what he thought a clear conscience. ‘There were reasons why he had never seen his conduct in the light in which the Escotts saw it. There were reasons ©

_why he fancied that he had: acted very considerately towards all concerned. He now saw no necessity for explaining everything to the beautiful Margaret Dover, at least before their marriage. He doubted not that their happiness would be as unclouded as their new home beyond the bay was charming. - To think of the Escotts gave him pain. As they were obscure people, and nowadays hated publicity, he knew that they would do nothing to molest him. In his heart he was conscious of having treated them very generously!

If they had broken with him, was that his fault?

Moreover, his father seemed to have sided with Tom in this latest dispute, a thing which put the young man’s conscience yet more at rest. ‘Tom’s new life thus began very joyously.

The storm came, however, a few months later, with that singular tragedy of Ellen Escott’s death.

Death, which hides so many things, here managed to reveal everything in the worst possible light.

Out of Tom’s blunders, Ellen’s death made a seandal. Out of what he had called a pardonable weakness, this tragedy somehow managed to bring to light the vilest treason. Fate was very unjust to Tom! It not only fully explained to Margaret everything that was unpleasant in the past, but it convinced her of even more than the truth. The great shadow fell on their married life, and endured. They were in this shadow when our story opens. > |

- ° To reach the old Dover estate, you drive along

the East Oakland side of Lake Merritt for perhaps a mile. Then you follow a road that leads towards the higher hills. You pass two or three groves of the dark eucalyptus - trees, some large grain - fields, and: a number of country houses. Dover’s former dwelling rises at last, in the midst of a jungle of shade-trees, on the slope of a high hill. On one side of the house runs a little ravine, full of dwarf oaks and low shrubbery. There is just room for a garden between the house and the edge of the ravine. On the other side there extends the long and evenly slanting hillside itself, where a large orchard has already attained an almost respectable age. The estate has its own water-works, with abundant supplies for lawn and gardens. Of the house you cannot say much, save that it might easily be far worse. It is very large, of course; it has gable ends and very gently sloping roofs. It is commonplace, roomy, comfortable, and free from useless display. Dover, gee, > i re ae v : 4 > indeed, had in his day a certain love of show ; but he lived in his house, and wanted only his old man’s comfort there. Display and art, which to his mind meant the same thing, he had therefore banished to a certain spot on his front lawn, where he had reared a twenty-thousand- -dollar fountain. The design of this was original. A vast and be- ° nevolent-looking bronze angel, on a high and dangerous perch, that bore the motto, ** Peace, Good- Will to Men,” was engaged in pouring from a big goblet a flood of water down upon a few naked babies, and upon a mass of turtles, dragons, lizards,

_and snakes, all of which were artistically disposed about the base. They of course spouted, feebly and thankfully, in return, while, in the narrow tank of the fountain, real live fishes restlessly wandered amid the foam, seeking an exit from their noisy metallic prison. Dover was a pious man, and had believed this fountain to be an accurate symbol of the dealings of divine providence.

Elsewhere about the place there was little to ° catch the eye of a novelty-hunter; and there were many things of a restful and homely sort: fine old oak-trees, gnarled and twisted by unnumbered summers of brisk sea-wind; pleasant nooks in the shrubbery; plain and simple lawns, diversified with but very few attempts at ornamental gardening. The new occupants had made but insignificant changes in the grounds.

Margaret Eldon, Tom’s pte was passionately fond of her own little garden-plot, on the west side of the house, towards the ravine and just under -her chamber-window. ‘There she worked awhile,

early in the morning, or just after sundown, when-?

ever the season permitted. She was proudest of

her roses; they grew luxuriantly, and she some-

times simply overwhelmed her numerous friends ' with gifts from her treasury.

Margaret’s other open-air recreation was riding. She had a beautiful little bay mare for her own use. She enjoyed best the long stretches to the southwards, towards the San Leandro region. She generally rode quite alone, and was as fearless and graceful in her flight as a sparrow-hawk. At home she read a good deal, but never played music, or even dabbled in fine art. Her garden was her only artistic activity. She was, however, in her way, quite an entertainer. Her circle of friends was carefully chosen; her talk was vivacious, fairly well informed, and even, according to some of the very youngest of her friends, at times profound. She had an uncommonly wellskilled practical sense, and some knowledge of business. She had a longing, and not a very secret one, to be thought, moreover, generally — intelligent. She loved to fix her dark-brown eyes on any learned man whom she might have enticed to the house, and to fascinate him with her modest and rapturous delight in the subject of- his specialty. She was not precisely insincere in all this, for the first sight of a learned man, particularly if he chanced to be a little noted, always made her heart beat with a warm enthusiasm.

Learning was something so far above commonplace life, so pure and so religiously cold! To be learned, she thought, ought to be much the same thing as to be saintly. Unhappily, the concrete cases of men of learning, when she saw them, usually disappointed her, though her melting brown eyes and her pale, gently admiring face nevér revealed the fact to them.

But among more ordinary human beings also she knew how to be a favorite. She had traveled quite enough to impose upon her purely provincial young California friends, and still she remained quite enough of a Californian to fascinate Eastern visitors. Her wealth and that of her husband were ample ; her position was excellent ; her life, despite one terrible event, for which none but malicious gossips, obscure ignoramuses, and interested personal enemies had ever blamed her, was above reproach; and her beauty still showed no sion of fading. Margaret was tall and slim, and very light and graceful in movement. Her voice was low and very musical, and had a curious and somehow very pleasant monotony about it. A part of every winter she used to pass in town with her mother, and for a short time in the summer she was often somewhere on the southern sea-coast; but for the most part her own house was the scene of her triumphs and of her kindly social activity.

Some of her friends misjudged her in a very singular way. They missed in her, they said, any real depth of feeling or of sympathy. She was, they asserted, with all her pretenses, hard and cold. They even doubted whether she had ever loved anything but her roses. This misjudgment was one of those tributes which sentimentality is accustomed to pay to self-possession. ‘The friends of this type observed that Margaret managed her husband with perfect and graceful ease. He feared her, — that was plain; and he certainly seemed to love her. But these critics declared — and in this one respect, perchance, correctly — that if she was fond of him she was at any rate hardly a devoted wife. Close friends and more distant gossips united in conjecturally explaining their relations, to some extent at least, by the terrible incident of some three years and a half since, — an incident which everybody had agreed to leave forevermore unmentioned in her presence as well as in general company, but which nobody could forget. Margaret Eldon’s spirit was too high and strong to let her show to any friend, after the first shock was past, the least sign of her feelings. Only her mother knew, if any third person, did, her present relations to her husband.

Her child, a boy, had been born a few months after the tragedy of Ellen Escott’s death. ‘The mother was no doubt fond of him; but these same critical friends of Margaret’s, who saw how little time she devoted to him, wondered if she really gave him a true mother’s love. She mentioned him but seldom to the friends; she was not a boastful mother, and at home seemed to them to be not over-anxious for his baby affeetion. Visitors at the house hardly ever had occasion even to learn of his existence. These dear and misjudging friends thought her a very cold mother. Though they had some apparent reason for their view, they were not quite just in this.

One morning in the autumn of 1882, Margaret Eldon awoke early. She was alone; Tom was passing his time of late very much in the city. Last evening she had received a note saying that he would come home about noon, and that he was very anxious for her advice about something important. She was glad of this. She knew that her advice was always influential with Tom; she had a pleasant sense of power in giving it; and as for the “important” topic itself, she had nowadays only enough mild curiosity about what Tom might call important to look forward to the interview with amusement. She expected nothing startling. It was now nearly three years since she had been startled, and she felt almost above such a weakness.

She passed her hour before breakfast, as usual, with her roses. The September sun was but an hour above the horizon when she sat down to the morring meal. She loved these early hours whenever she was alone. They gave her a long day, which she usually knew how to make amusing. After breakfast she spent a good while in the nursery. It was in fact her custom of late not to see her child until after he had been washed and dressed.and fed. Afterwards she took a little walk in the oak-grove with tlhe nurse and child.

One who had seen her for a while this morning would have been less disposed to call her a coldhearted mother, for she was plainly trying hard to amuse him. The boy, who was named Alonzo, after his grandfather, regarded her with longing and fascination as a beautiful playfellow, who was never enough with him, but who, according to his way of thinking, was very good so often as she came. His nurse was very fond of him, considering that she was, comparatively speaking, a new-comer, who had spent but three months at the house thus far, and who was certain to quarrel with the mistress and be dismissed before another three months had passed. But the boy, notwithstanding the nurse’s affection, was.a lonesome child. He seldom saw other children; he was somewhat ill-tempered ; his constitution, naturally sturdy, had suffered a little from a too frequent change of nurses, and from a constant change of the plans for his welfare. Moreover, he was longing to know about hundreds of things that nobody told him, and he had not even quite attained full skill in the childish accomplishment of asking questions. With his mother, therefore, he was restless, hiding much of his delight in her presence beneath a certain anxious care to keep her attention fixed upon him, and to be sure that she should not leave him. This morning, as they walked, he once gathered from the roots of an oak-tree, close down by the creek, a clump of moss to bring to her. Moss was his favorite among things that grow. When she complained that he

THE LADY OF THE HILLSIDE. 5 oe had got his feet wet in doing this, he made her sit down on a rock, and then nestled close beside her, and patted her arm and her cheek very nervously with his little muddy hands. She smiled, but forbade any more such caresses, and begged nurse to take him at once to wash his hands. At this he eried and showed temper, while she frowned, looked unhappy, and wandered off to the front lawn. Erelong he was pursuing her again, frantic with his eagerness not to lose.the one hour of the morning that she was always willing to devote to him. He begged of her a story, but when she began

_one he interrupted her, and demanded another.

She knew this other very ill, as it chanced, and so his attention soon wandered. At length he stopped her, displeased, no doubt, at her hesitating manner; then he looked sullen, and began to tear leaves from one of the plants. To forbid this meant to excite more temper, and thereafter poor Margaret began to think that if her boy had no love for her, and could take no joy of her efforts to please him, it must be hardly worth while to spend even so much time with him.

Then she grew anxious about his health, and began to question the nurse. He was pale; had he slept well? She wondered if that room was the best for him, after all, —the room that they had last fixed upon for the nursery. They were always changing nurseries in this house, having so many possible places to choose from up-stairs. Margaret, who was very conservative in all her other habits, could find no rest as to this matter.

Nothing, after all, seemed quite to suit his needs. The nurse, in reply, attributed all his pallor to his illness of some two weeks since. He had never recovered, she said, and it was all owing to that doctor. Margaret did not wish to recur to the old quarrel of nurse and doctor, so she went on inquiring as to the child’s diet. The nurse mentioned that yesterday, just after lunch, he had stolen unobserved into the pantry, and had devoured two or three bunches of grapes. Margaret wondered why she had not been told of all this before, and spoke severely to little Alonzo about his misdeeds. (Grapes were very bad for him, she said. They might kill him. He did not hang his head in the least, but took the opportunity to tell her gleefully how, as he stole the grapes, the cat got into the pantry too; how he gave her a chicken-bone, and then tried to get her to share his grapes. Puss declined them, whereupon he threw her violently out of the dining-room window, receiving several scratches, of which he seemed very proud.

Margaret was in despair. Could the boy never , be taught to let mischief alone? It was mean, she told him, to be a little thief, and to be so cruel to the cat.. She-should not love him if he acted so. She was going to leave him now, just to punish him. He should not see her again until evening ; nurse must take him away. He screamed in despair, threw himself on the ground, fought, and shouted that he hated his nurse, his mother, everybody, everything, and that he wished God att, ahr

Pe EeDADY-OF THE HILLSIDE. © <17

7 had made some other little boy instead of him.

The nurse at last carried him away, and Margaret, vexed and nervous, retired to the house.

She passed a short time after this in good resolutions. She must ask the doctor more about little Alonzo’s health. She mistrusted the nurse; she must get a new one. She mistrusted the

_ nursery; she must change it. And then she must pass more time with him. The morning hours, the quite early ones before breakfast, ought to be

-the best for being in the boy’s company. She ‘had loved them dearly when he was but a little baby. But of late she had left him wholly to the nurse at that time, her chief reason being that he always quarreled about the temperature of his bath, and was uniformly cross at his breakfast. Scenes of that sort always made her nervous, be. cause, when he was cross in the morning, he screamed hard, held his breath until his face turned purple, stiffened himself till he grew rigid, fought everybody, and was generally intolerable. The morning, however, she liked to have as peaceful as possible, else the whole day would be ruined. She always felt innocent, almost pious, in the early morning. She could not bear to be made wretched and ill-tempered at just the one most saintly hour. Hence she had fallen into the habit of not seeing the boy until after breakfast. The rose-garden was the gentlest and most friendly companion. - But now, after all, she asked herself whether this _ was quite right. She would try to sacrifice more for the boy. She felt that he was growing up ill- 2 A tempered, peevish, and unhealthy. She owed him more care. Next Sunday she would really make the experiment of staying all day with him. There would. be no company then. It would really be a good fashion of spending Sunday.

In the midst of this reverie she was suddenly disturbed once more by the boy himself. His face was now radiant with laughter. He was carrying a little pasteboard box. His eyes were full of love and resolution. He ran up to her, holding out the box. “* Oh, mamma,” he cried, “I brought you my green box. You may cuddle it and rattle it for to make it sound pretty. I love you.” Trembling with his new anxiety and delight, he put the box into her hand. It contained a few black beads, and was one of his most cherished treasures. He had managed to slip away from his nurse, and was bringing this as his peace-offering. Margaret was quite overcome; but though she kissed him rapturously, little Alonzo had no intention of staying in the forbidden room. He knew that the nurse was in hot pursuit now, and he instinctively wished to avoid another collision. He dashed out of the front door, crying that he must go and look for his cat. The nurse passed through in a passion of apology and chagrin, and pursued him out-of-doors.

Margaret sat still for a while, full of affection and of her new resolutions. These latter now seemed to her so simple and clear that, after she had fixed upon Monday as the time to have her next consultation about Alonzo with the dector, oul and upon Sunday.as the day to spend wholly in the child’s company, she saw no further use in reflecting upon the matter, and soon completely forgot it. Hers was, after all, a happy, resigned temperament, which quickly recovered from all ordinary shocks.

Her next occupations were more steadily and uninterruptedly amusing. She looked over the morning’s mail, ran through the current number of a magazine, wrote a letter or two, and then, about eleven o'clock, went up-stairs to dress for her ride. The ride itself was much as usual. She was dressed for lunch by the time Tom arrived.

The pale, graceful, and dark-eyed Tom was plainly rather abstracted and anxious. During lunch-time he did not introduce his important topic, and she, who disdained curiosity, had no questions to ask about it. After lunch she went back to the parlor, and sat by the window, looking off over the lawn. Beyond it, and between the great shade-trees, she could catch glimpses of the town, of San Antonio Creek, and of the bay, with the San Mateo hills beyond it. Tom followed her after a few moments, and seated himself opposite to her. He still seemed very thoughtful and somewhat anxious. He joined his hands nervously over his crossed knees, as was his wont when ill at ease, and then he sat looking hard at his feet. There was a little time of silence.